NATO 'family photo' sparks concern over Australia's world role
A picture of Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on the outer fringes of a 'family' photograph of world leaders taken at this week's NATO summit has sparked questions about Australia's increasing irrelevance on the world stage. The Defence Minister attended the NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, this week, where member nations agreed to lift their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP over 10 years.
Of course, Australia is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but Marles was there to announce more funding for Ukraine and to meet world leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Crucially, however, Donald Trump was not among them.
Many political observers had expected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to go in Marles' place after his scheduled meeting with Trump at the G7 summit in Canada the week prior was cancelled at the last minute due to the Iran-Israel crisis. It would not have been unprecedented, given Albanese attended NATO summits in 2022 and 2023. The Prime Minister has yet to meet Trump, despite Australia facing punishing tariffs imposed by the US on imports, including a 50 per cent levy on steel and aluminium, and an existential threat to the AUKUS submarine deal.
But a 'family photo' of world leaders, showing Marles on the far right of the back row, appeared to symbolise Australia's drifting relevance on the world stage. Trump, who had his ego massaged by NATO chief Mark Rutte, who called him 'daddy', was pictured front and centre next to the Dutch King and Queen. 'There's Richard Marles, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, right on the outer,' Sky News host James Macpherson observed on Thursday.
'Of course, I understand photographers probably order where everybody stands so maybe there's nothing in it. But the problem is when Australia's relationship with the US is so fractured at the moment, people read things into everything. And the fact we're reading into that is entirely the Albanese government's fault.'
Marles also risked Trump's ire by insisting Australia would not follow NATO members by lifting its defence spending to five per cent of GDP. 'Look, obviously, a very significant decision has been made here in relation to European defence spending, and that is fundamentally a matter for NATO,' Marles said. 'We've gone through our own process of assessing our strategic landscape, assessing the threats that exist there, and the kind of defence force we need to build in order to meet those threats, to meet the strategic moment, and then to resource that. And what that has seen is the biggest peacetime increase in Australian Defence spending. Now that is a story which is... understood here and we'll continue to assess what our needs are going forward. And as our prime minister has said, we will resource that.'
Marles did not speak directly with Mr Trump, nor US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, despite intensive efforts by government officials to tee up a first face-to-face meeting of an Australian minister with the US President. Marles announced Australia would deploy an RAAF Wedgetail surveillance aircraft to Poland, along with 100 defence force personnel, to help provide visibility for key humanitarian and military supply routes into Ukraine. The aircraft will be deployed for three months, concluding in November, and follows an earlier six-month deployment which was highly valued by the Ukrainians.
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