Anthony Albanese has used a speech about our wartime prime minister John Curtin to assert Australia’s independence on security from America, right when our relations with Trump’s America and Xi Jinping’s China are both complicated and difficult.

His speech will be seen as significant in both Washington and Beijing for its content – and its timing.

Mr Albanese has sought to wrap himself in Curtin’s mantle of a strong leader on security, clear eyed about Australian interests and willing to take a strong line with America.  Curtin did all that, but he did so from a position of strength: Australia had been fighting World War Two for two years before America joined it and had highly capable fighting men, with rapidly growing defence industries capable of making munitions, weapons, ships and even aircraft.  But Curtin knew without American power, the Pacific theatre was lost. That’s why he said “ on behalf of the Australian Government that we look to America as the paramount factor on the democracies’ side of the Pacific”.

What we hear in the prime minister’s speech now is quite different.  Wrapped lightly in the usual bipartisan boilerplate that the alliance is “our most important defence and security partnership and a relationship that commands bipartisan support, respect and affection” are words about distancing Australia and our security choices from America.

He tells us that back in 1942, Curtin realised our security “couldn’t be outsourced to London or trusted to vague assurances from Britain ”. Translation: it shouldn’t be outsourced or trusted now to Washington.

On our foreign policy, then, as now “We needed an Australian foreign policy anchored in strategic reality, not bound by tradition” – presumably suggesting that tradition defines our alliance with America today and that needs to be changed – just how he doesn’t explain.

Wrapping yourself in the mantle of a former great leader is risky business. The analogy can often boomerang back against the speaker – like when then US Vice Presidential candidate Dan Quayle compared himself to JF Kennedy during a debate, only to be told by his opponent “I knew Jack Kennedy, and you sir, are no Jack Kennedy”. That killed Quayle’s candidacy.

That’s the risk for Mr Albanese here.  John Curtin had mobilised Australia’s population and economy to make Australia a significant military power at a time of national and global crisis, and he knew that even with this, Australia needed American power to survive and thrive.  He made the case to the American people and to President Roosevelt in his famous 1942 speech and sent Doc Evatt to be the face and voice of Australia in Washington.  Curtin’s Australia was working in the closest of partnerships with America and his views were valued.

In contrast, Mr Albanese’s efforts on defence are anaemic and his speech comes over mainly as defining the differences and distances between Canberra and Washington while promising more of them.  But he is doing so from a position of weakness and what will look in Washington very much like free riding.

For a leader who doesn’t want to outsource our security to another, his actions on defence look odd.  His defence plans are producing a weaker Australian military over the next ten – perhaps even twenty – years – while slow big projects like the Hunter frigates and AUKUS nuclear submarines progress and consume the defence budget.  And the ships, aircraft and other equipment of our military have are experiencing growing budget pressures that are affecting their ability to operate and be maintained.

At the same time, the money the Albanese government does plan to put into things other than the frigates and submarines is going in an increasing share towards buying American systems and weapons.  The whole plan depends on America’s goodwill in making us a priority customer for increasingly scare military supplies, and having large numbers of US forces operate out of Australia.

The fact that some 30,000 US and Australian and partner troops and systems are about to practice ‘multi-domain’ operations operating out of Australian bases at the Talisman Sabre 2025 underlines the strategy, and highlights our dependence just as Mr Albanese delivers his speech.

And while it might be a great soundbite here at home to talk about $57 billion in ‘new’ defence funding over this next ten years, the Americans know that this doesn’t even make up for the lost purchasing power from inflation affecting our defence spending in recent years. 

So, far from being proudly independent with our US ally, this combination of policies and actions by Australia makes us more dependent than ever on American military power and American goodwill. 

Australia wants scarce American nuclear submarines, wants to keep spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, not 3.4 or 3.5 per cent like the US and NATO. And we have yet to have the kind of leader to leader meetings with the Trump Administration to set AUKUS and our alliance on a firm course.

That’s a very odd moment to emphasise how different our security choices are likely to be, even without the Trump factor.

“Mr Albanese seems to understand what Beijing wants but to have a tin ear for Washington.”

But Mr Albanese may well have three quite different audiences in mind for his words. The first is the obvious domestic one here at home: Australians who dislike Trump and Trump’s America, joined by some long term familiar anti-US voices.  They probably like what they hear.

The second target looks like China’s Xi Jinping, who Mr Albanese will meet face to face for the fourth time since becoming prime minister in the next week or so. It’s a long term goal of China’s government to create splits and fissures between America and its allies and partners and to encourage political divisions and instincts that make security cooperation that might constrain Beijing harder.  They will have been delighted with Mr Albanese’s evolving distancing from America around issues like Israel and China policy — and will probably not be able to believe their luck to hear this distancing now extends to security.

The message to Washington looks simple but badly timed, even blunt.  At its most obvious, Mr Albanese seems to be saying “Australia isn’t doing a NATO anytime soon – getting pushed into spending more on defence because America says so – so back off”.  

The problem is that the feistiness is accompanied by our increasing neediness and dependence on America for both equipping our own military and protecting us and our region. 

And then there’s the optics and timing of giving the speech and jetting off to the meeting with Xi, all without a timetable or plan for a visit to Washington. Optics, timing and words matter.

Maybe this is Mr Albanese’s Liberation Day moment. Let’s hope it works better for him and for Australia than Mr Trump’s own attempt.

A version of this article was first published in the Australian.