people|Wong turn

Penny Wong

Australia's foreign minister, the most popular minister in the Labor government re-elected in May 2025 and the most consequential Australian foreign minister in a generation. She is the first gay person and first Asian-Australian to hold the office.

Wong was born in Malaysia to an ethnic Chinese father and an Australian mother, and lived on the island of Borneo until she was eight. She was only the second Asian-Australian elected to parliament in 2001, but has begun to talk about her heritage more, wanting Asia to see the multicultural society Australia has become. Her sexual identity has not been a hindrance in Asian diplomacy; one minister from a conservative Muslim country regularly asks after her wife.

When Labor returned to office in 2022, Wong inherited a foreign-policy mess: the previous conservative government had turned sharply against China, which had stopped buying Australian commodities or taking ministers' phone calls. China had signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands on Australia's northern approaches, and the 2021 announcement of AUKUS had surprised South-East Asia. A gruelling travel schedule in her first year took Wong to 18 Pacific Island states and every country in South-East Asia except Myanmar. The dramatic improvement in relations with the region was accomplished mainly through personal diplomacy, without any underlying change in policy. China has since lifted all trade restrictions, but Australia has continued to work closely with America to constrain China's regional ambitions.

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, has little interest in questions of geopolitics, leaving them to Wong and Richard Marles, the defence minister. Critics say she has not done enough to preserve the alliance with America.

Wong has said that China is now engaged in "a permanent contest" for influence over the Pacific.