PM’s fiancee Jodie Haydon wears dress by Chinese-Australian designer Leo Lin during visit to Great Wall

The Prime Minister’s fiancee Jodie Haydon has done her bit to honour their Chinese hosts by wearing a dress with connections. Ms Haydon wore a white summer floral midi dress designed by Chinese-Australian designer Leo Lin when she joined Anthony Albanese on a visit to the Great Wall on Wednesday. The cotton dress – Joie Print in Snow with “delicate daisies and camellias” handpainted onto a fresh white canvas – retails for $599. Ms Haydon paired it with a matching white hat and sneakers for the event. The fashion choice delighted the design house. “As an Australian-Chinese brand, we are thrilled to see Jodie Haydon wearing Leo Lin in Leo’s home country,” Laura Good, head of brand at Leo Lin, told Nine Newspapers. “Ms Haydon has been a strong supporter of the Leo Lin label for some time and we loved welcoming her in to our Sydney showroom ahead of the trip.” Founder Leo Lin moved to Melbourne from China for his education when he was aged 16, before starting Leo + Lin in 2017, which has evolved into Leo Lin. For his part, Mr Albanese wore a white Rabbitohs cap and periwinkle blue polo shirt during the Great Wall walk. Albo grilled on AUKUS during Great Wall visit Anthony Albanese has failed to justify AUKUS while spruiking his peace-through-trade agenda with China from atop the Great Wall. The Prime Minister is in China on a six-day diplomatic and business blitz boasting the boons of deep bilateral trade, tourism and people-to-people links. The mission has gone down well, with Mr Albanese and his hosts emerging from meetings starry-eyed about the prospect of a future shaped by economic partnership rather than the spectre of an increasingly militaristic regional rivalry. But contrary to the positive rhetoric from both Mr Albanese and Xi Jinping, neither have agreed to change course on defence. Asked on Wednesday why Australia was “spending $360bn on nuclear submarines for the region if diplomacy is working”, Mr Albanese did not have an answer. “We are investing in our capability and we’re investing in our relationships,” he said. Pressed, a testy Mr Albanese was quick to shut down the topic, saying he would “make no apologies for investing in our capability to give Australia the defence and security assets that we need”. “If you want a long explanation of why nuclear subs, then I could do that, but there’s things to do today,” he said. Aside from obligatory sightseeing, Mr Albanese visited the Great Wall with his fiancee Jodie Haydon to pay homage to Gough Whitlam. A Labor reformist, the late former prime minister was an early embracer of China, establishing diplomatic relations with the communist state in 1973 and paving the way for the current booming two-way trade. Mr Whitlam too visited the Great Wall. Just as Mr Albanese has routinely invoked the Labor hero’s legacy when spruiking Medicare, so to has he invoked the Mr Whitlam’s approach to China. But the China Mr Whitlam dealt with was different to the China of today. Asked if he acknowledge China’s military and strategic aims were “vastly different” to what they were 50 years ago, Mr Albanese said that the “world is different”. “What the role of a leader is to adjust to the world as it is, rather than as you would like it to be,” he said. “And China has a different political system from us — that was acknowledged by all of the leaders in the discussions yesterday. “That means that we do have differences. “What’s important is that we’re able to talk about those differences, to talk about them wisely, and to acknowledge that they’re there, but to not allow those differences to define us.” Securing peace through economic interdependency is not new. It is a foundational part of the EU and a tactic the bloc tried to roll out with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. European countries were eager buyers for Russian oil and gas, and wasted no time building pipelines and locking in multi-year deals. But following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much of the EU was left scrambling to find alternative energy sources. Despite the precedent, Mr Albanese said he did not see the similarities. “Our relationship is very different, and I don’t think you can translate one thing across some other part of the world of which Australia is not a participant,” he said.

PM’s fiancee Jodie Haydon wears dress by Chinese-Australian designer Leo Lin during visit to Great Wall

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