As Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the ANU and a former deputy secretary of Defence, says, "we are clinging harder to an image of the way the world works which was always idealised and is now completely divorced from reality".

He calls it Australia's "Pollyannerish approach" which was under strain last week amid renewed moves to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom, China giving Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop a proverbial clip around the ears, and a US court overturning President Trump's second iteration at a travel ban from six Muslim-majority countries.

What all this means is unclear, beyond more evidence that the old world order is unravelling.

According to Professor Rigby, a former Australian consul general in Shanghai, and executive director of the ANU's China Institute, Australia has been living under the "relatively benevolent tutelage" of the "Anglosphere" – first Britain, then the US – for almost 230 years.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull invoked, Menzies-style, the Australian Snowy Mountains Scheme to propose a significant new addition to renewable generated power. Alex Ellinghausen

"That was good for us. The only problem" was the "Anglosphere" era was "very much an atypical moment in world history. The rise of China has made it obvious that the pretty much unquestioned dominance of Europe (and then the US) is beginning to reach its use by date. It's time to move on.

"All the other countries in our region except New Zealand have actually lived in a world where China was dominant. They've all been there before but we haven't. The challenge for us is that much greater, particularly as our national well-being is so tied to China.

"It's not just the rise of China. Islam has been at war with us [the West] pretty much since it began. Our biggest neighbour [Indonesia] happens to be largely Muslim. At the same time Western Europe seems to be turning inward," Rigby says, with the impact of refugees and Islamist terrorism "making them behave in less open and generous ways".


In this more protectionist, inward-looking world the US, with its giant internal market, "does have an option. It could become more isolationist again. But that is not possible for [a much smaller, export-dependent economy like] Australia to do. We must live in a far more complicated world".

The rise of China has made it obvious that the pretty much unquestioned dominance of Europe (and then the US) is beginning to reach its use by date. Getty Images

"The idea that we can fix things by going up to the attic and come down with tried and true ideas just won't work," Rigby says.

Interestingly, there's a paradox at the heart of this awesome political challenge facing Australia. Evidence dating back no more than five years suggests the one figure in public life equipped to face this complex challenge happens to be the Prime Minister.

In 2012 Malcolm Turnbull, then Opposition spokesman on the media, and smarting under Tony Abbott's Liberal Party leadership, displayed a prescient understanding of the changing world order while launching Hugh White's book, appropriately titled The China Challenge.

In a subsequent review of the book, published by the centre-left Monthly magazine, Turnbull wrote: "There is a lot of merit in Australia being seen to have a mind of its own, while remaining a staunch ally of America." This approach is referred to in foreign policy circles as "independence within the alliance", a posture favoured by former Labor prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating.

In 2012 Malcolm Turnbull, then Opposition spokesman on the media, displayed a prescient understanding of the changing world order. Supplied

Before becoming Prime Minister, Turnbull often spelt out his attraction to this view, but since moving into The Lodge he has adopted a politically safer – in terms of appeasing conservative figures in the Liberal Party – and more traditional stance.


"He's just walked away from it," White, also a former head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says.

Sure, but maybe Turnbull's foreign Prime Ministerial stance is not yet settled. It's a domestic issue, but a significant sign of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull possibly reverting to his former, "mind-of-his-own-Malcolm", has been in his response to the looming national energy crisis.

Beyond predictable point-scoring, Turnbull has channelled the two most successful Liberal prime ministers, Robert Menzies and John Howard, and used both as a cover to distract attention from his more interventionist approach.

"It's not just the rise of China. Islam has been at war with us [the West] pretty much since it began," says Richard Rigby. Oscar Siagian

He channelled Howard when he jaw-boned the major gas companies into saying they would work on covering for any forecast gas fuel shortages in the Australian energy grid by the end of next year. A few days later he invoked, Menzies-style, the Australian Snowy Mountains Scheme to propose a significant new addition to that same national energy grid through more renewable electric power resulting from a major expansion of Snowy Hydro.

The Snowy Mountains Scheme, started by the Chifley Labor government in 1949, but overseen for all but two years of its 25-year initial development phase by successive Liberal governments, has achieved almost sacred site status in post-war Australian history.

Maybe Snowy Hydro's planned expansion signifies not just nation-building but a more confident, independent Turnbull later putting Australia's external posture under a more contemporary footing, one beyond "tooks" and "brace girdles".