“Australia’s back,” Albanese declared triumphantly as his nine-day trip reached its conclusion.
“Australia is engaged,we’re having positive and constructive discussions with our historic allies,but with everyone in the region as well... If you look at the status that Australia has,we punch above our weight in international forums,when we’re mature,when we’re sensible,when we’re engaged,when we engage in diplomacy.”
Foreign affairs experts say they have been impressed by Albanese’s performance mingling with other leaders.
“I think it’s been a very good summit season for Australia,and for the prime minister,” says Richard Maude,executive policy director at Asia Society Australia.
Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove says:“He looks sure-footed on the international stage. Not all prime ministers have started off in the same relaxed and confident way in foreign affairs. He appears comfortable in his own skin and that’s important.”
The highlight of Albanese’s trip,undoubtedly,was his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The prospect of such an encounter was fantasy just a few months ago;under the Morrison government China had shut off all ministerial contact,refusing to return their Australian counterparts’ calls,let alone meet in person.
Yet momentum was clearly building for a rapprochement as the G20 approached:Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke to her Chinese counterpart on the phone and Albanese chatted to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the ASEAN gala dinner.
While welcoming dialogue,Albanese stressed a meeting had not been locked in. It only became official when he stepped off the tarmac in Bali and announced that,yes,Xi would hold his first bilateral meeting with an Australian prime minister since Malcolm Turnbull in 2016.
A cordial meeting with Xi alone would have made Albanese’s trip a success,but there were several other diplomatic wins. In Phnom Penh,Albanese met for 40 minutes with US President Joe Biden,where they discussed,among other issues,how to secure nuclear-powered submarines for Australia under the AUKUS pact. The two leaders clearly get along,emerging from the meeting smiling and shaking hands.
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In Bali,Albanese held back-to-back meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron,Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Modi invited Albanese to visit India in March;Sunak jokingly asked for his advice on winning elections.
A day later,as Albanese jetted off to Thailand,Myanmar’s juntareleased Australian economist Sean Turnell after 650 days in prison. Turnell’s release followed months of intense diplomacy behind the scenes alongside South-East Asian nations such as Cambodia. Announcing Turnell was on his way home to Sydney,a visibly emotional Albanese said:“Occasionally in this job you have a big moment.”
Unlike some of his predecessors,notably Kevin Rudd,Albanese did not ascend to the prime ministership with a reputation as an international affairs guru. No worries,says Fullilove.
“You don’t need to be a foreign policy wonk to be a good foreign policy prime minister,” he says.
“You need to have good instincts,be good at dealing with people,be a good negotiator. You need to be able to prioritise and delegate to your foreign minister and officials.”
Based on Albanese’s performance over the past week,and the rest of his prime ministership,Fullilove says it’s a skill set he possesses.
A real-time reminder of how diplomacy can go awry arrived on Thursday,when Xi - in the immortal words of former prime minister Tony Abbott – “shirt fronted” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G20. With cameras capturing the moment,Xi accused Trudeau of leaking details of their pull-aside meeting held the previous day,saying it showed he lacked “sincerity”. It was Trudeau’s first encounter with Xi in three years and it had gone badly.
Albanese’s half-hour meeting with Xi,by contrast,went smoothly. “China attaches importance to Australia’s recent willingness to improve and develop bilateral relations,” Xi said after the meeting,according to Chinese state media. According to Albanese,Xi didn’t even raise the issue of AUKUS,even though Chinese state media has been fulminating against the pact.
Maude,who advised former prime minister Julia Gillard on foreign policy and led the 2017 foreign policy white paper process,says:“The meeting marks the definitive end of the long period in which high-level contact was frozen. And while there were no obvious immediate outcomes from the meeting,the very fact it happened widens the window for Australia to make practical gains in the future.”
Maude cautions that Australia will not return to “some imagined golden period” with China;the differences between the nations are simply too profound. But he says Australia has a better shot at winding back some of the tariffs that have damaged Australian wine,lobster and barley exporters. It also opens the possibility of high-level negotiations to secure the release of two detained Australians,journalist Cheng Lei and writer Yang Hengjun.
Fullilove credits Albanese and Wong for taking some heat out of the relationship without conceding anything to Beijing.
“I agree with many of the former government’s decisions on China and I thought Beijing’s response was outrageous,” he says. “But diplomacy requires shrewdness as well as strength,and we weren’t always as smart as we could have been.”
Fullilove says Albanese was appropriately “straightforward and businesslike” in his meeting with Xi. “It’s important not to come off as needy,” he says. “The Chinese don’t respect weakness.”
In his final press conference in Bali,Albanese described his trip as “extremely successful”. It was self praise,to be sure,but not hyperbole.
“It’s been a long time since an incoming prime minister has faced such a testing set of circumstances,” Fullilove says.