Penny Wong’s world view: AUKUS all the way

To this, one is reminded of the remarks of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who describes Wong's alms-for-the-poor routine as, "Running around the Pacific Islands with a lei around your neck handing out money". This could hardly count as foreign policy. "It's a consular task. Foreign policy is what you do with the great powers: what you do with China, what you do with the United States."

Much of the speech inhabits the realm of the speculative. Wong is delusionary in assuming that regional states will accept Australia's observance of the Treaty of Rarotonga, whatever the stance taken by the AUKUS pact members. Otherwise known as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, Wong has revealed Australia's ambivalence in observing its provisions. For one, she is on record as accepting the position that the US need not confirm whether nuclear-capable assets visiting Australia have nuclear weapons. She merely says that Washington "confirmed that the nuclear-powered submarines visiting Australia on rotation will be conventionally-armed."

This hardly squares with the assessments of her own minions in the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs, who have confirmed that Australia will accept the deployment of nuclear weapons on its soil as long as they are not stationed.

The last word should be left to that great critic of the Albanese tilt towards Washington's military-industrial pathology. "Wong," observed Keating, "went on to eschew 'black and white' binary choices but then proceeded to make a choice herself – extolling the virtues of the United States, of it remaining 'the central power' – of 'balancing the region', while disparaging China as 'intent on being China', going on to say 'countries don't want to live in closed, hierarchical region, where rules are dictated by a single major power to suit its own interests'. Nothing too subtle about that." The Washington establishment will be delighted.