Albanese flies into great unknown, with Trump G7 meeting up in air and Coalition ready to pounce

The Guardian

a day ago

When Anthony Albanese's official plane took off from Canberra's Fairbairn Air Force base in the icy cold of Friday morning, the prime minister and his advisers had little idea if his looming North American visit would be a success.
Despite weeks of preparation for the six-day trip to the US and the G7 summit in Canada, Albanese had yet to lock in his first meeting with Donald Trump. There were even doubts about whether Trump would show up in Kananaskis, Alberta at all.
But before the military grey jet hit cruise altitude for the first leg to Fiji, the urgency of the summit – and the question over Trump's presence – grew significantly.
Israel stoked global anxieties by launching bombing raids against Iran, after months of tensions over Tehran's nuclear program. In the tinderbox political reality of the Middle East, these 'preemptive strikes' could hardly be less welcome.
It soon emerged the chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the second in command of the country's armed forces had been killed, along with at least two nuclear scientists.
The flashpoint could complicate Albanese's push to get his first face-to-face meeting with Trump.
The PM wants Trump to grant an exemption to his steel and aluminium tariffs and for reassurance about the newly announced review of the Aukus nuclear submarine plan, news which rattled the government and defence establishment this week.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, said he had known about the review for weeks, likely after discussions with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last month.
Marles' meeting with Hegseth revealed Trump's insistence that Australia should lift its defence spending to 3.5%.
Currently, defence spending sits about 2% of GDP. Any move to increase to 3.5% at the speed sought by the White House would amount to about $40bn extra a year from the federal budget – about the current federal aged care spend.
Risking Trump's ire, Albanese and Marles insisted Australia's military spending was a decision for the federal government alone, and would be decided on the basis of need, rather than arbitrary targets.
Trump, whose reputation as a skinflint is matched only by decades as one of America's great hucksters, has long believed the US is being ripped off by countries not spending enough to defend themselves.
He used his first term to play world leaders off against each other, manipulating them and undermining alliances across the globe. He dominated multilateral summits, confounding the leaders of countries long tied to the US, and prioritising ego-stroking over the real work of international diplomacy.
While Albanese is in Seattle at the weekend, Trump will be in Washington DC, overseeing a military parade to mark the 250th anniversary of the US army. The occasion, inspired by a similar show of force he witnessed in Paris during his first trip abroad as the US president back in 2017, just happens to fall on Trump's 79th birthday.
When they do meet, Albanese will push Trump to stick with the submarines agreement.
Signed by Scott Morrison in 2021, the deal will see the US sell Australia up to five secondhand Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, with the first to be delivered in 2032. They will replace Australia's ageing Collins class diesel-electric submarines and stay in the water until Australia's own Aukus nuclear-powered submarines can be built, in partnership with the UK sometime in the late 2030s.
Australia's first home-built Aukus submarine is expected to be in the water early in the next decade. By the mid-2050s, Australia is expected to have spent as much as $370bn on the plan.
Part of the agreement sees Australia pumping huge subsidies to the industrial bases of both the US and UK. The federal government has already sent $800m to the US, a downpayment on about $5bn in promises.
Scepticism about the plan isn't new.
In the US, concern that shipbuilding can't match existing domestic demand, let alone provide subs to Australia, is real. Currently American shipyards are building subs at an average rate of 1.2 to 1.3 boats per year; the agreement aims to lift that two per year by 2028 and to 2.3 a year at some point after that.
No transfers will take place without the authorisation of the president of the day, meaning Australia's spending could be in vain even if the project survives the 30-day review.
If Aukus is abandoned or Trump snubs Albanese in Canada, the Coalition will pounce. But the irony is that plenty within Labor would prefer the nuclear submarines plan did not go ahead, or that the government would be bolder, including on the Middle East conflict.
Australia angered the US by placing sanctions on two rightwing Israeli ministers this week for their role in inflaming violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank – a long way short of what some Labor supporters and a few MPs wish the government would do in response to the unthinkable human suffering in Gaza.
Even if Trump doesn't show up at the G7, he will be there in spirit. Not least because the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has won some political support at home for his deft management of the Trump relationship, while summit host Mark Carney and Albanese himself both won reelection in no small part due to voter dislike of the president.
While the politicians and the press gallery were consumed with news of the Aukus review on Thursday, security specialist Jennifer Parker told this column she wished more attention was being paid to the deteriorating situation around Iran.
Speaking before Israel started bombing, Parker, a 20-year veteran of defence, noted about one fifth of the world's oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, wedged between Iran and Oman.
Parker was right to worry. Some 15% of crude oil and close to a third of refined oil destined for Australia travels on those tankers.