SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Here is one curious fact: Singapore, with a marginally bigger population than Sydney, is not only Australia’s biggest two-way trading partner in booming South-East Asia, but the sixth-biggest overall.
This is just short of India, with its 1.5 billion people, and above both the United Kingdom and Germany. It is also well above Indonesia, which Albanese repeatedly declared last week to be Australia’s most important foreign relationship.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong celebrates his government’s election win this month.Credit: Bloomberg
Singapore loves Australia’s natural gas, gold and crude petroleum. Singapore loves to refine the latter and export it back to Australia in multibillion-dollar quantities.
You can barely pick up a bag of fruit or a carton of milk at a Singapore supermarket without reading “product of Australia”.
If the massive SunCable project works out, the two nations will also be connected by a 4300-kilometre underwater cable sending Northern Territory sunlight to Singapore in the form of green electricity.
The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) last year granted SunCable a conditional licence to import Australian electricity from 2035.
More broadly, Singapore’s geography at the juncture of strategic waters is as significant now, if not more so in these unpredictable times, as it was when Sir Stamford Raffles set up shop more than 200 years ago.
Playing a smart, middle-power role, Singapore maintains good relationships with both China and the US and has long been a beacon of stability among its regional neighbours, which are troubled with coups, corruption and crisis.
It is a good friend to have in troubled seas. Albanese’s visit is short, however. He’ll spend only a couple of hours in Singapore before flying to Canberra on Tuesday night.
Australia and Singapore have both escaped US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff calls with a 10 per cent flat rate. Still, global trade is Singapore’s heartbeat, and any disruption to the pre-Trump status quo will be keenly felt here.
Wong, who is paid a salary of $2.6 million, is still little known outside his homeland. But he seems a considered and mild-mannered kind of guy. Like Australia, he did not retaliate with further tariffs on the US. And like Albanese, he ventured to say the tariffs were “not actions one does to a close friend”.
As a politician, he also played on the US economic threat to keep would-be straying voters in the arms of what they’ve always known.
The two PMs have at least several years of clear electoral air to build their personal relationship and strategies for dulling the unwieldy Trumpian knife.
Albanese and Wong were both elected on May 3. It was Wong’s first election since taking the job from Lee Hsien Loong last year. With a strong showing (Wong’s PAP won about 65 per cent of the popular vote), the prime ministership is now essentially his for as long as he wants to keep it and the party lets him.
Wong, 52, is only Singapore’s fourth prime minister in six decades of independence. Lee held the post for 20 years, long enough for Australia to cycle through seven prime ministers.
Wong and Albanese at the APEC Summit in Peru in November.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Both nations’ open economies are deeply wedded to international norms, but the styles of democracy are vastly different. Singapore is dominated by the undefeated PAP – the product, in part, of its good track record, expert gerrymandering, a compliant mainstream media and the party’s suppression of free speech and protests. Wong has shown no inclination to mess with the winning formula.
The main opposition party fielded only 26 candidates for 97 seats in parliament in the May 3 election. It won 10. Again, the PAP will be able to do as it pleases.
Don’t expect Albanese to raise any of this. But he will point out that Australia was among the first nations to establish diplomatic ties with Singapore when it separated from Malaysia 60 years ago this year.
In that time, “the little red dot” has grown into a wealthy middle-power of influence, one of the great financial hubs and ports of the world.
Singapore and Australia are awash in bilateral and joint multilateral agreements ranging from free trade to defence. One of them, the Australia-Singapore Military Training Initiative, will have at its peak 14,000 Singaporean troops training for more than four months of the year in Queensland.
Another deal, the comprehensive strategic partnership, is due to be renewed this year and could be the subject of announcements on Tuesday.
