Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was proud to announce his $2 billion investment in Southeast Asia following recommendations from the Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 report.

This is the same Labor Party that deleted its election (winning) promise to lower energy bills by $275 because, well, it’s just too expensive for the government to help Aussies out when there’s a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. One wonders how they got away with copy-pasting Europe’s (valid) excuse for energy prices when Australia’s problems pre-date the wholly unrelated European war and is instead closely tied to the influx of renewable energy.

Regardless, Albanese would rather make promises of cash to Asia instead of honouring his pledge for energy bill relief to the people who voted him into power.

We are left to watch as taxpayer money is air-dropped to ‘boost investment’ as ‘part of a suite of economic initiatives announced at the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Melbourne’.

The 2040 strategy report was put together by Nicholas Moore, Special Envoy for Southeast Asia, in 2023. It makes for rather bizarre reading in the context of a Net Zero obsessed Labor government. We have a report talking up the ‘awesomeness’ of Australia’s competitive agricultural and mining sector while devising ways to capitalise on this in the Asian market. So far so good, except Albanese, Bowen, Plibersek and co are doing everything possible to tax and constrain these industries because ‘carbon is evil’.

While I could sit here and break the report down page by page, the overriding conflict in this tedium is that Albanese wants to throw $2 billion at Asia to improve Australian trade while actively dismantling Australia’s ability to be competitive in a trade relationship with Asia.

This is the type of incoherence is something we have learned to expect from Airbus Albo and Boeing Bowen.

What this likely means in practice is the money will be mysteriously absorbed by high-level Australian bureaucrats, businesses in Asia, and a handful of nonsense programs.

Not to mention Australia does not have cash to throw around when mums and dads are facing the prospect of choosing between heating their homes and feeding their kids. This trade deal slaps them in the face while Albanese locks arms with the rich and prosperous, grinning for the camera.

We might also ask the Prime Minister why his government is continuing to pursue Asia when geopolitical tension in this region is curating a market that could evaporate overnight. Expanding its dominance over Australian trade is risky. Why isn’t Albanese putting those frequent flyer miles to good use and diversifying trade investment with old allies? The European Union might be a basket case with its meddlesome and overbearing regulations, but there are plenty of other nations who want to be friends.

The recipient of this $2 billion is the Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility managed by Export Finance Australia. It grants loans, equity, and insurance with – surprise – a keen interest in the ‘clean energy transition’. As the ABC points out, five years ago the Morrison government set up a similar project called the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific which hands over loans so that Pacific nations can build roads that regional Australia can’t afford. And politicians wonder why voters are so angry with them.

‘Australia last’ is the ideology of the era.

Laughably, this new project will appoint ‘10 Business Champions’ to ‘ensure the government and private sector work in tandem’.

‘When our region prospers, Australia prospers,’ said the Prime Minister.

A comment which is fundamentally untrue.

Australia prospers when Australia focuses on freeing up domestic businesses, lowering taxes, and liberating small businesses from the tyranny of State intervention. Being allowed to mine, grow, and create exportable products is what makes Australia prosperous – and yet these are all things Labor is set upon restricting to reach Net Zero goals. A nation whose businesses have to go begging to the government for loans to export into Asia is not a thriving economy, it is a nation kept behind economic gates lashed closed by the Treasury.

At least Foreign Minister Penny Wong was mildly honest when she admitted that this money is a bit like paying the mob for protection.

‘We face destabilising, provocative and coercive actions, including unsafe conduct at sea and in the air and militarisation of disputed features. We know that military power is expanding, but measures to constrain military conflict are not – and there are few concrete mechanisms for averting it. ASEAN centrality as key to the region’s stability and security, and we are committed to supporting ASEAN’s leadership.’

The obvious flaw in Wong’s thinking is that we have been shown repeatedly that after Australia throws billions at a neighbour, China swoops in, pays off its leaders, and starts building military ports. We are sold out every time.

Australia would be a lot safer if we had spent what must be hundreds of billions over the last 30 years on ourselves and our own infrastructure, instead of splashing it around so that an entire generation of politicians can retire into cushy jobs travelling through Asia ‘making deals’.

‘Australia and South-East Asia must together face this moment with a sense of optimism – and urgency. Because while there is so much untapped potential – there is not unlimited time. We must act together – and we must act now,’ said Albanese, invoking some of his ‘act now!’ apocalyptic climate script.

Yes, we must ‘act now’, and put Australia first for a change.

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