Penny Wong is a virtue-signalling low achiever. Remember her statement against gay marriage?

Abbott in a couple of years got 3 FTA's signed while Labor has yet to get one.

Nothing very free about most 'free' trade agreements - https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6141655/nothing-free-about-tony-abbotts-free-trade-agreements
They invariably favour the big bully-boy corporates with loud voices and deep pockets. And they very often come at the expense of lower paid local workers and of hard-fought environmental standards.
And besides, what value is a free trade agreement with Asia's largest economy if you don't have the diplomatic skills to maintain it?
This is where Penny Wong might give us a fighting chance of resurrecting the lost trade and the once mutually-respectful relationships trashed by Dutton and Morrison.

Bronwyn,

Once again you have served up another steaming plate of bollocks.

FTAs grant market access, reduced or removed tariffs and a reduction in customs paperwork which benefits small businesses as much or more than corporates that have in-house legal and customs depts.

This increased trade significantly from the moribund trade union-run Labor party.

The Chinese Ambassador in the news resently, seeming to want to reset relations with Australia? And talked about Australia needing to take concrete steps first. Without identifying what those steps were.

I don't think we need to do very much as the steps would make us subservient? And china started this trade war with a selective embargo on trade goods, coal being front and centre with coal ships parked for up to a year in Chinese ports!

We were saved by the Russian/Ukraine war, as nations around the world started to buy coal as a substitute for Russian gas. And saved our bacon so to speak.

Let there be no doubt that this reprieve is temporary and when Russian hostilities end we will be back to square one And coal prices so low we could only sell at a loss.

This means we have some time to transition to MSR thorium and power prices that take all the current steam out of inflation! As well as massively increasing profits and production! Also driving down our massive debt via expanded production/profitability!

Other choices include further debt growth even as interest rates mean some spending will have to go. Pensions, aged care, education and health, e.g. Or fueling further runaway inflation.

The transition to nuclear power could be paid for by us becoming a repository for the world's nuclear waste and using the annual millions earned to pay for the factory we'd need to mass produce SMRs.

We were once the third wealthiest nation on the planet, but that was in the days when government was in the business of being in business. And the "right" energy business is a guaranteed success and our path back to a prosperous future!
Alan B.

Probably just angered China more.

Hey Alan B.
The issues China has with us are known to those like Jeffrey Wall, but they don't want us to know them.
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/fourteen-points-on-australias-icy-times-with-china/

They'll admit there are 14 points (it's no secret)
- But no-one in Australia will publish what those points are.

One of those 14 points is for the government to stop funding the ASPI
- people like Jeffrey Wall CSM CBE, the author of this article.
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/author/jeffrey-wall/

People like Jeffrey Wall CSM CBE want to march us into a war we cannot possibly win.

The US is done.
We think it's the worlds strongest superpower, but it's not anymore.
They project power with their carrier groups and fight smaller countries, but are no match for China or Russia.
Russia and China have hypersonic weapons,
they only need to shoot 20 of them at a US carrier, they can't defend against them all, the carriers will be sunk.
They can't project the power they once had anywhere anymore.
I've watched videos that show how western volunteers that have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan that have gone to fight in the Ukraine war are fleeing in terror.

"Fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, But..."| Why Putin's War Has Jolted Ukraine's "Foreign Fighters"
http://youtu.be/TVHOX3NyTSM

People like Jeffrey should just shut their mouths, and stop trying to march Australians into wars we can't possibly win.

What do you think Americans do when they face this?
Russian Firing Rocket Battery
http://youtu.be/5Vkz3opneLo
- They run.

No-ones going to beat China's army in China.
http://youtu.be/ahL-kFB0BvM

Just the same as Ukraine and the West are not going to take back the parts of Ukraine Russia has taken.
It's pure fantasy.

All the West can do is try to project a power it no longer has.
- And try to fight with money and trade.

If the West send troops against another superpower, other countries the West has screwed over will rush to fight them.
The US will be shown up as it's real power being non-existent, and it wont risk that.
It will only fight wars against weaker adversaries.
- Goat herders and such.