Opposition Urges Australian Leader Not to Neglect US Relationship

Australia’s shadow defence spokesman Angus Taylor is calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese not to sideline the nation’s relationship with the United States.

Taylor made the comments on the ABC 7.30 program on July 15, saying he supported Australia maintaining strong trade with all its trading partners, but that Australia’s U.S. relations had been sitting unattended for too long.

Taylor’s comments come as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping urged Australia to maintain the existing relationship, “no matter how the landscape may evolve.”

“Trade’s important to this country, always has been, and will continue to be … so I strongly encourage the prime minister to keep pursuing those trade relationships. But we should be pursuing them across the board, including with the U.S., and that means fighting hard to avoid having tariffs imposed on our exports,” Taylor said.

“After over 250 days of this new U.S. administration, we should have seen a face-to-face meeting between the prime minister and the president of the United States and we should be seeing relationship-building and work going on with the U.S. around the AUKUS alliance, around our strategic alliance more broadly.

“And that’s incredibly important at what the prime minister himself has said is the most uncertain and dangerous time since the Second World War.”

Taylor added that the Australia-U.S. relationship is very long-standing and deep, and said the Albanese government should continue it by ensuring “we have peace through deterrence and strength with them.”

Weighing in on earlier calls from the U.S. for Australia to state its position on a potential conflict over Taiwan, Taylor said Australia needed to have an agreement with the United States, regardless of who the current president was.

“We should have a joint commitment with them to the security of Taiwan and peace in the Taiwan Strait, these are incredibly important things to be focusing on right now and it’s why AUKUS is so important,” he said.

Taylor said it wasn’t possible to “codify” a response in all situations, but said Australia should be committing to core principles.

The minister’s comments come as Liberal frontbencher James Paterson said it was not appropriate for the United States to urge Australia to state its place on any potential conflict with Taiwan.

Paterson said the United States had not declared its position, and subsequently, Australia shouldn’t have to, either.

“It’s had that policy consistently since 1979—when the Taiwan Relations Act passed Congress—so it wouldn’t be appropriate for the U.S. government to ask Australia to do more than the U.S. is willing to do in relation to that,” he told ABC Radio National.

“What they’re asking for is for us to pre-emptively and publicly declare what we would do in the event of a hypothetical Taiwan contingency.”

Paterson said any potential invasion of Taiwan by the CCP would be a disaster for the region and the world, and that Australia should be working with its allies to prevent such an event from happening.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just finished his fourth meeting with the CCP’s leader, but has still failed to conduct an in-person meeting with President Donald Trump.