SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia will seek to disprove the “corrosive” idea that democratic institutions are failing amid significant global uncertainty, and play a stabilising role in the region, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday.
In his first major speech since his centre-left Labor party was re-elected in May, Albanese said the rise of far right and far left populism elsewhere in the world was because people felt they did not have a stake in the economy and that institutions were not working for them.
“We are living in a time of significant global uncertainty – and that reaches beyond just economic instability, it is the more corrosive proposition that politics and government and democratic institutions, including a free media, are incapable of meeting the demands of this moment,” he said in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra.
Albanese said that while some “cynically seek to harvest it”, the Australian government saw its responsibility was to disprove such perceptions.
He also referred to an Australian journalist hit by a rubber bullet during protests on Sunday in the U.S. city of Los Angeles as “horrific”, and said that his government had contacted the U.S. over the incident to say it was not acceptable.
Albanese is expected to meet U.S. President Donald Trump for the first time next week on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Canada, where the security allies will discuss tariffs and a request from the United States for Australia to increase defence spending from 2% to 3.5% of gross domestic product.
Albanese has declined to publicly commit to a defence spending target, saying Australia would focus on capability needs, such as local manufacturing of missiles.
“I think that Australia should decide what we spend on Australia’s defence,” he said on Tuesday, adding the country’s ties in the Pacific and Asia were also important for its security.
Australia was focussed on strengthening relationships in Asia, amid strategic competition in the region, he said.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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