Jim Chalmers wasn’t exaggerating when he said copies of a speech by Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, were being shared widely around Parliament House in Canberra this week.
Carney used a visit to the World Economic Forum to give last rites to the international rules-based order, declaring the era of Donald Trump represented a “rupture, not a transition”.
But as the US president trashes institutions, maligns opponents, threatens to take control of sovereign countries and apply tariffs on anyone standing in his way, it is unclear to what extent the Albanese government has heard Carney’s warning.
Even more worryingly, there is no sign of what, if anything, Labor intends to do differently as Australia’s most important ally and chief security partner changes beyond recognition.
Having faced threats and provocations from Trump since his election victory last year, Carney, a former central bank governor, used his speech in Davos to quote the Czech dissident writer turned president Václav Havel.
He recounted Havel’s story of the greengrocer, told in his essay The Power of the Powerless. Seeking to keep favour with communist rulers, the man placed a sign in his shop window, declaring ‘Workers of the world unite’. Like all the other traders on his street, the man didn’t believe the sign’s message, but wanted to avoid trouble, so he repeated the ritual every day.
This lie helped the communist system survive, Carney explained. If one person removed the sign from their shop window, others might follow and the illusion would be shattered.
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In a moment that would register around the world, including clearly in Canberra, Carney said it was time for companies and countries to “take their signs down”. The rules-based order was over, even if many of its adherents knew its story had been at least partly false all along. “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said.
“Middle power” is how the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, likes to describe Australia.
His answer to this changing global landscape is the energy and capital Labor has invested in regional institutions since coming to power in 2022. Across the Pacific and south-east Asia, Albanese, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, and others have worked hard to build close ties and cooperation, acting as a leading player, even as they still regularly cite the security blanket of the rules-based order.
Anthony Albanese at the Global Progress Action Summit in London with Keir Starmer, Kristrún Frostadóttir and Mark Carney. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Equally, Albanese has talked up his cooperation with Carney and Britain’s Keir Starmer in recent months, as well as with other Trump-exposed leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron. Last year the PM appeared at a progressive political summit in London, joining Starmer, Carney and Iceland’s Kristrún Frostadóttir to share lessons on how to hold back the populist right. Presenting themselves as an alternative power base, they said progressive governments could deliver quality public services and protect institutions in the face of scepticism and misinformation.
This week, asked to explain the government’s response to Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland, by force if required, the prime minister and senior cabinet colleagues have used carefully formulated talking points. They stressed that the future of the Danish territory is a question for its people and the government of Denmark.
Labor believes that answer is a criticism of the US president’s position, even if it doesn’t make headlines or prompt a vitriolic response from the White House. Trump appeared to step back from the worst of his threats late in the week, spooked by some of the biggest losses on global stock markets in months.
But the government is choosing not to engage publicly on the broader question: what does it mean for Australia’s defence and foreign policy that Trump wants to return to an era where powerful countries can roll over smaller ones without consequence? Trump thinks he’s entitled to take the Arctic island, and even to subsume Canada as the 51st American state but, so far at least, there’s no sign of concern or change in approach in Canberra.
That is in contrast with Albanese’s friends. When Trump threatened new tariffs on the European Union and Britain for speaking up against his plans, Starmer rebuked him, noting economic coercion was no way to treat a close ally. Trump lashed Carney for suggesting the US-led world order was a thing of the past, even retracting his invitation for Canada to join Trump’s new “board of peace”. Albanese has received his own invitation to join.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who wants to sign a new defence agreement and a free trade deal with Australia this year, was similarly direct, promising an unflinching and united pushback against the US if Trump went feral. The Republican president has hated Nato for decades, so warnings that his plans for Greenland would destroy the alliance likely only made him want to do it even more.
The big question for Australia remains the future of the Aukus agreement.
The government quietly sent another $1.5bn to the US last month to keep the deal for the delivery of nuclear powered submarines in the 2030s ticking over. It brings the cost to more than $4.5bn so far, with more cash to flow over the next decade. The payments follow Trump’s endorsement of Aukus and the completion of a secret review. As the only country paying for the far-off submarines, we might be entitled to know what the review found but Labor is keeping its copy of the Pentagon report secret.
John McCarthy, a former Australian ambassador to Washington, wrote on Friday that an American presence in our region remains in the country’s interest, but an unsentimental assessment of Aukus was necessary, including moving on from the “sanctification” of the US alliance.
Such a conversation would be difficult but is necessary, and would help Australia develop a new mindset for greater strategic autonomy that could outlast Trump’s remaining time in office.
Albanese is right to maintain an even keel with an unpredictable US commander-in-chief, but taking down our sign and acknowledging that the world isn’t what it used to be is an honest first step.
Tom McIlroy is Guardian Australia’s political editor