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George Brandis<\/a>Former high commissioner to the UK and federal attorney-general<\/p>\nMarch 1, 2026 \u2014 1:30pm<\/p>\n
March 1, 2026 \u2014 1:30pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Save this article for later<\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n Got it<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses a joint sitting of parliament in Canberra on Thursday, he will, no doubt, make a plea for middle powers such as Canada and Australia to work more closely together in the face of disruptions to the world order. He can be expected to reprise some of the themes of his instantly famous speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January.<\/p>\n Leaders of other important democracies (notably, Donald Trump) also spoke at Davos, but it was Canada\u2019s prime minister who grabbed the world\u2019s attention \u2013 not just by the erudition of his remarks, but by their unsparing candour. While European leaders hedged their words with careful euphemisms about threats and challenges to the rules-based global order, Carney dismissed such diplomatic legerdemain as \u201ca pleasant fiction\u201d.<\/p>\n Criticising the \u201cstrong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety\u201d, he bluntly warned his fellow leaders: \u201cWell. It won\u2019t.\u201d Rather, he declared, the world faced \u201cthe beginning of a brutal reality, where geopolitics among the great powers is subject to no limits, no constraints \u2026 Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.\u201d<\/p>\n In years to come, the speech may come to be seen as a defining moment. (It certainly reads as if it were written with one eye on the history books.) Its impact was, to a degree, attributable to Carney\u2019s gravitas and prestige. He is unusual among world leaders in being at once a political neophyte \u2013 he was shoe-horned into the prime ministership from outside parliament by Canada\u2019s Liberal Party \u2013 and a well-established member of the so-called global elite.<\/p>\n It is unimaginable that Anthony Albanese could have made such an impression: someone whose biggest job before he was an MP was assistant secretary of the NSW branch of the Labor Party is never going to speak with the authority of a former governor of not one but two of the world\u2019s leading central banks (the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England).<\/p>\n Related Article Whatever one may think of Carney\u2019s analysis, the powerful impression it made typified the significant influence, disproportionate to its size, which Canada has on shaping the dialogue of global politics. It is the smallest member of the G7 in both population (42 million) and by GDP. Its armed forces (68,000 full-time personnel) are only slightly larger than Australia\u2019s (61,000). Canada\u2019s contribution of intelligence product to the Five Eyes is roughly the same as ours. According to the latest World University Rankings, it is home to only three of the world\u2019s 100 highest-rated universities. (Australia has six.)<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s outsized influence in global politics is largely due to its soft power: its reputation as a good global citizen, with a deep-seated commitment to internationalism. Only last week, the UK\u2019s leading conservative magazine, The Spectator, described Canada as \u201cthe moral leader of the middle powers\u201d. For instance, by one of the few empirically reliable measures of soft power \u2013 foreign aid \u2013 Canada\u2019s contribution is one of the world\u2019s largest in per capita terms, almost double that of Australia (0.33 per cent of gross national income versus 0.18 per cent).<\/p>\n In the decades after World War II, Canada was also important because geopolitics had a largely Atlantic focus. The division of Europe between NATO states and the nations of the Warsaw Pact was the frontline of the Cold War. Although they fought proxy wars in Asia and elsewhere, Washington and Moscow glowered at each other across the Atlantic Ocean. Canada, as a significant NATO nation \u2013 both Anglophone and Francophone \u2013 was in every important conversation.<\/p>\n We no longer live in a predominantly Atlanticist world. Canada\u2019s own National Security Strategy, launched in 2024, recognised: \u201cThe Indo-Pacific is rapidly becoming the global centre of economic dynamism and strategic challenge. Every issue that matters to Canadians … will be shaped by the relationships Canada and its allies and partners have with Indo-Pacific countries.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article In the era when the main fault line of geopolitics lay through the Western hemisphere, Canada\u2019s leaders projected global influence \u2013 as they still do. In the 21st century, however, it is Australia \u2013 situated at the inverse apex of the Indo-Pacific \u2013 that finds itself in the most contested and strategically fragile region of the world.<\/p>\n Yet too many Australians \u2013 and an alarming number of politicians \u2013 still indulge the happy complacency inherited from the days when ours seemed a sequestered part of the globe, where crises happened on the other side of the world, and international politics were somebody else\u2019s problem. In a sense, we still live in the long shadow of Donald Horne\u2019s assessment of Australia as a mediocre, insular, unimportant nation. \u201cAustralians are anonymous, featureless, nothing-men,\u201d he sourly wrote.<\/p>\n The Lucky Country was published in 1964. White Australia was still a bipartisan policy (until Harold Holt began to dismantle it in 1966), the word \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d did not exist, and hardly any of the people Horne was describing are still alive. But there is one thing Horne said that remains as true today as it was two generations ago. Speaking of our engagement with Asia (although in very different circumstances), he wrote: \u201cAustralia\u2019s problem is that it now exists in a new and dangerous power situation and its people and policies are not properly re-orientated towards this fact.\u201d<\/p>\n Canada has, for decades, been an exemplar of how a middle power can also be a global leader \u2013 if it appreciates that its interests are international, not just regional, and addresses global issues with the authority that comes from seeing itself as an important player in the great game of geopolitics. There has never been a time when it was more important for Australia to do the same \u2013 and for our foreign policy to reflect that realisation.<\/p>\n George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at the ANU\u2019s National Security College.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/907db8fb66050042f1f5f0e7c1bd2519709c0943.jpeg\")
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Canada PM Mark Carney at the Global Progress Action Summit in London in September. Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d651103b06acc37bce5af987c97d273e1befcc90.jpeg\")
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