The Australia-first words that Sussan Ley says are a threat to the US relationship

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Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has questioned the wisdom of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to emphasise Australia’s foreign policy independence while the Trump administration reviews the future of the AUKUS defence pact.

On the eve of his meeting in China with President Xi Jinping next week, Albanese used the 80th anniversary of the death of Labor’s wartime prime minister John Curtin to talk up Curtin’s Australia-first instincts.

The prime minister honoured the legacy of wartime leader John Curtin on Saturday.

“John Curtin is rightly honoured as the founder of Australia’s alliance with the United States. A pillar of our foreign policy … that commands bipartisan support, respect and affection,” Albanese said at the John Curtin Research Centre’s annual oration in Sydney on Saturday.

“Yet our alliance with the US ought to be remembered as a product of Curtin’s leadership in defence and foreign policy, not the extent of it.

“As Paul Keating put it in his John Curtin Memorial Lecture: ‘Curtin began us thinking in our own terms’.

“So we remember Curtin not just because he looked to America. We honour him because he spoke for Australia.”

Curtin is feted for shifting Australia’s primary allegiance from London to Washington, but Albanese hailed Curtin’s decision to stand up to both powers by bringing troops back to defend Australia, rather than sending them to Burma. In putting Australia first, Albanese said Curtin avoided a “disaster”.

Albanese placed his reflections on Curtin under the banner of “progressive patriotism”, a phrase he has used repeatedly since first mentioning it in this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast in May.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley during an interview at Parliament House.

But with Albanese now unable to secure a face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump, even as the AUKUS defence pact is being reviewed by the Pentagon and Australia is lobbying for exemptions to US tariffs, Sussan Ley argued it was the wrong time to inch away from the US.

“At a time of global uncertainty, growing conflict and a growing list of issues in the Australia-United States relationship, now is a time to build our influence in Washington, not diminish it,” she said in a statement.

“Many Australians will wonder whether this speech at this time was in our national interest, given so many things crucial to Australia’s future are currently being considered by the US administration.”

The AUKUS defence pact is a trilateral agreement with the United States and United Kingdom that will allow Australia to acquire nuclear submarine capabilities.

James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, said that since John Howard it was unusual for Australian prime ministers to speak positively about a more independent foreign policy not tied solely to US interests.

“It’s not entirely inconsistent with where Albanese has been headed,” Laurenceson said, pointing to remarks from Trade Minister Don Farrell about growing trade with China following Trump’s tariffs.

Laurenceson said Albanese would be confident that the Australian public was comfortable with his coming meeting with Xi occurring before a face-to-face with Trump, pointing to polling showing Trump’s unpopularity in Australia. Coalition trade spokesman Kevin Hogan said on Sky News on Sunday that “it is embarrassing” Albanese had not yet met Trump.

Sydney University international affairs historian James Curran said there was a contradiction in putting a spotlight on sovereignty at a time when Australia was tying itself more firmly into US military framework through the AUKUS submarine pact.

He said Albanese’s speech was significant because it came at a time when the US was pressuring allies to boost defence spending and contain a rising power in China.

University of Sydney professor James Curran says there are times when Australia has to determine its own destiny.

“While it’s not a new strategic doctrine, it is saying that there are times when Australia has to determine its own destiny,” Curran said.

“After the best part of two decades, in which the culture of the alliance has been awash in the sentimental claptrap of ‘100 years of mateship’, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the loose cannons in the Trump administration – who are perhaps getting used to allies capitulating – to hear an Australian PM saying that, from time to time, Australia needs to express itself differently.”

During the election campaign, Albanese and his ministers used Trump’s haphazard approach to discredit the Peter Dutton-led Coalition, whose policy agenda and style had similarities with the US president’s.

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