One of my pals observed the other day that we currently have one of the worst federal governments in living memory. He quickly added that the federal opposition is the worst ever.

Of course, these two things are related.  Without an effective opposition with consistent messaging, the government’s key ministers are free to make egregious and costly mistakes based on some undergraduate Marxist conception of the role of government.

Not only is there no consistent stated disapproval of the actions of the government, but there are also no alternative ideas being put forward. You might think that it’s early days and that the small numbers of opposition members haven’t had time to decide anything. But a strong set of values would guide both the opposition leader and deputy leader in questioning the government’s decisions.

Last week, we had to endure day after day of Albo’s six-day holiday in China – videoed postcards and all. It was like a Women’s Weekly World Discovery Tour on land.  All the usual tourist clichés, but without the crowds – the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the pandas. Let’s hope Jodie enjoyed it.

But hang on, Anthony Albanese is the head of government of a country that has very many domestic and international challenges. What was he thinking spending so much time in one country, even if that country happens to be our major trading partner?

As Prime Minister, he wasn’t heading up a trade mission, even though there was the usual retinue of rent-seekers, also known as captains of industry, trailing after him. Albo drumming up more Chinese tourists – is this some sort of joke? That’s why we have the taxpayer-funded Tourism Australia. Supporting the development of green iron – that definitely is a joke.

Let’s not forget here that China is the major geo-strategic threat to Australia, something that Albanese and his band of loyal deputies would rather forget. The fact that the Chinese navy was conducting live ammunition exercises in waters close to Australia at the same time as the trip surely underpins the reality of this threat. But Albo is very good at looking the other way.

There is also that rather tricky point that China is a totalitarian communist country in which repression is an ongoing feature of day-to-day life for its citizens. Sucking up to dictators is always a dangerous tactic.

But Albanese is very proud of having ‘stabilised’ relations between Australia and the Chinese Communist party; his aim is now to improve them. Forget the US, his real aim is BFF status between Australia and China.

In his eyes, former prime minister, Scott Morrison, was a disaster for Australia-Sino relations. As for Marise Payne, then foreign minister, calling for an inquiry on the origins of Covid was madness, according to the Labor playbook. (Arguably, this was the only decent thing she did in her long political career.)

Let’s not forget here that Albanese’s great political strength is to make decisions mainly with a view to domestic political considerations. Forget the national interest, he is more concerned what the Chinese diaspora thinks about his words and actions. (We see this playing out in respect of Labor’s highly ambiguous position on the Middle East.  The overrepresentation of Muslims in certain electorates is always front of mind.)

There is no doubt that Labor was very successful in capturing the Chinese vote in the last election. You only need to look at the results in outer Melbourne – Chisholm and Menzies, in particular – to realise that this was a slam-dunk result.

With WeChat (in Mandarin) being a major factor driving voter outcomes, Labor had it all over the Coalition. We might laugh at Albo being called ‘handsome boy’, but this did him no harm in a domestic political setting with Chinese voters.

It is also the main reason why the Labor government has no intention of winding back our immense immigration program, with its dominance of entrants from China and India. To be sure, it takes a while for these new migrants to enrol as voters. But Labor’s view is that, with the right settings and the appropriate utterances, these migrants will be Labor voters for life. How good does it get?

Of course, Albanese will always have some plausible reasons – minders are always a help in this regard – for his recent Chinese holiday. After the rather rocky period during which China imposed tariffs on our wine, barley and lobster, the stage is now set for more trade with China.

In fact, the imposition of those tariffs was a perfect excuse for Australian producers to diversify their buyer base, making them less likely to be damaged in the future by unilateral action by the Chinese government.   Some success was achieved, particularly by the barley producers.

The Albanese government would have been better advised to continue to promote this diversification of the buyer base away from China. Let’s not overlook the fact that the Chinese government backed down on the imposition of those tariffs because they hadn’t worked from its perspective. All they did was drive up local prices with no other real gains.

There is no doubt that China’s dominance as the buyer of our exports confers a high degree of fragility to our economic performance. And within that scenario, the reliance of the iron ore industry on China as a buyer simply heightens this potential instability.  After all, iron ore constitutes 20 per cent of our exports by value and the overwhelming majority of it heads to China.

The alternative for Albo’s trip would have been two days in China, two days in Korea, two days in Japan. That might have made some sense. But six days in China is an obvious snub to the US and the critical importance of US-Australia alliance.

But here’s the thing. The left’s view of the alliance is that it’s sort of important, but with Trump at the helm in the United States, federal Labor shouldn’t be going out of its way to cosy up to the US government. And the last thing these lefties want is to spend more taxpayer dollars on defence. After all, there are so many pet projects that need to be funded, and they should take priority over missiles and soldiers.

This point of view was summed up in the title of an article by Shaun Carney in the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Albanese is pulling away from the US – and Australians seem to love it.’

And where has the opposition been when all this has been going on? Basically, most of the remaining Coalition parliamentarians seem to have bad doses of extended aphonia, rendering them incapable of uttering a sound. Unsurprisingly, the Nats aren’t averse to a bit of trade promotion, so that bit of Albo’s trip is OK with them. But when it comes to the threat to the US alliance, including the uncertain future of Aukus, the word is mum from the opposition, apart from criticising Albo’s failure to meet with Trump.

The end result is a government incapable of governing in the national interest, preferring to satisfy its domestic political constituencies, and an opposition that is imitating a Norwegian blue parrot. Sigh. Big sigh.