Anthony Albanese has just completed the most nauseating diplomatic kneel-down Australia has seen since Gough Whitlam’s panda photo op.
In Beijing's Great Hall of the People, our Prime Minister didn’t merely shake Xi Jinping’s hand...he practically polished the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief's boots.Xi set the tone early:
“Our warships will conduct exercises wherever we want.” Translation? “Your sovereignty ends at the spray line of my destroyers.”
Albanese’s reply? A politely murmured request for “more notice next time”, as if Beijing had accidentally parked on his nature strip.
This is what passes for “constructive dialogue” in 2025.
The Chinese Navy circles our coastline with live-fire drills; the Australian Government circles a State buffet, dispatching dumplings and diplomatic dribble. Xi brushed aside the complaint about his navy like a waiter clearing crumbs, and our PM thanked him for the privilege.
Sickening doesn’t begin to cover it.
Meanwhile, back home, Chinese money still lubricates university campuses, property markets, and half the political class. WeChat propaganda keeps a million dual-loyalty voters tethered to the motherland.
CCP front groups scout talent, bankroll candidates, and harvest every juicy scrap of data they can get. Spy balloons are passé. Why bother when you can buy the information wholesale in Sydney’s CBD?
One sour point for China during Albanese's tour is his election promise to rip up the Darwin Port lease, which is held for 99 years by Landbridge, a private Chinese consortium with key ties to the Chinese military.
Good. But let’s not cheer too loudly: the deal never should have existed, and it took an election promise by the Liberals to prod Labor into action.
Any foreign soiree by an Australian Prime Minister would not be complete without the obligatory genuflection to climate change. So our PM pretended to lecture Chinese steel barons on “green steel” and Paris targets.
Apparently, he is unaware that Beijing’s blast furnaces belch more CO₂ by morning tea than Australia emits all month. Xi must have choked on his jasmine tea, laughing at the hubris. Moralistic symbolism in exchange for more iron ore contracts. That’s the swap.
Albo's entire tour of China has been overshadowed by Washington's questions on our defence spending and our willingness to defend Taiwan. Thankfully, for once, Canberra isn't rushing to sign up to spill blood and treasure for another US in advance.
While I have a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the free people of Taiwan, an intervention right on Beijing's doorstep will not go well for Australia.
China doesn’t need to land troops on Bondi Beach.
It can bankrupt our miners and farmers with a stroke of a tariff pen, and exercise a virtual fifth column via a million-strong diaspora held hostage to the party line.
That’s conquest by other means.
And the question begs: Is Albanese handing China a fresh invitation to continue that conquest?
Whatever the case, it’s high time we stopped measuring foreign policy by the length of the banquet table, and started counting the cost to liberty, prosperity, and national identity.
Thought for the Day
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” Winston Churchill
