As the pincers of Australia’s geopolitical position continue to close in on the Complacent Country, our leadership would rather not talk about it.

On one side, we prepare for the economic pain that Donald Trump is about to inflict on Australia in round three of his tariffs – while he refuses to take a phone call from the Australian prime minister.

Illustration by Joe Benke

On the other, Xi Jinping advances his plans for domination of Australia’s near approaches with a survey ship following on from China’s naval task force tour of intimidation. This is not only unfriendly. It’s positively rude. Don’t these leaders know that there’s an election campaign under way in Australia?

The government is reluctant to discuss these realities. It prefers to conduct a campaign in a parallel universe where the only danger is Peter Dutton.

When the government is confronted unavoidably by the inconvenient intrusions from the world’s two greatest powers, it has two responses. One is to downplay the problems.

Richard Marles on Monday was asked by the ABC’s James Glenday about the Trump administration’s claims on the territories of its allies, Canada and Denmark: “This is our closest military ally, and they’re talking about annexing bits of land. I mean, that seems like something we should be paying a bit of attention to and be maybe even concerned about?”

Marles deflected by talking about Australia’s “very close relationship with the US”. He said that “the alliance is the cornerstone of our national security” and “we feel confident about how that will play under the Trump administration”.

He volunteered that he’d had a “really good meeting” with Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, but declined to........

© Brisbane Times