The prime minister’s biggest moment on the world stage has arrived

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Singapore: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be here in Singapore on Friday night to deliver his most significant foreign policy speech yet.

The prime minister is the keynote speaker at the opening-night dinner for the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg

Defence secretaries and ministers from the United States, China and elsewhere are heading to the plush surrounds of the Shangri-La hotel on Orchard Road for Asia’s leading security summit. But it is Albanese who has top billing, giving him a platform to lay out the Australian government’s world view at a time of heightened superpower competition and concern about the potential for conflict.

The Australian leader is the keynote speaker at Friday’s opening-night dinner, following in the footsteps of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who delivered last year’s main address, and Malcolm Turnbull, who was the headline act in 2017 when he was the Australian PM.

In a nod to the weight being given to the occasion by Albanese’s office, his speech was finalised weeks ago. It will be followed by a weekend of high-profile appearances, including by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s newish Minister of National Defence Li Shangfu, who is also set to make a “major speech” according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which has organised the conference.

The events on stage, of course, are only part of the story at a gathering of such heavy hitters.

Even the seating chart at the dinner − and the more private sit-down affair at the Istana, Singapore’s presidential residence, on Saturday night − tends to be of interest. Then there is the frenzy of bilateral action that occurs on the sidelines, in wings of the hotel and suites booked out by the delegations.

From left to right, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, and his counterparts, Australia’s Richard Marles and China’s Wei Fenghe at last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue.Credit: AFP

It was in a corner of the Shangri-La last year that Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles met Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe in the first such in-person discussion between ministers from the two nations in almost three years. Austin and Wei also met up during the 2022 edition, but there won’t be a similar get-together this weekend.

Joe Biden’s defence chief had hoped to hold talks with Li, who succeeded Wei in March, but the approach has been rejected by China, unhappy that the US has not lifted sanctions imposed on Li in 2018 over Beijing’s purchase of arms from Russia. The knock-back of the US request is a blow for the agenda and also for Singapore’s neighbours.

“The inability of Beijing and Washington to maintain even a rudimentary level of communication regarding defence issues is a growing cause of concern in South-East Asia and around the region more broadly,” wrote IISS executive director James Crabtree this week.

“Many onlooking defence ministers will gather in Singapore this week and will likely put pressure on both China and the US, in private at least, to use the opportunity presented by the dialogue to strike a more conciliatory tone and begin to de-escalate tensions that have built up over the last year.”

Given the high-powered guest list and the subject matter, the Shangri-La Dialogue will be staged under the tightest of security. The Civil Aviation Authority will have a no-fly zone in place above the hotel, and Singapore’s renowned Gurkhas − the elite police unit made up of men mostly recruited from hill tribes in Nepal − have been a regular presence in past years.

Marles will also be in attendance with Albanese, who will fly off to Hanoi midway through the event for a stop marking 50 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

Hanoi will be the prime minister’s third bilateral visit in South-East Asia, the first two being his trip to Indonesia soon after taking office and a meeting here tomorrow with Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (his boss, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has COVID-19, again).

It promises to be a fascinating few days.

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