Why Albo is under pressure to meet Trump

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The Prime Minister has reiterated that US tariffs on Australian goods should be zero as Penny Wong flies to Washington, D.C.

to try and clinch a potential last-minute deal.

But as the tariff deadline looms, a senior Labour Minister confirms conversations about an Albanese-Trump meeting are in train.

And back home, aged care has been in focus.

So who are the Sandwich generation?

And are you part of it?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvelis.

And I'm Raph Epstein from ABC Radio Melbourne.

And Raph, I want to tease out this tariff stuff with you shortly, but you've just jumped off your shift on air where you held a forum on what is kind of called the care squeeze generation.

You know, that's the generation that is looking after kids and also their elderly parents and

working.

And that's, well, guess what?

Hard.

We've had a lot of mail to the party room inbox in the wake of the election asking why aged care wasn't a bigger focus.

So why is the ABC focusing on this issue?

Every ABC station in the country, PK, the local ones, have been looking at this today.

And I guess there's two reasons.

One is, if you want to deal with the care system, aged care, either in the home home or an aged care home, you have got to be financially literate, emotionally literate, bureaucraties literate, social services Australia literate.

So you've got to have all these capabilities while working, while looking after your children, while looking after your parents.

And then on top of that, this sort of care is the care that most of us are going to need for longest.

We may not all need childcare.

We may not all need the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

We may not all need something significant out of the hospital system.

Aged care is something.

I've got breaking news for you, okay, PK?

Brace for it.

We all get old.

No.

Yes.

We are old.

I'm so glad we're cutting edge here.

And we're trying in this country and we've spent a long time focusing on what's going on in aged care facilities, aged care homes, what used to be called nursing homes, and that's what the national debate was tied up in very necessarily for a long time.

That's a small part of the aged care equation.

The bigger part of the aged care equation is people getting looked after at home.

So that's why we were talking about it and just the impossibility of navigating that system.

And we got stories like Sri who comes from the Melbourne suburb of Camberwells, who actually wasn't sure was it a Monique Ryan issue or was it a Karina Garland issue because the electoral brownies were redrawn but navigated the system, got on to the local member.

The local member advocated for them, you will know.

But just so listeners know, every electorate office has a special cue for all of these inquiries about aged care.

Finally got that issue actually escalated to the federal health minister, Mark Butler, who made, his office made the phone call to make sure that Sri's family actually finally got the assessment.

By the time the assessment came through, Sri's mother-in-law was dead.

We tried to get into the aged care system really early before we knew any diagnosis had happened and lost paperwork, systems being down, getting shunted from one queue to the next to the next.

That is not an unusual story.

The bureaucracy is difficult to navigate.

You take it on, you get effectively, you push yourself to the front of that queue by agitating,

and the net result, it doesn't help you in the end.

So that is why we're talking about that.

That's why we talked about it across the day on Monday on ABC Radio.

And what you just described is somebody being really assertive and active.

What worries me always is the people who just, and there are many of them who can't navigate that system.

And also a resourcing issue.

Have you got the time?

Because if you are so busy looking after someone, you may not have a family member who's got the time or space to advocate.

And the number of people who said, because to get aged care in the home, you've got to get assessed for your level of need.

But even to make the appointment with the assessor, that can take hours and literally it can take weeks just to get on the phone, to book the assessor.

And that appointment might be three or four months away.

And then you finally get the assessment and it's sort of 12 months since you started the process.

You finally get the care in the home and you go, hmm, mum's actually worse than she was.

So now we need to do that again.

That's the thing the Albanese government's addressing.

It is what has been delayed.

It was supposed to start tomorrow, Tuesday, the 1st of July.

It's been delayed until November.

And I think one of the major reasons it's been delayed is hard.

Like, it's really big.

And one of the most fundamental issues is around our workforce.

We don't have the workforce.

Yeah, so even if we delay it till the end of the year, I don't think that gets resolved very quickly.

Well, it's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, houses, submarines, aged care, the number of cafes in my street, right?

There's just not enough humans.

So yes, a significant problem.

You can train people and you can bring them into the country.

You can do all of those things.

But that is still only one part of the problem.

Because they're trying to, I guess, fine grain those aged care reforms.

Essentially, they are means testing them more and they are putting many different levels of care in there.

So it's a bit easier to jump up as your as your needs increase.

It's an incredibly difficult, sophisticated little piece of government machinery.

It will chew as much money as the government throws into.

It will never meet all of the needs of all of the people who want help.

And what I think they're really struggling to do is you just want to be able to get the care to the people who qualify.

Even just getting the help to the people who would fit and tick every box, that's hard.

I could fill weeks of two and a half hour daily program with just this problem.

I'm sure every AB Series.

And that's right.

And if you are at that age, your 40s or 50s, it honestly is like the barbecue stopper of our generation.

And also the number of women who've had to do the care for their husbands.

They are dealing with the grief about the demise of their partner, the death of their relationship while doing the caregiving, while being worried about the financial...

plight that they might put be putting themselves into.

I'm going to look after my husband in the home.

That chews through a lot of of resources.

So what happens to that woman after her husband has passed away?

How does she fund her own care in her own home or in an aged care facility?

And we've also fundamentally changing the model, right?

This is in the wake of the Royal Commission, which found, you know, which was in the wake again of some incredible reporting by the ABC.

A new model, which is more of a focus of in-home care, because we were very focused on institutionalising care for a long time.

And now we're moving a little away from that because all of the evidence shows that people want to stay in their home for longer.

It's better for their health.

It's cheaper.

It is.

It's supposed to be cheaper.

It's supposed to be cheaper but in terms of being able to execute it, roll it out in terms of the workforce, proving to be pretty tricky.

Can I just be a little bit policy wonkish?

I think there's a stated desire from all of the major parties and most of our parliamentarians.

Things like the National Disability Insurance Scheme and aged care should be funded.

We should look after people.

We are very much though in a place where the people providing the care are funded by government but not controlled by government.

I can't tell you how many people have said to me, oh hang on, when I used to organise this, like when I organised it for old people 10 years ago, I went through local government.

Local government managed a lot of this home.

Local governments are getting out of aged care.

There is the federal government.

and then there is the private provider.

And it's harder for your federal MP, harder for a federal government to respond.

There were benefits when you had a local government engaged in aged care.

The local nurse would drive around and then someone would say, oh, you've gone to see RAF.

Can you just go and have a word to PK?

I reckon she could.

That's much easier to do when you've got it provided by local government.

It's not provided by local government anymore.

I tell you one thing after this discussion that we've been having and we've talked about for a number of weeks, if there's one job I would not want in federal government, it'd be dealing with aged care.

Yeah, and so now that's Mark Butler's very difficult job.

And good luck to him if he's listening to this podcast.

Well, interesting, because I think we started with your listener question is why wasn't this spoken about during the election campaign?

And I do think that, I mean, in some ways it's great when we have bipartisan agreement.

And if you want to make changes, you really need that.

That's really important.

There's a flaw, and I don't know whose fault it is, but when the major parties don't fight about it, we don't focus on it.

And there's some real,

that is a problem.

I don't know if media retention solves a problem.

Solve is kind of too neat a word, but it puts immense pressure, I think, on governments to deal with things with a bit of urgency.

And I think that was one of maybe the negatives of the deal done between the opposition and the government on aged care, that it meant that some of that scrutiny was missing.

But there was the scrutiny was missing.

And you also, you want...

Like you want, you don't want the major parties maybe to have a big fight over aged care.

You don't want them brawling, but you do want accountability.

Surely it's possible to do both which is what you guys were doing today actually so it is possible to do both it's just about all we did today and as important as it is you could hear people around the country saying oh it's not just me i i am not alone in this so that's crucial but importantly the other reason we had the conversation is easy for you and i maybe to joke about it at this stage those conversations get a lot harder they do get harder and they also happen in a in a flash right can i leave you with a final bit of advice every expert we spoke to said start now do not leave these conversations for later.

Start now, whatever stage you're at, however old you are, whoever's in your life who might need some aged care down the track, start now.

You cannot start too early.

Yeah, I think that's a very good point.

All right, let's get back to Canberra or Canberra adjacent conversations.

A lot of concern is growing over Donald Trump and his looming tariffs, that 90-day pause on those so-called reciprocal tariffs, those beautiful tariffs set to end on July the 9th.

Are the tariffs big, beautiful or the legislation?

The legislation is big.

But I call everything big and beautiful now.

Donald Trump declared on the weekend that he isn't planning on extending the deadline to allow for more negotiations.

Now, Australia really wasn't in that negotiating field because

we got the bargain basement, I call it, sort of tariff.

We got the lowest tariff at 10%

of the broad ones because, you know, we're in a surplus basically of trade with the US.

Anthony Albanese was up this morning reiterating that Australia will continue to make the case.

And he says, and this is what I want to talk about, tariffs should be zero.

Now, Raph, this is the big question.

Sounds like my economics professor.

Sure, I agree.

Tariffs should be zero.

I actually agree, and I think a lot of Australians would agree.

Absolutely.

But is he standing up and just saying that?

Is that like a realistic bargaining position?

Like, what's he talking about?

Because the US has a very different view.

You have to work with the world you're in, not the world you dream of.

I always wonder when Anthony Albanese is asked about America, and it goes to everything from, you know, strikes on Iran through to the tariff deal.

When he's asked a question, is it a question that Donald Trump and the American administration gives a fig about?

Not quite sure.

Secondly, when he talks, is he talking to the people who voted for him?

Is he talking to the media who keep persistently asking him a question?

Or is he talking to Donald Trump?

So, and you know, anybody in the American administration, mind you, does anybody in the administration matter except for Donald Trump?

When he says zero.

What does he mean?

Well, I have an answer to your question.

I think it's just a message to the Australian media.

I really do.

I think out of those three options, sure, he has to be sure that anything he says on the public record is reflected back in Washington in whatever 5,000 conversations that might, one sentence might get to the president in a way that doesn't do damage to him.

And the idea that Australia is against tariffs is one that he'd be happy to be reflected, zero.

But ultimately, it's just a message.

for the media.

I don't think he thinks voters are largely engaged at the moment on these negotiations.

I think actually Australians made their decision that they think this is a difficult administration.

Do your best.

At least this guy has sorted out.

And this guy might not be able to fully sort it out.

There's a sort of radical realism in Australia about...

Radical realism.

Yeah.

I like to just coin new stuff.

Did you like it?

I do like radical realism.

You're going to take it, aren't you?

It's a curious.

So I guess it's an amber claim, right?

I will use it.

Radical realism.

Call now.

1300 222774.

Don't worry, it'll pop out tomorrow morning.

When he says zero, I did go back and look at Sergeius Darmersdiel, the British Prime Minister.

They are the only people who got close to a significant, you know, climb down from Donald Trump.

But even the British deal, the only thing that is zero is aerospace.

Cars, steel, everything else, 10% or more.

In fact, steel is still a lot north of 10%.

So I don't know if zero is, I don't think it's achievable.

I mean, I can't understand why Australia would achieve zero tariffs.

What does he achieve, the Prime Minister, by saying that?

Can he get near what Britain got?

No.

Does it sound like a decent amber claim, you know, because Donald Trump's full of amber claims?

Maybe.

You start.

You start.

Is it better than calling him daddy?

Yes.

Because let's face it, like, that's the path.

Is it better than calling him?

Well, that's the path they've chosen, isn't it?

Right.

A whole lot of people have chosen being obsequious.

A whole lot of people have chosen.

These are global leaders.

They have chosen.

Let's get down our way.

Let's get over the top in our praise for him because

they think they're being very strategic though.

They wouldn't agree that they're being on their knees.

They think they're manipulating him, right?

I think it's fair to reflect what they think they're doing.

I know, you're right.

Because longer term, that rule-based order relies on the US, for instance, with NATO staying in it.

And so you just appease this guy who they've clearly made an assessment, has a personality issue, a problem with the way he makes decisions.

And

it's just a means to an end.

So there is a significant problem in that one man's whims take precedence over all of our institutions, but I've been on that bandwagon before, so I'll park that.

NATO's clearly made an assessment.

A, we don't have to get to that defence spending for at least a decade.

B, if we just say things like Trump's daddy and we don't talk too much about Russia and Ukraine, they'll leave us alone.

And yes, we increase our defence spending, but the plus or the upside of that is he won't interfere too much.

I mention that because Anthony Albanese is not doing the same thing.

He's not using the same language.

He doesn't even want to use the language of percentage of the economy, does he?

Which makes him a bit of an outlier, actually.

So I don't know where it's going to end up, right?

It's a really interesting position to take.

If you say, nah, oh, this whole idea of percentage of GDP, nah.

We'll just decide what we need and then we'll go out and fund it.

And this whole, you know, we're not going to get to zero.

Well, I'm going to aim for zero.

Like, that's an interesting beginning to the negotiations for a Prime Minister who still hasn't met with Donald Trump.

I have no idea where it'll end up, and maybe it's the right strategy.

My question to throw into the mix would be and keep in mind Peter Dutton mentioned putting defence on the table as part of the tariff conversation during the federal election and got mauled by the federal government and maybe voters thought that was good or bad I don't know.

I would be interested to know if the federal government wants to say hey Donald look I'd like you to see here's I've got all my bits of paper here.

Here's how much it costs for us

to make so that you can have a dry dock for your submarines over in WA.

Here too is how much it costs for you to base all of your submarines over here.

It's not just a dollar figure that pops up in a budget.

Here, Mr.

President, is precisely how much it costs for you to increase your submarine capability in Australia.

We would like you to think about that in terms of A, what's going on with our defence and getting more submarines more quickly.

And B, maybe, maybe, maybe it even becomes part of the tariff conversation.

Well, I understand why you'd want to separate out of the tariff conversation, trading defence for...

Go with me here, PK.

We're going to blend it together.

We're going to stick them in the neutral bullet and the barrier.

I don't think Labor's going to do that, Labor.

So

that was my amber claim.

I'm in fact certain that they won't do that.

But your other point, though, that you put it in the defence context, well, that makes sense, doesn't it?

You talk about increases of defence and you talk about what we're already doing in defense.

That's a negotiation.

Well, the negotiation about defence.

So I do think it makes sense, but it's genuinely curious.

And again, I'm not saying right or wrong.

Think about what Anthony Albanese, as Prime Minister and leader of a country that relies on the US, is saying.

His positions are relatively unique and are quite different to everybody else.

Our relationship's different.

We've got a trade surplus.

We've got a different sort of military relationship than most others do in that we are far more reliant.

But I want to know where it ends up.

You know, I want to know where things,

I want to know.

what comes next.

Yeah.

And a lot of that will be determined

by kind of in the next month, I think.

I think there's a sense of urgency that the Prime Minister will need to at least secure a meeting within the next month.

It doesn't mean that meeting will occur within the next month, but that it will lock in and lock in, yeah.

And we've got this week Penny Wong meeting, you know, her quad partners,

second time in six months, Marco Rubio.

So she'll be clearly paving the way.

Well, that's the expectation on her.

It hasn't happened yet, but she's on her way there.

That's what she'll be doing.

But

I think that the government has accepted that they have to go to Washington and meet the president probably in the Oval Office.

I think that's, you know, that kind of idea that they'll do a sidelines.

I think that they realise that the other options have kind of been exhausted now.

This is now.

So you don't think they'll wait till September in the UN meeting?

I think they could.

I'm not saying they won't because I'm not certain.

But there is a sense of urgency that this meeting happens and that they're aware that it becomes a compounding problem the longer you wait.

I mean, the fact that the Prime Minister is dogged by questions about this at every juncture.

Yeah, okay, it's early on in the second term.

They want a landslide.

Lots of caveats.

But it's a pretty distracting thing, wouldn't you say?

You kind of need to sort of hive this off.

You do need to hive it off.

What I'm curious about, NATO's got an outcome that you sense most of them are quite happy with.

So they set up the conditions for a conversation that I think they were mainly happy with.

And a lot of their commitments are on the never, never, and only really Spain is away from that.

We often hear that the conversations with anyone other than the president don't matter.

Well, actually, maybe that is not the case anymore.

Maybe countries and institutions are working out how to get what they want from Donald Trump.

So in the same vein, if NATO does all of that work, Trump just comes for a day and then leaves, but NATO's relatively happy with that outcome.

What do those preconditions look like for Australia?

And in the past, at the start of this year, I would have thought, Pennywon going to DC, who cares, right?

Only Trump makes the decisions.

No, I'm sure they have have a strategy.

I'm sure they feel they can seed some of the work early, have some of those conversations with Trump's cabinet early to at least set the boundaries for a conversation.

Because I also feel that you're right.

I mean, this is not going off any conversation, but they're actually leaning towards, right, we've got to go, got to go to the Oval Office, got to endure that.

But what do you get in his ear before you endure what is the Coliseum of the Oval Office?

And I suspect that's the work that's going on right now.

Yeah, that's exactly the work that's going on right now.

And part of that is the point you make about

being able to quantify that extra spend,

the check that we just handed over not that long ago when it comes to subs.

It's not like we're not handing over money.

But that check's quantified, right?

So it was half a billion US, wasn't it?

About 800 billion.

And I think 800 million straight.

I think it's three to four billion in payments over the forward estimates from the budget.

I think in payments for submarines, I think that's right.

That's already separated out.

What other things are they going to say?

Oh, by the way, this is worth this much to you.

And do they even do the work where when someone like Richard Miles meets with Pete Hegseth from the Pentagon, are you fishing for information?

Say, okay, so if we allow you to base your submarines in WA and you're in the water 17% more of the time,

what would be the equivalent investment that America would need to make to have their subs in the water for that period of time?

I don't know if they're asking those questions, but if I was trying to attempt that negotiation, they're the sort of numbers I'd like to have at at the top of my head.

Yeah, I suspect that's exactly the way that they're framing it.

Why don't they just ring us and ask us for it?

I'm sure that's...

Yeah, I'm sure.

Well, some of them will listen to this podcast.

I hear it all the time, actually.

We've probably solved this dilemma.

I'll tell you where they're listening.

Gym, school run.

All of the above.

All of the above.

Just don't forget your radical realism.

She's trying to get that trendy, radical realism.

Well, you've embraced it.

I'm on board.

Hashtag radical realism.

I'm there.

I expect now it's a thing.

Last thing I'd like to talk to you about is Gaza.

The president of the U.S., who literally likes to tick off things as if he's got a to-do list, right?

I don't know if it leads to enduring outcomes, but he sort of approaches the things he needs to do.

Clearly, Ukraine,

not easy to resolve.

He's going to solve that one in 24 years.

Yeah, exactly.

So he's had to park that on his to-do list.

But he does feel...

kind of emboldened by the Israel-Iran ceasefire that's still holding so far, as we record on a Monday in the middle of the day.

We'll see.

Gaza.

He's He's now pushing for a deal on Gaza.

I find this really fascinating that he now

seems to me using the momentum of the previous,

you know,

the win that he recently had to achieve it.

Can he do it?

Well, it's always worth pointing out what's actually happening on the ground.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people have died while trying to get food.

The IDF, the Israeli Defence Forces are accused of being behind that, right?

So hard to get facts on the ground, but that's hundreds and hundreds of people.

The

most significant factor I would argue in answer to your question of if you can achieve a CSV is public opinion in Israel.

Let's be honest, right?

That's going to be much more important than public opinion in Gaza.

Public opinion in Israel is universally behind what happened in Iran.

The polls definitely support that.

The idea, though, that you would continue to prosecute the war in Gaza for the sake of, I think the numbers are something like 50 hostages, maybe only as many as 20 of them are still alive to continue to pulverize and make life hell for all of the people in Gaza there's less support for that in Israel I think broadly Israeli support for the way the war was conducted I think that's a factor in the conversation but people are getting sick of the war because it is an interruption to their lives they do

they do see a some of what is happening in Gaza so I think there is a moment

but you know there is a moment that Donald Trump could strike in and potentially achieve a ceasefire.

Few caveats.

We've seen a ceasefire before.

The other major caveat, Israel set the running, right?

Benjamin Netanyahu 100% set the running for what happened in Iran.

Donald Trump was able to come in over the top and do something significant, but he wasn't the major instigator.

Again, Gaza, Israel was the major instigator in response to what happened, of course, on October 7.

I don't know if Donald Trump has as much influence, right?

And he's not the only American president who's tried to intervene there.

And he is the American president who established a ceasefire and then it fell apart.

So I just think it's harder and more complex.

No, it is, and I agree.

But I will say this: there was a moment when

Trump had that, you know, that breakout where he dropped the F-bomb and then he sort of that tweet.

I don't know what the F they're doing.

Yeah, and then the Truth Social turn around your jets.

Which they did, and they did.

The Israeli jets turned around.

This is where I'm going with this.

And in that moment, I thought, here is a U.S.

that is flexing his muscle in a way that's getting a result.

It's something that Biden, you know, lots of words spoken, but that couldn't do that.

And so

could he do that?

Do you know what I'm saying?

I'm just putting it out there.

The idea that you cannot influence Israel, I think in that very moment, turned around your jets.

It proved just how much power the US has.

Is he prepared to do it?

That's the big question.

I think the simple answer to your speculation and your decent argument is it will only happen.

A ceasefire will only happen if Donald Trump sees it is in his interests and if Benjamin Netanyahu sees it is in his as well.

And Benjamin Netanyahu.

He really can be threatened, is my point.

Netanyahu can be threatened by the U.S.

We also don't know what threats have been made privately.

But yes, he can be threatened and there's a history of it was George H.

Bush, George the Elder, who withheld funding for settlements in in the West Bank and was never forgiven.

It was Ronald Reagan who I think made the comparison with the Holocaust when Menachem Begin as Israeli PM was launching strikes on Lebanon.

So people have done it in the past.

They've used the power of the bully pulpit of the presidency of the United States to influence Israel's direction.

I think your argument is decent, but I come back to Netanyahu, who will only do it if he sees it is in his interests as well.

Raf, love having you on the podcast.

You'll be back soon.

Always.

Thank you.

That's That's it for Politics Now today.

And I'll be back for another edition of Politics Now tomorrow.

If you have a question for us, send us a voice note at the partyroom at abc.net.au.

Fran and I will answer it on a Thursday.

Catch you then.