Albanese to spruik free trade as salve to turmoil at G7 but Australia still struggling to secure meeting with Trump

The Guardian

12 hours ago

Anthony Albanese will tell Donald Trump and the leaders of the world's biggest economies that free trade can help calm rising global insecurity, as next week's G7 summit looks set to be dominated by conflict in the Middle East.
The prime minister will visit technology giant Amazon's Seattle headquarters on Sunday, on his way to talks with world leaders in Alberta next week, a trip he hopes will include his first face-to-face meeting with the US president.
Amazon and the federal government are building new top-secret data centres in Melbourne, set to allow the country's military and intelligence agencies to collaborate with overseas partners on highly secured networks.
But, after Israel's strikes on Iran and a retaliatory barrage of missiles ordered by Tehran, the meeting in Kananaskis is expected to focus on the fallout from the Middle East crisis.
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Albanese will tell business leaders on Sunday that the summit will be focused 'on the significant security and economic challenges facing the world'.
'But we should not lose sight of the profound opportunities that can be realised by closer and deeper cooperation,' he will say at the event hosted by Australia's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd.
He will talk up the government's plans on energy security and critical minerals, expected to be offered up in negotiations with the US as Australia seeks an exemption from Trump's punishing aluminium tariffs.
'We will continue to advocate for free and fair trade, for the jobs it creates and the investment it drives,' Albanese will say.
'We will hold true to the principles of shared opportunity and collective responsibility that are vital to building a more secure, prosperous and stable region – and world.'
The federal government has so far failed to lock in a meeting with the US president on the sidelines of the G7.
Albanese is part of a long list of world leaders seeking their first face time, including the European Union's Ursula von der Leyen and the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
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The Pentagon's review of the Aukus nuclear submarines agreement will be a top agenda item if Albanese and Trump hold talks.
The shadow defence minister, Angus Taylor, said Albanese should 'do whatever is necessary to get a meeting with the president at this time'.
So far the Amazon project, dubbed the Top Secret Cloud, will see the federal government fund construction of new data centre facilities and pay for their use. Additional investments are expected, as Albanese called the deal a demonstration of joint Australian-US ties.
The world's largest cloud computing company, Amazon already has significant deals to provide national security systems in the US and United Kingdom. The data centres provide access to Amazon cloud products as well as critical backup capabilities for an outage event taking government servers offline.
Albanese is expected to meet with executives from companies including BHP, Diraq, Trellis Health, Airwallex and Anthropic while in the US.
The G7 host, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has ditched the practice of a lengthy joint statement from summit participants. Trump objected to a series of similar communiques in his first term.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued updated travel advice for Israel on Friday, warning nowhere in the country was safe for travel due to the volatile security situation.