Will beef be on the menu when Albanese meets Trump?

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Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been awarded our nation's highest honour for his eminent service to Australia.

Who decides on these awards and should they be handed out to former Prime Ministers?

And with the G7 meeting of world leaders fast approaching, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump.

Now, given the US President's recent meetings with other world leaders, what can we expect and what kind of tightrope is Albanese walking?

And who is playing Donald Trump in the rehearsals for this event?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvelis.

And I'm Jacob Greber.

And Jacob, it's the King's birthday public holiday in much of the country.

Happy.

The King, long live living.

Yeah, long live the King and happy public holiday to you if you are getting one.

We are, of course, at work as we often are on public holidays.

But it's good because we can talk about one of the honours, which I think is significant.

Scott Morrison, former Prime Minister, has been appointed a companion of the Order of Australia for his eminent service to the people and Parliament of Australia, particularly as Prime Minister, to notable contributions to global engagement, to leadership of the COVID-19 response.

And it goes on.

mentions AUKUS as well.

A big question is,

these honours, they're often given to ex-Prime ministers.

He's just a long list of ex-prime ministers that gets one.

Is it a case?

I'm going to be controversial.

Is it a case of, with all of them, not just him, man does job?

These things come up every time, don't they?

To be accurate, they're actually offered now by convention, it seems, to every single prime minister.

The only difference...

can be in how long it takes for them to get this gong after they've left office.

John Howard waited one year and then he got his man does job award.

Julia Gillard waited five years, Kevin Rudd six years, Tony Abbott six years, Turnbull three years and Scott Morrison three years.

So he's not the quickest to get it, but by no means has he waited the longest.

So look,

this will annoy people and others will go, well, I don't care.

He was a PM and deserves to get it, if you think that way.

I actually like what Dan Rapicoli said this morning on our network, which is, I know prime ministers and it's a really tough job.

I thought that was a classy thing for him to say.

He's a Labour MP.

He's saying this of Morrison, that it's a tough job.

And, you know, if you're giving these awards out for services, as you said there in the citation, then that's fair enough.

Now, other people are going to vehemently disagree with me and think he was a terrible prime minister who did all these bad things.

And why would you give him the gong?

Interestingly, the only one who ever said no to this was Paul Keating because he said

the job alone was honor enough.

Also, what a cool move.

Sorry, you got to hand it to PJK.

What a cool move.

He sort of set the counter convention.

And now every time, you know, when Anthony Albanese gets his one, everyone will be reminded of the fact that Paul said, no, I'm good.

Well, we don't know.

I mean, will Albo keep it?

But that's, he's actually got to keep being the prime minister for a while.

So that's, that's a future hymn problem.

A today hymn problem, it is not.

Yeah, so there's lots of other gongs, of course.

Just Scott Morrison gets the attention for obvious reasons.

You know,

lots of people are being given that honour today.

I want to just pivot, if we can, to

tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a big day.

We're recording this on a Monday, but the Prime Minister will be delivering his National Press Club address where he'll be outlining kind of his vision as Prime Minister for the second term.

I think it's a pretty pivotal moment for him.

He doesn't have to do it, but it's, you know, again, convention and he really prides himself on fronting up to these things even at difficult times.

Now, I don't think at the moment is a particularly difficult time.

But it'll be interesting to see how he sort of frames his message.

I bet he'll be peppered, which we'll get to in a moment, with questions about how he'll deal with Trump, because the sort of press gallery is rather obsessed with the Trump meeting.

Trump's dealing with all of these crises in his own land at the moment, from tariffs to Elon Musk and the bromance going horribly wrong to, of course, the LA situation that's unfolding, which is looking pretty ugly, sending the National Guard there.

But the Prime Minister, back to his speech, he's going to lay out his careful as you go agenda, isn't it?

Because that's his whole pitch.

I'm Mr.

Moderate, not going to do anything wild, not going to do anything radical, not going to listen to gratuitous advice.

That's the vibe of the thing, isn't it, Jacob?

It's certainly how he's pitched it since the election, but it is his first opportunity to kind of explain how he'll go about his second term.

There are people pushing him hard to be more ambitious, to finally have a look at our tax system, the intergenerational inequality of it.

There's a sort of micro-row that's been going on mainly in the financial press, but it's sort of broadened out about superannuation reforms.

And that, I think, is a really really good debate to have because what is the point of super is it to become rich is it a tax

maximization scheme or is it to provide a self-funded retirement or at least a partially funded retirement for people from their savings and I think that's a whole debate that should be had because there are a lot of accounts with large sums in them and in a world where we're starting to wonder whether we can afford all these other things that is a fair enough thing to talk about.

And I accept that there are problems with the way some of these super things are

going to change, you know, taxing, unrealized gains, all the rest of it.

Let's not get into that.

But I think the Prime Minister should use this speech to address some of these long-term questions.

He's got this thumping majority.

What is the point?

of a majority this big if you're just going to mind the franchise and i think that's what people will be asking i don't know piquet what else should he do i mean we can talk about trump in a minute, but there's a lot of other stuff sitting underneath all of this.

There's the row about how to pay for defence, for instance.

Yeah, there is.

And, you know, they're the questions that'll be thrown at him if it's not a centrepiece of his speech.

And so, yeah, he will no doubt be preparing today and tomorrow morning for how to respond to those curly questions.

But I don't think he has to come into that speech, even though with respect to my press gallery colleagues, and I was obviously in in the press gallery for a long time and I'm a sort of de facto member, I got to say, you know, we love big new things, shiny things.

We would love him to walk in, wouldn't we, and sort of,

you know, declare a war on intergenerational inequality and an overhaul of our system.

But that isn't what he pitched

for election.

And I do think we have to live within our means and our means of promises as well.

What he did say is what he will, I think, center his speech on.

I don't think it will overwhelm people with excitement.

What will be interesting, though, is the way he's starting.

And I heard him in with his interview with Graph Epstein last week just hinting at this.

So when asked the question about, you know, the bold vision and whether he was prepared to go further, he very much says, steady as you go, what we promised.

But he does add, which is almost so obvious, but also important to point out, you don't know what might be thrown at you.

Now, I do think that's significant, I'll explain, because it's the giant caveat in all of this, which is, of course, you can't go into an election and outline exactly what the next three years are going to look like.

I mean, if you did, that's ridiculous.

That is not the way the world works.

Look how fast technology, when you mention defense, look what on earth just happened in Russia from Ukraine, where the whole way war is being fought is literally changing in front of us, right?

In terms of defense capability,

defence materiel, how to manage all of that.

The world is changing really fast.

So the Prime Minister is actually going to get the opportunity, because the world is changing really fast, to propose new things to meet those challenges.

I don't think he's going to do it tomorrow, though, unless I'm, you know, missing a yarn.

No, I agree.

I agree.

It doesn't feel like he's got anything major that will blow us off our feet.

Just while you were talking there, I was thinking, it's actually quite rare if you think about the last 20 years for a Labour Prime Minister to have consolidated that much power and power is fleeting, as you well know.

It can change in a minute.

Things can happen and it seeps away.

But think about it.

When Rudd came in, he came in in the middle of a global financial crisis or it just happened after he came in.

That derailed all the agenda he really had, became the sole focus.

You could argue the same thing happened when Albanese finally got Labor back into office with Ukraine, with

the whole post-COVID inflation spike.

Those were things out of their control, which then became their primary focus.

They had to deal with an energy crisis pretty much from day one in 2022.

Doesn't this feel like a really unique moment for a Labour Prime Minister with supreme authority from voters who've said to Labor, the other side is not what we want to go with.

We're giving it to you.

Isn't that an opportunity?

There's no, I mean, I know there are long-term crises coming at us, and that's what we're getting at, but surely, surely now's the time to think a little bigger, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, absolutely.

I'm just not convinced that's

such a cynical realist, BK.

Well, you know, I've lived in this real world for a long time now, my friend, so yeah, I am.

I mean, they want to see if they can get something.

I just think it's a unique circumstance at the moment for a Labor government.

Show us a bigger ambition here.

Don't just tend the shop, which is the criticism that's been levelled at them.

Yeah, and you don't want to die wondering, right?

If you've got this once-in-a-generation opportunity, use it is what you're saying.

And that's true.

So

I think that the Prime Minister wants to use it, actually, but he wants to use it still cautiously, carefully.

And

I just think he's going to try and thread the needle there.

It's, you know, we talked about a narrow path with the economy landing in a particular way.

There's also a narrow path to honoring your promises, not being overly radical or frightening, but also

shifting the dial on certain things.

Obviously, the superannuation test is the first one.

The Greens look ready to roll up their sleeves as their language and kind of get on with trying to do a deal.

It's a small thing, but it's the first thing.

And then an appetite for bigger change.

That's how I think they're going to try and frame it.

But it'll be interesting.

I think if I was to sort of think about how he performed in the election and in the six months up to it,

Anthony Albany is a conservative Prime Minister in the sense that he doesn't like to take big risks.

I think we saw that in his first term.

He would delay, for instance, difficult decisions because that was probably an easier thing to do on a given day.

But I sensed during that election campaign a greater willingness to back himself, to back his instincts.

And the example that springs to my mind is when that whole issue came up about sending troops into Ukraine, being part of a European NATO type mission,

he was immediately into that and said, yes, that's something we should do as a country.

He sort of announced it even before the Defence Minister was aware, it seemed at the time.

And that was a sign of him being prepared to back himself a little more.

I wonder whether we might see a little more of that, Anthony Albanese, in this term, at least at the beginning.

I don't know.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to watch because, yeah,

he's feeling pretty good about himself and he's a confidence player, so he has all of the right ingredients for success at the moment, I think.

Look, the big test for him, though, is coming up, of course, and that's the G7 summit in Canada on the 15th of June.

It's expected he'll meet with the US President Donald Trump on the sidelines.

Now, that isn't yet confirmed, although it seems to me highly unusual that the US president would snub him given he's such a nice man, he says.

What does it call him?

I don't know, something not a handsome man, that's the Chinese call.

No, lovely man or something.

Yeah, that would be really surprising, notwithstanding all the various crises that Donald Trump's currently dealing with.

He's got a bit to deal with.

He's got a bit on, but

you know, these summits are an important opportunity.

It will be the first time they are in the same place at the same time.

There are things to discuss.

We've got an issue with

the trade war, a suggestion around that beef might be something we negotiate on.

My mail is that's pretty minor.

I don't think we're going to give any ground on anything that compromises biosecurity.

That's just not on the cards.

I think the big thing here will be critical minerals, rare earths.

That's what Australia is going to put on the table and say to Donald Trump, look, you need our critical minerals.

Let's cut the rubbish with these tariffs.

Yeah, there was a lot of reporting, of course, last week

about US beef imports to Australia.

Obviously, there is a review underway.

It has been for some time.

There is no chance

on earth that the Prime Minister would allow himself to be seen to be risking our biosecurity or our pharmaceutical benefit scheme.

These are signature issues for our country, particularly the pharmaceutical benefit scheme for Labour.

There is

just no benefit for him politically.

And also, he's a whole brand at the election.

Was I'm the one that's going to stand up, you know, contrasting himself.

Now, Dutton tried to create a contrast and say, I'd do it too, but I don't think it was believable to people,

especially when he admitted that he didn't know the guy.

Yes.

And had never met him.

That was a bit weird.

I mean, it was also a moment of bloody honesty.

yeah on the on the biosecurity thing i mean i think albanese has the opposition's uh

support here

there's no way they would to stick to our biosecurity rules and and frankly the um pharmaceutical benefits scheme that's also a bipartisan issue we saw the coalition back that during the campaign uh i can't see them changing their mind on that and so

where does that make he's right yeah so where does that leave the pm like he's he's not gonna

he

again it's this unique position he's got, and I'm suggesting these unique moments don't last very long.

He goes into that meeting with Donald Trump from a position of strength.

He's just one thumping majority.

Donald Trump understands that.

He knows what that means in a political sense.

And he knows that he's dealing with someone who does not have to bend the knee or beg or

give up unreasonable conditions to, quote unquote, make a deal on a completely confected trade war that Donald Trump has

raised for the other side.

And just, Pika, just think about this.

Had Donald Trump given massive exemptions to his trade war in the lead-up to our election, to say Britain or Canada or someone else, that would have hurt Anthony Albanese.

But he didn't.

He's doing it now,

but it's different.

The Prime Minister's won the election.

He has that authority.

He doesn't have to compromise much at all, in fact, I would argue.

But but that would be for him.

And

look at the deal that Keir Starmer got for the UK.

It involved a compromise we wouldn't make.

So there are different rules because we do have, you know, we're sticklers here.

And you know, have you tried to take an apple core into another state in this country?

I mean, that's even hard.

Every time we go to South Australia, you feel like a criminal if you've got a banana in your back.

We have really strict rules and we kind of love to hate them, but we love them.

So this is why I think the Australian approach going into this potential meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday in Toronto which would be Monday our time the approach is really to talk about

what is doable and what matters to America and this this goes back to these resource questions that we're in a big strategic military alliance with the United States.

They use us like a fixed aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.

That suits them, helps us as well in a strategic sense.

But

these things are much deeper than meets the eye.

And I think Australia has a very strong position to put to the Trump administration, which is you don't have enough of this stuff.

China dominates the market for these critical minerals.

Fill your boots, go and get them from somewhere else, buy them from Xi Jinping, see how you like them apples.

Fill your boots.

That was so good.

But you know, the only thing that confuses me about it, and

the US wasn't very interested last time we offered.

There was no deal.

Yeah, and my response to that might be that there were about 80 different trade wars going on at that very moment.

You know, they'd set off tariffs on every single country and they were getting phone calls and pitches and all sorts of things.

So I'm not surprised that Australia was ranked down the list.

But we do have interests.

You know, we've got the steel tariffs have gone up.

or will go up much more than they were originally slated to.

I think aluminium's still in the gun.

But what I'm suggesting is, and the PM, I think this is what he will probably indicate tomorrow, we come from a position of strength on this.

Donald Trump has 80 or 90 or however many fires burning now on the trade front.

We've kind of got one, you know, and we can live with it, you know.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

We can live with it.

That's very well put.

And we are kind of living with it.

Now, that's not to say, I just want to be really clear here that the industry isn't being hit right now because of it.

They are, and it is going to have implications for jobs and industry.

But, you know, like

I mean, we're managing.

I think I, yeah.

If we're talking about the steel industry,

I'd like to see the evidence of that, that we can't cope because it is not the biggest market for us.

And there are other markets in the world.

So as we did when China imposed tariffs on us, when they started limiting what we could do in terms of wine, barley, coal,

we found other markets.

And it wasn't great.

The winemakers suffered, to be clear, and it hurt them bad, but they got through it.

That was a much harder, that was a much harder set of circumstances than what we're facing now.

So that's the tangible, but it's worth reflecting, which we've kind of pointed to, but just before we end, on what is really a crisis developing in the United States, I think.

I mean, the decision to call in the National Guard to put down immigration protests in LA

is pretty serious.

The stouch between Donald Trump and Elon Musk isn't just hilarious.

I mean,

I know why it's hilarious if you've been enjoying it as much as me.

You know, that's a natural response to

some very, very unusual men

not having any ability to manage their own moods and with too much power.

I mean, you know, I've seen all the jokes and the memes about, you know, can can you imagine if they were women, how they would be described in terms of how emotional they are?

I mean,

I mean, these two guys, let's call it what it is.

They're behaving like 12-year-olds.

And

that's probably unfair on most 12-year-olds.

My 12-year-old was much more mature.

So were your kids.

Come on.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely.

No, you don't write that.

It's not something you share.

But he's got two of the most powerful, one of the richest, or the richest person in America and the most powerful person in America setting an example for everyone.

And what an example it is.

So I'm not surprised he's tried to flip the script if that's what's happened in LA.

And this is sort of, this is what he kind of campaigned on, getting tough on immigration.

And so

he sent in federal authorities to get illegal immigrants, find them in workplaces.

That's generated a backlash.

There are protests.

And the California governor, Gavin Newsom, has accused Trump of overreacting.

Yeah, terrible slur that he uses on Twitter and elsewhere,

the president of the California governor.

And so Trump has said, you beauty, here's a way for me to escalate this thing and look tough.

And this is what I promised my base that I would do, that I would go after illegal immigrants.

What's interesting to me is he's also picking at one of the strengths of the U.S.

economy, whether you like it or not, and I've lived there.

It has a vast supply of, in Australian terms, we'd call them underpaid workers, but that's how the American economy keeps going.

It relies on workers, many of whom who don't have the right paperwork and therefore don't have the rights that Americans have.

And what Trump's doing here will have an economic consequence as much as it does, you know, a political one and perhaps even a moral one if we're talking about sending in troops to shut down these protests.

Yeah, that's right.

So that's all unfolding.

And, you know,

it's a pretty ugly picture.

Look, we are going to actually be making the podcast next Monday, I think, in the sort of wake of this sidelines meeting between the two.

So it'll be happening just as we would normally be about to record, wouldn't we?

Yeah.

Or just asking for it.

So basically, we'll try and bring you.

a taste of it.

That's what our intention is.

So there you go.

You can just like count your sleeps till that.

Looking forward to it already.

Count your sleeps.

How exciting.

It was the best week ever.

Just counting down.

Now, I'll be back tomorrow with David Lipson.

The Prime Minister will have been speaking at the press club.

So hopefully he says something quite interesting.

Even if he doesn't, that's why I love my fellow journalists.

They will ask something that will try and spice it up.

And so we'll comment on the questions part if the speech doesn't quite excite anyone.

If you want to send a voice note in the partyroom at abc.net.au to Fran on Thursday.

He's good too.

See you, Jacob.

See you from a beautiful Canberra, the Brinda Billas, which is the mountain range, for those of you who don't know around us, covered in snow this morning.

You can see white on the Brindabellas.

Oh, yeah, all the way, sort of halfway down.

It's gorgeous.

Oh, I love that.

Can I say,

I love running, and I think people have heard that before, but we've just had day after day of hideous, non-stop, miserable, London-esque rain in Melbourne.

But I thought runners always said there's no such thing as bad weather.

No, I went out every day.

I went back.

Yeah, I went out.

But it's not as fun as when it's like Canberra and it's all bright, even if it's cold.

But anyway, yeah, okay.

The Brindabellas, love the Brindabellas, love Canberra.

See you, Jacob.

See ya.