“We take the world as it is, but we seek to shape it for the better.”

This has been Penny Wong’s guiding foreign policy mantra since before Labor returned to power in 2022, a dictum that seeks to fuse the two competing strands of international relations: realism and idealism.

The two-state solution conference co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday morning, Australian time, at United Nations headquarters in New York was heady with idealism. World leaders, including Anthony Albanese, rose to the podium to speak about their goal to shape the world for the better by advancing the cause of Palestinian statehood.

President of France Emmanuel Macron speaks at the Two-State Solution Conference after a rock-star reception. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Hard-headed realism was i

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