Australia’s New Course: Morrison’s Foreign Policy Abandons Former PM’s Asian Pandering

Read MoreCommentary For decades Australia sold its soul to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in exchange for getting rich on trade. The recently signed AUKUS treaty represents a major foreign policy pivot born of an Australian awakening from self-imposed blindness about the CCP and a recognition that Australians have seen China through rose-tinted glasses for too long. Both AUKUS and the Quad alliances signal a realisation that the costs of allowing China to become Australia’s leading trading partner were too high. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s policy shift is not just about China. It is a change that reveals two different prime ministerial visions of Australia and its place in the world. To use journalist David Goodhart’s terminology, we are witnessing a shift from Paul Keating’s “anywhere” (globalist and internationalist) vision to Morrison’s “somewhere” (Australia-rooted) vision. Goodhart’s book, “The Road to Somewhere,” states that “anywhere” people see themselves as global citizens …