Why the PM chasing Trump could look 'desperate'

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The Prime Minister says he's mature about Donald Trump cancelling their talks and has vowed to meet soon with the US President, not ruling out a snap visit to The Hague.

But as consolation, Anthony Albanese has met with the Trump administration's senior economic team where tariffs and critical minerals were on the table.

And amid a flurry of meetings with other world leaders, the Prime Minister joined the EU Commission President to agree to start negotiations on security and defence agreement.

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm David Spears.

And while the cancelled meeting with Donald Trump was still fresh for the Prime Minister, he didn't have long to dwell on it in many ways.

A flurry of meetings with world leaders scheduled, but just a day after suggesting the Defence Minister Richard Miles would attend the NATO summit at The Hague next month, quite clearly stated by the Prime Minister that it would be Richard Miles representing Australia at this forum.

And the understanding at this point is that Donald Trump would be perhaps in attendance.

The Prime Minister has now suggested he's considering attending, which, if you join all of those dots, you're playing the dot game, would leave the door open, perhaps, to another sidelines meeting, David.

Is that the idea?

That's the idea, PK.

And this, I think, tells us just how determined the Prime Minister now is to get a meeting.

Now,

a couple of things here.

Yes, it was unavoidable.

The embarrassment, the disappointment, Trump having to leave early meant that no meeting, and that's not Anthony Albanese's fault.

And I heard you and Jacob talking about this the other day on the podcast.

Politically, being close to Trump, you know, it's not great.

so you know

what what's the big downside here but I would say this really matters he's got to get a meeting with Trump and I think pretty soon because while you can meet the the leftovers those uh other you know officials and advisors and the treasury secretary from the us who stayed behind at the g7 in canada and and the pm did that he met uh scott besant the treasury secretary the trade representative jamison greer and the economic advisor kevin has it that's great the thing we know about trump is he is mercurial he is the one who calls the shots No one, even his closest pals, know exactly what he's going to do on any given day.

So it really matters that the Prime Minister gets some face-to-face time with Donald Trump.

We know it's serious because now, as you say, he's talking about maybe considering going to this NATO summit at The Hague next week.

Now, I don't even know if Donald Trump will show up at that.

There's a fair bit going on, you might have noticed, around the U.S.

President right now.

But obviously, Australia reckons there's a window there that might be an opening for a meeting with Trump, and they're very closely looking at it now.

They certainly are.

There are a few potential problems, though, with that.

One cancelled meeting, I think it's, as I said on the pod yesterday, no big deal.

I really don't think it's a terribly big deal.

I know why we're excited about it.

That's because we've been waiting for a long time for a meeting, an aucus, and all of this is huge for us, for Australians.

But Israel-Iran is a conflict of monumental proportions.

Oh, absolutely.

Right?

So, to me, me, I thought it was rather parochial and a little bit like basically trying to make a big deal of something when there is way bigger stuff going on.

There is.

But I mean, Trump found time to call the Mexican leader after being unable to meet him at the G7.

There's no call, no contact, assure between officials, but at that leadership level, that's where you need to have a relationship.

And it just doesn't look like there is much of a relationship.

Now, I don't overstate it.

Maybe they'll be fine once they sit down face to face.

But there just doesn't seem to be that same level of dialogue.

No, I think that's correct.

And the reason it matters is, well, there are several reasons that I think are worth mentioning.

One is Anthony Albanese himself has committed in a pretty intense way, I've got to say, to the AUKUS Pact.

He has.

Oh, yeah.

So he's the one that's talking it up.

He's the one and his government saying, you know, no plan B, this is the only one that has to work.

So they've, in fact, boxed themselves in, David.

It's not like they are prepared to walk away and prepared to look at other options.

By boxing themselves in, they have made it, I think, absolutely mandatory that they have to have the meeting because you can't do one without the other.

Yeah, and look, again, politically, it doesn't hurt Albanese at all, right, to miss out on a meeting with Trump.

He's pretty toxic in Australia, no question.

But when you're the Prime Minister,

politics matters, of course, but actually delivering on Australia's national interests matter as well.

And this government is all in on AUKUS, as was the coalition government as well.

This is bipartisan in Australia.

You've got the tariff issues as well.

Look, they're not hurting Australia that much right now, but what if Trump goes further on pharmaceuticals or beef or other areas?

You know, we need to establish that relationship for a lot of reasons is the point.

So, yeah, it's fascinating that he's now contemplating another trip to try and catch up with Trump.

But, you know, as you rightly say, there's a lot of uncertainty and risk about does Trump show up?

Does he get a meeting?

Well, there is.

How about if he doesn't show up?

How about if he does and then he cancels it again because something big happens?

And guess what?

Something big will happen.

I don't know what, but I feel like it's pretty clear that the world is in incredible turmoil and the unpredictability of the way many of the main players.

are operating at the moment means that you can't be sure that nothing will happen.

Now, I think then it does become a problem for Anthony Albanese if another meeting is cancelled and he's, you know, that that is a problematic look for him and for the relationship.

I mean, I think that sort of goes into some more, well, it goes into crisis level, really, if you can't sort of stick to a date at all.

And that is what they'd be weighing up.

Is it worth it?

What's the risk?

I was saying to another colleague in prepping for this podcast, look, you know, obviously they'd want to get the highest level guarantee possible that it won't be reneged on, you know, that the Prime Minister would be mainly making that trip for this.

Yeah.

But back to

the Don,

you know, you can try and get that.

But ultimately, if he just, I don't know, has a mood swing or something big happens, I don't think that that means much.

Yeah, look, I mean, I don't think it's the end of the world if the PM doesn't get a face-to-face for some time.

Look, it might be September they're talking about going to the PM going to address the UN General Assembly.

Maybe he gets to Washington and has a meeting at the White House then.

So that's a few months away.

Yeah, there are risks, though, in looking a bit desperate, I think, going to the NATO summit and missing out on a meeting or

keeping your fingers crossed on a meeting.

Look, we'll see what's happening.

You're right, though.

The big story is what's happening in terms of Trump's decision.

on what to do in relation to Iran.

There's no question that our issues are small beer compared to what's happening there.

And the world, including Australia, is very much on edge, waiting to see if the U.S.

intervenes in whatever way, whether it's refuelers or whether it's the big step of dropping these bunker buster bombs on Iran's nuclear sites, any sort of intervention like that could potentially see this conflict expand dramatically and Iran starting to hit U.S.

bases in the region, other

perhaps terrorist attacks starting to take place.

There's a lot of concern about where this could spiral to.

So that's the big game right now.

And in terms of Trump's thinking on this, I'll just give a shout out to the New York Times, has a fascinating long read on this that about

14 minutes.

Four journals, including one of our former Canberra Gallery colleagues, Jonathan Swan, who's an awesome reporter at the New York Times,

have done this,

the months leading up to what's happened over there.

And it's just fascinating to see how Trump has been toing and froing, umming and ahing

on whether Israel, whether he was going to support or oppose Israel making this strike on Iran and now what to do in terms of U.S.

involvement in this.

There's some fascinating detail in this piece.

And it's just so interesting in the MAGA group how you've got these different views as to whether the U.S.

should get dragged into another Middle Eastern engagement.

You know, some of them like Tucker Carlson, for example, are adamantly opposed to going in to aid Israel,

the U.S.

getting militarily involved.

Then you've got the other more hawkish members

of that crowd who very much think they should do whatever they need to to defend Israel, support Israel at this opportunity, at this moment that they've got.

So he's kind of torn Trump between these two camps within his own base.

Yeah, he is absolutely torn and getting conflicting advice.

So there is a split really in that grouping.

That was always there, but now it's quite acute because

there's a real conundrum in front of him, right?

Like, but those camps pre-existed and now these camps are uh obviously trying to flex their muscle around something very real

so this piece is a long read about how donald trump's stance on iran has shifted under pressure from israel and from the prime minister of israel benjamin netanyahu and we'll link it in the show notes and going back to that very long and and fascinating piece you know camp david is in it always one of my favorites but uh what you you see emerge in that piece is that you know Trump was reluctant, very reluctant to be involved.

But the biggest part of the story for me is just the way Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn him in.

And clearly, Trump has been persuaded quietly, slowly by the inverted commas success of the operation.

Just on that, yeah, two little nuggets in that New York Times piece.

One, that he was still pretty torn as Israel began its strike, but when he saw how it was playing out on Fox News, which he loves, obviously, and

glowing coverage of Israel's capacity to do this to Iran, then he decides, according to this story, that he wants to take some credit for this as well and starts letting reporters know that, no, no, no, we, you know, we had a bit more to do with this.

The other nugget was the Pager gift.

Did you see this, PJ?

And yes, and that Trump thought it was really odd.

But yeah, tell the story.

Well, Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, course, after the Pager attack that took out all those Hezbollah leaders and members,

he presented, was it both Trump and J.D.

Vance with gold-plated pages as a gift?

And as you say, Trump found that a little odd.

It is a little odd.

I think what's interesting is that they briefed out that Trump thought it was odd.

So again,

what's the point of that story?

Sort of.

It goes to this little bit of

mistrust with

friction in the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, which is fascinating.

And that relationship hasn't, you know, I find it interesting.

I hear some reporting that, you know, they're tight.

Well, no, they're sometimes tight.

I think Donald Trump was pretty annoyed, wasn't he, with Benjamin Netanyahu after Trump lost the last election.

And, you know, sure, the relationship's rebuilt now.

I think the relationship is only as strong as the success story of Israel.

And, you know, if there ends up becoming, it becomes apparent that, you know, this isn't an easy operation, I think you'll find that Trump tries to distance himself again.

So he's weighing it all up.

There's been emergency meetings.

They're obviously trying to mess with the heads of the Iranians as well.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But the Iranians are playing hardball back, it seems.

You know, Trump calling for their unconditional surrender.

Well, it doesn't look like that's about to happen.

There's a lot of psychological games going on here, clearly, whether it's Trump, whether it's Netanyahu.

I mean, the story earlier in the week about the Israelis, you know, were planning on assassinating the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,

and Trump saying no.

And now Trump overnight, our time has been saying, well, maybe.

Well, he says not now, but he also says we know where he is.

Yeah, so it's this sort of psychological warfare, I suppose, messing with the Iranians and the Iranian leadership in particular.

Look, I think Trump, yeah, that relationship with Netanyahu is a little bit hard to read.

I think he's more focused on clearly the divisions in his own base about should they, shouldn't they, the U.S.

get involved here.

For Netanyahu, Trump's an absolute gift.

I mean, would he have struck Iran while Biden was in the White House?

I mean, the U.S.

has long said no to this sort of direct strike.

But now Trump being more equivocal on this,

Netanyahu's gone for it.

I mean, there are a lot of other reasons too.

He had the opening to do it.

You know, Hezbollah had been weak in the Syrian Assad regime, gone, and, you know, Hamas pretty much flattened in Gaza as well.

So he had all sorts of, you know,

arguments that this was the opportunity to finally do it.

But that very little pushback from Washington that would have been there previously, I think is a big factor too.

I think it's enormous.

It's clearly so far, although it's so unstable that you can't be sure, but so far been fairly successful in drawing Trump in.

I think it leaves a whole lot of other countries

who say, and I saw you asking on 7.30 the question of the Deputy Prime Minister whether we had been briefed on whatever this operation might be, Donald Trump talking big.

Again, the Prime Minister was asked that question in his press conference.

We're recording this on a Wednesday.

He says, yeah, they've been briefed, but he's not going to talk about his briefings, which is of...

Of course.

It's kind of saying, yeah, we know something.

And that's come through the intelligence channels, but without saying too much about exactly what they know or how they know.

Yeah, they can't say anything.

I mean, it's outrageous and they wouldn't actually know the details.

Do you think that even the Australian intelligence agencies, as amazing as they are,

would have any clue?

I mean, this decision is still very much...

in play

as far as we're aware of.

Yeah, that's right.

Look, I just want to raise another thing that happened out of the sort of sideline G7 meetings, and that's a meeting with the EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen and the Prime Minister agreeing to start negotiations on an Australia-EU Defence and Security Pact.

Now, that was requested by them.

We sort of parked it a few weeks ago and said, yeah, we'll consider it.

You know, it was, we didn't dive in, but we didn't say no, obviously.

We were sort of parking it.

Now, an official yes.

I just thought that was interesting timing, given the sort of broader defence, you know, AUKUS being put under review, opening new doors, new relationships, the Prime Minister making sure that was the message out of

his trip to Canada.

It's almost like the message to Australians, the subtext is, yeah, we haven't met the biggest fish in the world, but we have done a lot of productive work with lots of other people to safeguard ourselves.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think the message is as important as the detail of the document.

And to be clear, this is not some sort of alliance agreement where we're bound to come to their aid, they're bound to come to our aid in the way that something like ANZUS works.

But it is, you know, presumably about allowing Defence kit and technology to be bought and sold a little easier than it currently is between Australia and the Europeans, and that matters a lot.

But I think you're right.

The message this sends about how Australia is viewing its security relationships is important right now, given the enormous volatility and uncertainty around Trump.

That clearly remains the bedrock of our security posture, no doubt about it.

That U.S.

alliance is still fundamental.

But we've got to look at some extra options, some added options.

And I think that's what this is about.

It's all about opening doors, whether it's the trade front, the defense front, on lots of different areas.

You're seeing a lot of activity from the government.

Look, before we go,

it's a big thing for us.

And that is productivity.

Arguably the most unproductive word in the English language,

but equally...

A favourite on this podcast, though.

It is.

I think I genuinely find it very interesting, but only when it's unpacked, not on face value.

We have a big productivity problem in our country.

The treasurer says he wants to fix it, if I could be sort of crude about it.

And today, in fact, imminently, he's about to start his national press club address outlining his strategy.

Then he'll take questions.

David, my hot take.

I think they are very serious about it and they understand that this is the time to act with a clear mandate, a big majority, and needing to land some economic reforms to justify

their kind of power.

This is the biggest problem in our economy.

Everyone knows it.

How is the treasurer going to outline a vision?

Yeah, and I think it's Jim Chalmers who is the driver of this within the government.

I think it's fair to say.

So we're recording this just minutes before he takes to his feet at the at the press club.

So they're probably right now finishing off their vegetable tarts and clearing plates away away so that he can take to the stage and deliver this speech.

But from what we've seen and what I understand of what he's going to say, yes, he'll talk about his willingness to embark on reform from the centre

and that the aims are for the government and for this productivity roundtable that they've announced that's going to be coming up, fairly tight, concentrated group, which I think is good, better than the unwieldy, you know, any meeting is more productive if there's fewer people in it.

And productivity is what we're all about here, right?

So they want to boost productivity, they want to boost economic resilience, and they want to make the budget more sustainable because he's acknowledging the budget is not in a sustainable position right now.

What those reforms look like, I don't know.

An important thing he will say in this speech, PK, I understand, is that we've got to move beyond the rule in, rule out.

This is the message to the press at the press club today, to you and me and everyone else.

You know, there is from some a tendency to say, well, will you rule out?

touching the GST, just to use an example.

You know, would you rule out increasing the GST and using that as a trade-off to lower income taxes or company tax?

And he's urging us to get beyond this rule-in-rule out game.

He's not the first treasurer or prime minister to suggest this,

but I think it is a worthy,

and I'm sure someone will find an example of me asking a rule-in-rule-out question.

You sure have.

Of course.

So have I.

But I think it's a worthy aim for a treasurer to say, look,

can we at least have some willingness to not shut down options before they're properly considered?

I don't know what you think, but I can understand from a treasurer's point of view, wanting wanting to move beyond this sort of locking in thing that happens and prevents governments from looking at considering all options.

Because, you know, at a moment like this, when we do have these problems with our budget, when we do have these problems with productivity, we need to have some open eyes and have a good look at all options.

I

absolutely agree with him because I'm a believer in Australia doing its best and being able to pivot and respond to big challenges and making the best nation.

So, if you believe that, if that's your biggest belief and that is my number one primary belief of continuing to live in the best country that I've got the chance to be brought up in, and my parents are migrants, big deal.

I don't want to go back to Greece.

That speaks a lot.

I'm a dual citizen.

This is a very important country, and it has to do its best.

It cannot do its best if it's so closed off all the time and thinking in such small ways, in such electorally damaging short-term thinking.

So I agree with him.

Having said that,

the questions from journalists, which sometimes can feed into that dynamic, and I own that in my own participation in democracy, 100%,

I don't think are always unreasonable.

Maybe we should change our framing a little bit, but you know, they're about trying to tease out what matters.

I think it is also the onus is on governments and spokespeople to be able to make the argument.

And one thing I've already noticed that the government's done, which has worked for them, hats off to them when we ask the question.

It's the treasurer himself who's been successful at doing this.

He says it's not a proposal at this time.

Yeah, we have no plans.

No plans.

Remember the stage three, the stage three tax cut change?

You know, this went on for years, didn't it?

Are you going to finally change these stage three tax cuts?

Well, we are going to have to.

And then he had the plan.

He had the plans.

But he didn't have the plans.

And we found it a little annoying.

Perhaps the story is for us not to find it so annoying because, yeah, they didn't have the plans.

Maybe they were trying to keep their options open.

They were.

And as it turns out, the options open was the right option for the country.

I mean, I think really high-income earners getting that whopping tax cut

when the most struggling people in our economy were not was a genuine equity issue at that time.

There are lots of other reasons too.

Yeah.

And there are different times in the cycle, right?

I think when you're in an election campaign or about to go on an election campaign, some of these questions, you know, with, well, are you going to do this or not?

People deserve, the Australian voters deserve to know, right, whether one side of politics or the other is going to do something or not.

Immediately after an election, when you're trying to deal with some of these big problems, yeah, you want governments to keep a bit of an open mind on a few things.

So the timing depends a bit here, too.

Timing matters.

The framing matters.

You know, us not jumping on it to be like the biggest outrage.

So some of that outrage politics needs to change.

But also, because I'm not going to let them off the hook, neither would you, they need to not be sneaky either.

And I'll explain.

Before an election, if you know you want to do something, but you are actively

hoodwinking people because you think that you can't sell the thing.

Well, I've got a bit of an issue with that.

I mean, I think that that's not transparent.

And I have seen that happen in politics.

And I'm not into that.

I think that's really problematic.

Yeah.

You know, Tony Abbott's, you know, we're we're not going to cut that.

You can't incentivise that.

Cut this, this, and this.

And then they made all those spending cuts.

I mean, even Julia Gillard, there will be no carbon tax.

We can argue the topic.

To be honest, I think she mentioned when she said that one.

But, you know, it hurt her, right?

It hung around her neck for a long, long time.

So, look, yeah, those things do matter.

Yeah, we're never going to let politicians off the hook, don't get me wrong.

But I think what he's trying to get to, Jim Chalmers, today is, you know, let's have the debate.

I'm up for debate.

I think he's laying some guardrails around, look, we're not going to go, tax reform is not the big thing we're after here, but I'm very keen to hear ideas on tax reform at this roundtable.

But there's many things that go into the productivity pie, and we've done other podcasts, and we'll do a lot more, I'm sure, talking about all of those.

But today is really just about opening the doors and saying, you know, I am up for some reform to boost productivity.

And as I said initially, I think it's Jim Chalmers is the one to watch here, driving this within the government.

Prime ministers are often more focused on the political impact, the the electoral impact of what governments are doing.

Treasurers are often the ones who want to push a little further here to deliver some substantive change to the budget bottom line and the economy.

So keep listening to politics now as we make productivity sexy again.

David Spears, always a pleasure.

Thanks, PK.

And we will be in your podcast tomorrow for the party room.

You can send a question to the party room at abc.net.au and we will answer it.

David, got your guest for second.

I don't.

It's a fast-moving week, PK.

So, yes, it'll be

somewhat really interesting, I'm sure.

It will be.

Oh, gosh.

Seriously, I've got whiplash.

See you, David.

See you, mate.