Big call on Albo's high-stakes Trump meet
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has praised Anthony Albanese's gift of the gab ahead of the Prime Minister's first face-to-face with Donald Trump.
NewsWire understands the two leaders are set to meet on the sidelines of the G7 in Canada starting later this week but a time has not been confirmed.
With a tariff carve out and defence spending straining relations between Canberra and Washington, Mr Albanese has no shortage of uncomfortable talking points for the US President.
But Senator Wong said on Wednesday Mr Albanese was 'pretty good at handling meetings'. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is 'pretty good at handling meetings' ahead of his first face-to-face with the US President. NewsWire / Martin Ollman Credit: News Corp Australia
'He's had a lot of experience, not just as prime minister but as a senior minister for a very long time,' she told Nine.
'Look, we don't agree with the President Trump's administration on tariffs.
'We've made that clear. We think it's not consistent with our free trade agreement.
'We don't think it's in the interests of American consumers.
'We think it's an act of economic self-harm. We've made that clear publicly, consistently, and we will continue to do so.'
Senator Wong refused to 'speculate' if bumping up Australian defence spending — which the US has demanded be hiked to 3.5 per cent of GDP — would be on the table.
'We'll always do what is required to keep Australians safe,' she said.
'We've invested more money in defence over the next few years, and also forward over the (next) ten.'
Senator Wong added that the Albanese government was 'very aware of the circumstances Australia faces' and that building up ties with Pacific neighbours was key to the strategy.
'A great part of my job is to work with other countries because those relationships contribute to stability and security in our region, which is where stability, security and ultimately our prosperity come from,' she said.
More to come.
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Maybe. We don't really do introspection and we're not much inclined towards looking backwards, either. To its credit, the UK allowed seven years for its Chilcot inquiry into Britain's disastrous enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion. It found that non-military options had been deliberately overlooked, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that the UK had too willingly agreed with America in sexing up intelligence. An easily beguiled Australia was along for the ride, unlawful and unethical as it all was. Yet an Australian equivalent of the Chilcot process was never embarked on in the years after. Lessons went unlearned. When it was unveiled in September 2021, AUKUS quickly became the new big thing - one of those binary faith questions in mainstream politics and most media. There were only two types: believers and apostates. 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An easily beguiled Australia was along for the ride, unlawful and unethical as it all was. Yet an Australian equivalent of the Chilcot process was never embarked on in the years after. Lessons went unlearned. When it was unveiled in September 2021, AUKUS quickly became the new big thing - one of those binary faith questions in mainstream politics and most media. There were only two types: believers and apostates. The tripartite Anglophone deal for nuclear subs came as a rude shock to the French who had been contracted (by the Turnbull government) to build our next generation of conventionally powered submarines. The costs were gargantuan but the long-term punt on unfailing US delivery was far greater because it relied on future administrations and unknowable security challenges in the decades ahead. Change of president? No worries. Everybody in Washington is onboard, the story went. Now, with Anthony Albanese on his way to the Americas for a possible first-ever meeting with Donald Trump, AUKUS is suddenly under active review to assess its consistency with Trump's populist rubric, "America First". Few really know where Trump stands or if he has ever thought about AUKUS. What is clear is that the president's acolytes are fuming about Australian sanctions on far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet and are looking askance at Albanese's recent statements affirming Australia's exclusive right to set levels of defence spending. Then there's the whole trade/tariff argument. READ MORE: These eddies will make for trickier conditions than Albanese might have imagined only days ago. Might it even see a bilateral meeting delayed or downgraded as a rebuke to Australia? With friends like Trump, literally anything is possible. Which, by the way, is why blind faith in AUKUS has always been disreputable. With the precision of a barrister and the venom of a politician betrayed, Malcolm Turnbull has torpedoed the credulous heart of Australia's multibillion-dollar AUKUS evangelism, raising the question: are we the only true believers? If the answer turns out to be yes, and we may know soon, the unhealthy consensus between our two major parties will have been exposed as the most naive conflation of our security interests with those of another country since Iraq, or even Vietnam. "The UK is conducting a review of AUKUS" the former Liberal prime minister tweeted. "The US DoD [dept of defence] is conducting a review of AUKUS. But Australia, which has the most at stake, has no review. Our Parliament to date has been the least curious and least informed. Time to wake up?" Maybe. We don't really do introspection and we're not much inclined towards looking backwards, either. To its credit, the UK allowed seven years for its Chilcot inquiry into Britain's disastrous enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion. It found that non-military options had been deliberately overlooked, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that the UK had too willingly agreed with America in sexing up intelligence. An easily beguiled Australia was along for the ride, unlawful and unethical as it all was. Yet an Australian equivalent of the Chilcot process was never embarked on in the years after. Lessons went unlearned. When it was unveiled in September 2021, AUKUS quickly became the new big thing - one of those binary faith questions in mainstream politics and most media. There were only two types: believers and apostates. The tripartite Anglophone deal for nuclear subs came as a rude shock to the French who had been contracted (by the Turnbull government) to build our next generation of conventionally powered submarines. The costs were gargantuan but the long-term punt on unfailing US delivery was far greater because it relied on future administrations and unknowable security challenges in the decades ahead. Change of president? No worries. Everybody in Washington is onboard, the story went. Now, with Anthony Albanese on his way to the Americas for a possible first-ever meeting with Donald Trump, AUKUS is suddenly under active review to assess its consistency with Trump's populist rubric, "America First". Few really know where Trump stands or if he has ever thought about AUKUS. What is clear is that the president's acolytes are fuming about Australian sanctions on far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet and are looking askance at Albanese's recent statements affirming Australia's exclusive right to set levels of defence spending. Then there's the whole trade/tariff argument. READ MORE: These eddies will make for trickier conditions than Albanese might have imagined only days ago. Might it even see a bilateral meeting delayed or downgraded as a rebuke to Australia? With friends like Trump, literally anything is possible. Which, by the way, is why blind faith in AUKUS has always been disreputable.
