Albanese and Trump lock in a date

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Hello, Spearsy.

Hello, mate.

You got me there?

I do.

My phone has got a thousand push alerts flashing up on it to say they've met.

They've touched hands.

They've talked.

And it was warm and friendly.

So it's happened.

It's happened, finally.

It's a real thing.

Physical contact.

And you can please now stop asking me about it.

Although, I think the highlight of the day is still Emmanuel Macron doing a.

I'm going to call the manager on the NYPD and just calling Trump Direct and saying, This traffic is no good.

Get rid of it.

Did you notice it?

Uh, it didn't fix the problem, though.

That's right.

He remained stuck at the traffic lights.

I did feel for the police officer who had to say,

I'm sorry, Mr.

President.

You cannot cross the road.

We all know who runs this country.

All right, shall we do this?

Let's do it.

I'm Brett Worthington, filling in for PK.

And I'm David Spears in New York.

Spearsy, you're at the centre of where it's all happening, in part because of Donald Trump's fiery address to the United Nations earlier today.

And we will get to that, but matters closer to home have finally been locked in, and the Prime Minister is going to sit down with Donald Trump, not this trip, next month.

Do you think the Prime Minister's a bit relieved you might stop getting the question?

Yeah, I think so.

So October 20, put a big red circle around it in your calendar.

That's when the meeting will finally happen.

I think, yes, it had become a pesky question that you could tell Anthony Albanese he was sick, thoroughly sick of being asked.

So now he has an answer for it as to when this meeting might happen.

But I think more than that, it clearly was becoming pretty embarrassing.

On top of those issues in PNG and Vanuatu about the deals not being signed last week, this problem of not actually having a face-to-face between the leaders of two very close allies was starting to look, well, pretty weird, frankly.

And I think to have gone home from New York without any sort of meeting would have been making this problem worse.

So to have at least one locked in now, and yes, there's always the chance it gets cancelled too between now and then, but he's got the confirmation that it will happen at the White House on the 20th of October.

Yes, I'm unclear if it goes in in pencil or pen at this point, but I guess the Australian side, very relieved that this.

Be bold.

That's right.

Highlight it.

Circle around it.

I suspect we'll be asked a lot about it between now and then.

But it has been a long time getting to this moment.

Two things can be true at the same time, as we've talked about this week on the podcast, that both the government level can be happy that the relationship is okay and things are tracking in the right direction, particularly around AUKUS.

But to what extent is there that brutal political element that an Australian Prime Minister needs to be able to be seen to get into the room with the US President, given the closeness of our relationship from a security point of view?

Yeah, I think that has traditionally been the case, right?

And we know Prime Ministers, pretty much all of them, have used any sort of meeting or photo or conversation on the phone with the President, you know, to their own political ends to show that they're the ones who are moving with the big dogs and able to talk to the leader of the free world.

I think it is a little bit different, though, with Donald Trump, right?

Given his deep, deep unpopularity in Australia.

And you see this around the world as well with, you know, similar countries.

But in Australia, clearly there's not a lot of love for Donald Trump for reasons that we can go through.

But that means for Anthony Albanese, he's got to get the meeting and keep the relationship on track because it's still critical, particularly with AUKUS and all of that.

But at the same time, not look.

like he's sucking up, not look sycophantic, not look even like he's getting too close to this guy that many Australians just have disdain for.

So

it's a delicate balancing act.

Now, clearly, they knew this announcement was coming.

And you could see when you look back on it, Anthony Albanese was always looking pretty relaxed when he was asked about this.

Sure, frustrated at the question, but pretty untroubled about the lack of a meeting.

They knew, I understand, a few weeks ago when they had a phone call together that the White House had agreed at that point, yep, we get it.

A meeting is necessary and we want it to happen here at the White House rather than a sideline meeting at a summit because that can always get squeezed or cut.

So Australia had that certainty for a few weeks.

They didn't have the date necessarily, but they knew that Trump was on board to have a proper White House meeting and now it's confirmed.

And to what extent do you think the Australian side would be quite happy with the idea of it being a special sit-down in the Oval Office?

Obviously, that brings with it a high-stakes element that we've seen from Donald Trump's encounters with other world leaders, but it also pushes back on the coalition criticism of Anthony Albanese that meeting on the sidelines of a summit or a little pull-aside or whatever was never going to cut it.

In going there, a special design trip for him to meet with Donald Trump.

Does that work at a domestic political level as well, do you think?

I think so.

And look, sure, there are risks.

You know, just ask Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, what happened.

I mean,

we've seen a couple of leaders, you know, on that wild ride in the Oval Office where it all seems to be live streamed and anything can happen.

There are risks and uncertainties for Anthony Albanese there.

But look, you know, he should be able to handle this.

It's not like we have, sure, differences on Palestinian recognition.

They have different views on defence spending and climate change and so on.

But there's many more points of agreement.

And

this should be a meeting that goes okay.

Risks, yes, but on balance, I think absolutely worth taking because this is a more serious meeting when it's a sit-down in the Oval Office than some sort of what they call a pull-aside or even a bylat on the side of a summit of more leaders.

We heard from Mike Huckabee today, who's the United States ambassador to Israel, and he made clear that this decision that Australia has taken on recognising Palestine does create tension with the United States, but was very plain in the fact that it is not a barrier to doing other work with Australia, defence in particular.

To what extent do you think that's welcome news for the government, just to hear someone who is so close to the support of Israel in saying,

this is all okay.

We can do two things at once here?

I think, you know, you're right, because if anyone was going to go the hardest, it's Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador in Israel, right?

They're all pro-Israel, but this guy's right out there.

So, yeah, that's assuring.

And I don't know what you thought, Brett, but even Donald Trump's, you know, we can come to the

rambling speech that he gave at the UN General Assembly, but what he said about, you know, some members of this body, so some countries recognizing a Palestinian state, you're awarding Hamas.

It was pretty lukewarm criticism.

I thought he got more fired up about the broken escalator at the UN than he did about countries recognizing the statehood of Palestine.

So I don't think there's too much of a concern there on the Australian side about the, you know, this being the issue that's going to derail a meeting.

From watching from a FastPears, and I'd be curious to see what it's like up close.

If we think back to when Anthony Albanese was in South America for the G20, it's in that period post-Donald Trump's election, but before he comes into office.

And the big open questions at that time was, who is going to be filling the role of the leader of the free world if Donald Trump is pursuing an isolationist approach and in the months since then we've really seen the rise again of the Europeans some figures who might have been diminished in a domestic sense Emmanuel Macron of France we've seen Frederick Mertz of Germany want to play a bigger role on the world stage and obviously Keir Starmer the British prime minister figures who Anthony Albanese is tacking very closely with their rise to some extent comes because Donald Trump does pull back and now the Americans are kind of going, well, hang on, why are you doing this unilateral response response in recognizing Palestine when

you're just blindly following the Europeans?

To what extent do you think this vacuum that's been created has been created because the U.S.

has been pulling back?

Yeah, I do think it's been interesting to watch.

Well, certainly Emmanuel Macron being one of the driving forces, the leader really of getting this Western bloc on board with Palestinian recognition.

They had that conference here at the UN and it was Anthony Albanese's, in fact, it was his first address at the UN.

His proper leader's address comes this time tomorrow.

But he spoke at that event, the special two-state solution event that Macron and the Saudis had organised.

Macron was like a rock star at that event.

I mean, everybody there was like-minded on this issue, but they all wanted to congratulate him after he spoke.

And you could just see this.

Yeah, this

leader who's been around a long time and had his ups and downs and has his political troubles at home.

But on this issue internationally, he's won a lot of respect and support.

And then I think, you know, when you look at Australia's foreign policy position, we've heard Albanese talk about wanting to, you know, pursue a more independent foreign policy approach.

This is kind of a good example of it because he's been willing, sure, with the help and cover of the UK and Canada as well, two other U.S.

allies, but willing to break with the Trump administration on this and with the U.S.

long-held position on this and side more with the Europeans.

Now, look, you know, whether this builds into something beyond that, the other thing, too, is the Ukraine coalition of the willing that, again, Trump hasn't been all that thrilled about, but Australia's been willing to talk to Macron and Starmer and be a part of the talks on how to help Ukraine post-ceasefire.

Just these things all sort of add up to, I think,

something that suggests that we are perhaps seeing a subtle realignment.

Doesn't mean, you know, we're not going to still be reliant on the U.S.

We are.

But it's just an interesting moment, I think, where we are seeing Australia align itself with the Europeans a bit more.

And seeing the ways in which these world leaders are navigating Donald Trump and trying to get him to where they want him to be in terms of bringing peace to the Middle East, but also the comments we've seen him make in the recent hours about Ukraine and suddenly doing what seems like an about face and essentially backing in Ukrainians' leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

They've come a long way from that Oval Office meeting and essentially saying the Ukrainians can get the land back.

It must feel like your head's spinning like a top if you're a world leader to work out where you're trying to position yourself and what policies you're putting forward.

Yeah, and I was even wondering today how the State Department and the Pentagon keep up with these shifts and changes in the currents from Donald Trump on what their position, what on earth their position is on Ukraine and Russia.

You know, one minute he's got the red carpet rolled out in Alaska for Vladimir Putin.

And then what we saw today was quite something different.

You won't be surprised to know that the confirmation of Anthony Albanese's sit-down meeting with Donald Trump is not really getting a lot of attention in the media here in the U.S.

But boy, that sit-down with Zelensky is because, I mean, we all remember that scene in the White House, right?

When J.D.

Vance was really at him.

Just being berated.

Just being berated.

What was the line?

You don't have any cards.

Well, I think you've got to sit here today and say, well, maybe Zelensky did have a card or two up his sleeve because here we are with Trump telling him that you can actually reclaim all of that lost territory.

And, you know, NATO should be entitled to shoot Russian planes out of their airspace.

I mean, it's such a shift.

I know we're constantly doing the, wow, Trump did what?

But it's just, again, it's one of those moments that it's really shifted the position once more when it comes to this war that just drags on.

And even quite a shift from that speech that we saw earlier today, where it's always unclear to me if it sends terror or joy through parts of Donald Trump's administration when you hear words, the teleprompter has broken, but I'm happy to freestyle this and go up myself.

He's a man who knows an ability to talk and, like I said, wasn't too thrilled that the escalator stopped working.

So he wondered if there could be some ballroom renovations coming to the United Nations.

Well, it was actually, I'm not sure if many people caught the speech, right?

But he actually spent quite a chunk of it riffing on the renovations.

Back in his property development days, he lost the bid for the renovation contract rebuild of the UN building, right on First Avenue, the famous building here in New York.

And anyway, so he then goes onto this long sort of detour talking about how he would have had these beautiful marble floors and they've ended up with, what is it, Terraso floors instead.

He talked about how shoddy the building work was.

He would have done so.

Maybe it was a deliberate metaphor for the UN, you know, having money but not spending it wisely or something like that.

But it was, it was just quite a riff that he went on there.

In fact,

he was complaining about the elevator, sorry, the escalator that he was on broke down here, Melania, as they were heading in there.

One of our former Press Gallery colleagues, Michelle Nichols, who's the bureau chief at Reuters at the United Nations, just sent me the story that she's just uncovered, that the reason the escalator broke down, it was Trump's videographer, so the guy who's filming videos, was going backwards up the escalator in front of him and Melania.

And it triggered, because

when you get to the end of the escalator,

it triggered the stop thing.

So that's why it broke down.

It was his own videographer.

Well, he was very thankful that Melania is fit, I think he said.

So he and her were both able to charge up those stairs.

Our colleague John Lyons described the speech, though, as Trump on steroids.

He railed against the United Nations, says they're little more than feckless and only able to write strongly worded letters.

And that was about it.

What was it like hearing this speech, finding it that it started to spread what Donald Trump is in there saying?

He had a lot to get off his chest, right?

He hadn't spoken at the UN for I think six years.

So leaders are meant to have 15 minutes to speak.

He went for 58 minutes.

Not that anyone was going to pull him up.

And he just had this list of grievances, right?

I mean, the Building Works was one of them.

But then, yeah, all this, the climate change stuff, the uncontrolled migration that he was ripping into the Europeans over, Brazil, Venezuela all copped a spray.

He was just, and then the UN itself.

And as you say,

look, it's no surprise, but his view, standing there in the UN, telling this organization what he thinks of them, it's just classic Trump, right?

The sort of stuff that his supporters would absolutely be cheering on.

But yeah, it was such a contrast to what we've heard from every other speaker there at the UN today.

We've seen this playing out and obviously there's been a heavy focus on climate change policies.

There's been some criticism from parts of the Pacific about where Australia has landed with its 2035 target, that push for greater ambition.

And if climate change and treating it seriously, is viewed as the admission ticket to get into the Pacific to be able to work with other nations throughout there.

What are you hearing from parts of the Pacific at the UN about its standing with Australia, the ways in which climate is affecting relationships?

Yeah, well, I caught up for a sit-down interview with the president of Palau on the sidelines of the UN here.

It was interesting on a couple of fronts.

When it comes to China's activities in the region, yeah, he did strongly suspect that China was behind the reason why we haven't seen those security deals Australia's been trying to sign with Vanuatu and the defence treaty with Papua New Guinea.

Why we haven't seen those actually finalised?

President Whipstrom at Palau reckons, yeah, China's behind that.

And then on climate change, obviously there's a great concern amongst specific leaders about what Trump's saying and doing on climate change, but even in Australia, the 2035 target, you know, the president of Palau told me it's lower than they would have liked, but it's a base to work from.

The bigger concern, though, is this debate in Australia around dropping net zero altogether that we hear from the coalition.

And he said that would be Australia abandoning its friends in the Pacific if it were to go down that path.

Do you think that will be a product of the coalition's thinking as it has this reckoning that it's trying to come to terms with?

Well, I mean, the reason I was asking the question clearly is because I don't think this has come up much in the debate on the coalition side, right?

I mean, the coalition knows strategically that we need to keep the Pacific.

There's a contest in the Pacific, and we need to keep the Pacific on side.

China's trying very hard to peel away individual small Pacific states.

The climate is the biggest issue in the Pacific.

And if Australia isn't seen to be serious on it, that does weaken our hand in the region.

So it has a strategic consequence, this climate debate for Australia as well,

which I don't think has really factored into much of the debate, at least on the coalition side around whether they should drop net zero.

I don't know what you think, but I just haven't heard that really come up as

a concern

or an issue as to their thinking on this and their debate on this.

No, it seems an existential crisis in the short term is the one that they really want to reckon with.

And we've seen in the last couple of days the ways in which there's been briefing against Andrew Hastie and Andrew Hastie then calling colleagues Muppets in social media posts.

This is clearly bubbling over so early into Susan Lee's leadership and at a time when the party is still reckoning with the election loss.

But you've just got to go back to 2022 and think back to Zed Sesselja.

He was a frontbencher then being sent to the Solomon Islands during the campaign because all of a sudden, had Australia kept its eyes and not been keeping a close eye on the Pacific enough, was the

security deal with China looming, the ways in which it can have political implications for a government of the day are very real.

And, you know, we've also seen again overnight, this sense that Vanuatu is going to sign a security deal with China, nowhere near the amount of money or value with which the deal that Australia is trying to secure.

But you just get the sense that that...

Vanuatu in particular is slightly different from the ways in which the government is hopeful about Papua New Guinea.

Do you think that's a fair assessment?

Yeah, it was a fascinating story.

So this was from our colleague Stephen Jedgetts that, yeah, this police deal, and sure, it may not sound like much in the scheme of things I think it was a bunch of motorbikes and a few other things for the police

some drones I think and some drones right okay but some of the language I think from the was it Vanuatu's police minister glowing terms that he was talking about the Chinese counterpart how wonderful and friendly and helpful and supportive they are yeah I mean all of that is going to ring alarm bells for the Australians because they're still waiting to sign this deal.

And basically what we understand of this Vanuatu security deal that Australia's pitched up, which I think is worth $500 million,

is to give Australia a veto over things like that, right?

Over Vanuatu doing other deals, which raises all sorts of sovereignty questions for Vanuatu.

That's why it's kind of stuck.

But the thing is, China's absolutely right in there, as Stephen Jenchett's story tells us.

They're not missing a beat in the Pacific.

And I just wonder the extent to which they're also not missing the fact that you've had Jacinta Allen, the Victorian Premier last week, Roger Cook, the West Australian Premier this week, in China trying to tap further into Chinese investment into their states.

You wonder at times if some of these Pacific island nations are going, hang on a minute, how come they can go and get some funding for infrastructure, but not us here in the Pacific?

Yeah, exactly.

We actually need some police motorbikes.

Look, I just don't know coming back to the coalition whether there is much of that debate going on in their ranks when it comes to this net zero thing.

I think, as you say rightly, it's

a more immediate and perhaps more internally focused and perhaps even leadership-focused round of jostling that's going on right now.

Speasy, I've got no idea if you know what day it is, what hour it is.

You seem to be here there and everywhere at the moment.

What's been something that maybe isn't in the news as such, but what's really stood out to you from this trip?

Gosh, it's a good question.

I mean, there's so many different sideline things going on here and there.

And you try and catch up and

get to some of them, can't get to all of them.

But there was one event out on the lawns of the United Nations that it did get a bit of coverage, and that was an event that Australia had sort of set up,

a declaration to protect humanitarian workers.

And Zommy Francom's brother was there with Penny Wong to tie a ribbon for Zommy Francombe, the Australian aid worker who was killed in Gaza last year.

It was a really touching moment and ended up getting a huge turnout of diplomats there to offer their support for doing more to protect aid workers.

And I guess that was a reminder, too of what the United Nations, but also aid organisations, the incredible work that they can do.

It's easy to stand there and bag the UN for this and that.

And they're certainly not perfect.

Don't get me wrong.

But there are things that these sorts of organisations do that are incredibly difficult, but incredibly important.

Well, Spusy, I'm also pleased because I heard a whisper on the grapevine that an insider's interview between you and Chris Bowen might have been somewhere on the UN grounds that you weren't meant to be filming.

And I'm worried, were you going to be detained?

Were you going to be left behind in New York?

You're well informed.

What's that line?

Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.

They're just for forgiveness when they ask for permission.

We followed that rule and got away with it.

And yes, the local security guy was lovely, but made it clear to us after we'd finished the interview that where we had filmed was

not an appropriate media area.

Anyway, you say firmly ensconced in that prime ministerial bubble, Spearsy.

That is it for politics now.

Thank you for joining me.

Thanks, Brad.

Cheers, mate.

And tomorrow, it's the party room.

If you have a question for us, please send a short voice note to the partyroom at abc.net.au and Mel Clark and I will answer it for you.

See you, Spearsy.

See you, mate.