From Hamburg: As China’s latest flotilla sails closer, Australians are entitled to ask their Prime Minister whose side he is on.

Has he chosen the side of the liberal democratic world that has guaranteed our security for 80 years, or the side of the authoritarian regime he has spent years desperately trying not to offend?

His response to the live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea earlier this year, alerted by a commercial airline pilot, leave the ordinary citizen doubting.

If you want peace, as the saying goes, prepare for war. Here in Hamburg, there are plenty of reminders of how Hitler’s military and political preparations for war appeared obvious in hindsight.

Meanwhile, Mr Albanese appears to be doing nothing but feeding the crocodile and hoping it eats us last.

Mr Albanese seemed to confirm his crocodile diplomacy approach earlier this year after his second trip to China. Echoing Neville Chamberlain, he had ‘no reason not to trust Xi Jinping’. Meanwhile, the strategic situation is changing rapidly and Australia’s diplomatic relationship with Japan appears to be under some strain.

Japan’s former ambassador to Australia, Yamagami Shingo, said back in September that Albo’s diplomatic relationship with China was ‘tantamount to appeasement’. This week Shingo, referring to newly-elected Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, went a step further and accused the Albanese government of failing to support Japan.

Japan publicly stated that Australia ‘was not walking alone’ when China was attempting to coerce Australia through sanctions following the former Morrison government’s call for an independent inquiry into the origin of Covid.

Shingo said that Australia had not reciprocated by remaining silent after China demanded an apology from the Japanese Prime Minister for a speech in parliament last month. Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be a survival-threatening situation for Japan, triggering Japanese military action.

To be fair, President Trump is managing a delicate trade relationship with China after disrupting the apparent softer stance taken by the Biden Administration. And Takaichi has isolated herself by stirring the pot with China. The Albanese government has done enough to upset the Trump Administration without making matters worse by jumping on Takaichi’s bandwagon.

In the meantime, however, the latest Chinese expeditionary flotilla, reportedly led by a helicopter carrier and escorted by destroyers, frigates, and a replenishment ship, is sailing south, apparently bound for exercises in Australia’s nearby waters.

This is not a courtesy visit. This is the largest People’s Liberation Army Navy deployment ever seen this far south, timed provocatively just weeks after Beijing’s latest diplomatic tantrum over Aukus and the Quad. And what is Canberra’s response? More ‘strategic patience’ while avoiding the issue that should have our defence strategists focused.

To make matters worse, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced he will upend Defence’s materiel division and create yet another bureaucracy headed-up by a public servant who will have similar levels of power to the current Defence Secretary, Greg Moriarty.

Instead of demanding the Department of Defence get on with its job, Marles is bureaucratically rearranging the organisation instead of exercising leadership. I suspect this will only further entrench the department’s inertia. And that inertia is already well-entrenched.

Australia today is the most strategically exposed it has been since 1942. Our submarine capability is a decade away at best, our surface fleet is shrinking before the new ships even arrive, Army is thousands of personnel short, the RAAF has lost its command of the air-sea gap with no tangible replacement for the F-111, and our outdated munitions stocks would prove inadequate in a high-intensity conflict. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review, commissioned by this very government, described the situation in dire terms. Again.

To be fair, aside from Scott Morrison’s achievement with Aukus, Australian governments of all stripes have been lazy on defence policy for decades. A lack of prioritisation has been at the core of the parlous state of our defence capability.

Nevertheless, Labor has exacerbated the existing problem by its poor governance. These include turning a nation of sports men and women into a nation of sickly welfare recipients, destroying any sense of national identity and social cohesion, mass immigration and government spending that has undermined our economy, and diplomacy too focused on anti-colonial rhetoric and appeasing China.

It was the Labor Party that spent a decade mocking the idea that China could ever be a threat, dismissing concerns about foreign interference as ‘anti-Chinese racism’, and attacking any politician who dared mention the words ‘strategic competition’. It was Labor’s punters who ridiculed the 2018 foreign interference laws, who whinged about the calling-out of Confucius Institutes, who sneered at the Coalition’s Pacific Step-Up as ‘climate denialism in disguise’.

And it is Albanese himself who, as Prime Minister, has gone out of his way to cosy up to Beijing by increasing defence expenditure somewhere in the distant future while simultaneously ignoring calls from Washington to protect, not restrict, freedom of speech.

Crocodile diplomacy is the belief that sweet words and shared hatred of America will buy you safety in a world of hard power. The same ideological current that once saw Labor figures fawn over Mao’s China and march against ANZUS now manifests in Albanese’s cringe-worthy efforts to ‘stabilise’ relations with the CCP, right at the moment Xi Jinping is sending carrier groups to our doorstep.

The contempt shown toward our most important ally, the United States, has been irresponsible. From the whining about the original Aukus announcement, to the endless moral posturing about Gaza and the cowardly response to antisemitism, this government has gone out of its way to virtue-signal to the world. When American officials privately express alarm about our defence spending and readiness, Albanese’s response is to poodle-fake about ‘sovereign decisions’ rather than tackle the real-world problems Australia is facing.

History will not judge kindly those who fed the crocodile in the hope it would eat them last. Under Anthony Albanese’s leadership, Australia risks becoming the weak link in the Indo-Pacific. Regardless of past failures, Albanese is in the hot seat and needs to start pulling some levers toot suite.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.