Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has dismissed concerns about Donald Trump's US presidency, saying she is working well with his team and that there's nothing surprising about its policy of "America first".
"If it means that he intends to focus on the interests of the United States as an overriding priority, then it is hardly surprising, given every world leader should say that their priority is to act in the national interest of their citizens," she told the Melbourne Institute's economic outlook conference on Friday.
"While there is an almost universal focus, some may say obsession, with the President's Twitter account, and it has proven to be a most effective means of instantaneous communication, we have been focusing on what the President and his administration have been doing.
"I meet with, and speak to, and indeed text with, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson regularly. I have not seen signs that the interest of the United States in our region is any less committed than past administrations.
"There are two areas where we differ: the President's decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
"President Trump's announcement that the US would withdraw was disappointing, given it appeared that the US would meet its commitments in any event.
"The withdrawal was more than symbolic. The US is one of the largest carbon emitters, and the fact it has rejected international co-operation with 197 nations signing the agreement and 153 ratifications, sends a negative message to many other nations, including in our region.
"While these decisions give succour to the isolationist theory or the view that US influence is waning, I don't subscribe to either."
Ms Bishop said there seemed to be an assumption that it was inevitable China would soon overtake the United States as the world's economic powerhouse.
"I just put it to you that on a number of important measures, the United States is so far ahead of any competitor that I suggest it will be some time before it is seriously challenged as the dominant economic power," she said.
"We know about its military might but look at the economic indicators."
"Net disposable income, a driver of consumption, is $US3000 per head in China, $US38,000 a head in the United States. In absolute terms that's $US4 trillion in China against $US12.5 trillion in the United States."
As a source of capital, US investment in other countries is about $US300 billion and China's is less than $US250 billion.
"On productivity per worker, even taking into account its much lower labour costs, China is still 60 per cent of the US. On innovation, every credible index has United States firms at numbers 1, 2, 3,4 and 5. Chinese firms have yet to make it into the top 20."
Responding to Ms Bishop, Melbourne University economics professor and former ambassador to China, Ross Garnaut, said China was only a decade away from becoming a very high income country. When that happened, the correlation between democracy and high income would be broken.
"I doubt very much if anything will stop it," he said. "Then, for the first time, a majority of the world's high income people won't live in democracies."
Whereas the Cold War had been a contest between democracy at its best and authoritarian regimes, the new contest was between democracy at its weakest and authoritarian regimes enlivened by an market economies.