How Albanese won Trump over

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Hello and welcome to the party room.

I'm Patricia Carvellis joining you from Runderie Country here in Melbourne.

And I'm Mel Clark.

I'm on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra.

I'm filling in for Fran Kelly.

But PK, I'm very happy to have you back at the party room.

We missed having both you and Fran on the podcast.

So thrilled to have you back.

I'm very excited to be co-hosting with you, Mel, and you and Brett have done such a great job job steering this very large ship of Australian politics.

So it's been great.

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keen to hear that too.

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I do too.

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But we're going to be really winding up a very big year in politics.

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That's the announcement.

Now, let's talk about a week which has been, I think,

seminal for the government, in my view.

Anthony Albanese has been able to advance one of the most important relationships for Australia, the U.S.

alliance.

And I just think this is like, overall, Mel, quite significant, right?

Piquet, it really was a significant week.

And there's so much to go through.

There's obviously the meeting at the White House and everything that that entailed.

multi-billion dollar critical minerals deal, reassurances on AUKUS and defence spending.

Of course, Kevin Rudd's brush with Donald Trump.

That certainly got plenty of attention, perhaps more than it warranted, but we can get into that.

And then, of course, back at home, the perpetual issues of coalition unity have risen up once again.

Barnaby Joyce this time and the Nationals flirtation with One Nation.

Is he, isn't he?

Still not really clear if he's a member of the Nationals when it comes to sitting in Parliament.

So we've got lots to go through.

Oh, we certainly do.

No one better placed to talk about this this than Katina Curtis, Canberra Bureau Chief for the West Australian.

Welcome to the party room Katina.

Great to be here.

Well let's talk about that meeting because it is still, you know, we're nearing the end of the week but there is nothing bigger than this meeting.

Well thank you very much.

It's great to have the Prime Minister of Australia.

Fantastic place.

The Prime Minister is as you know Anthony Albanese and he's highly respected.

I hear you're very popular today, right?

It varies from day to day but...

Thank you so much, Mr.

President, for the invitation here to the White House.

And we are great friends and we're great allies.

And this is a relationship that's been forged in the battlefields of the world.

We have stood side by side.

Everyone has given it sort of high marks.

10 out of 10 from Malcolm Turnbull.

I mean, you know, and he's the guy who's also had a meeting with Donald Trump as Prime Minister.

You'd have to say it's been an overwhelming success for the government and they know it, right?

Oh, absolutely.

I think Anthony Albanese will be flying high when he gets off the plane this morning in Sydney.

You know, it really went

far exceeded anyone's expectations, I think.

He definitely owes a four pack of elbow ale to whoever it was that briefed the president before that meeting because, you know,

the three things that he really had to do, that Trump had to do, you know, compliment the Prime Minister, check in spades spades and say yes to AUKUS and sign the critical minerals deal.

And, you know, they got them all.

It's something that the opposition had even set out as the challenges that they were putting forward to the Prime Minister.

These are the high hurdles that need to be cleared.

Probably expecting that there wasn't much chance of getting every single one of them ticked off.

But with the exception of getting a reduction of tariffs, Anthony Albanese did tick off all of those things.

Does this sort of neuter some of the the criticism that the opposition had been levelling at Anthony Albanese for months now?

Yeah, I mean, I really think I listened to Kevin Hogan on RN the morning after the meeting.

He's the shadow trade minister.

And really, he

sort of was struggling to find negative things to say.

On the trade front, though, look disappointed.

The main standout for us is the 50% tariff on steel and aluminium products.

Other countries like the UK have got carve-outs from that and have it at 25%.

That was sort of the one thing that I was looking for.

And then we did the critical mineral steel, which is good.

It would have been nice to leverage this cariff target.

As you say, Mel, you know, the tariffs, but I don't actually, I don't know about you, but I don't think that anyone in the government realistically ever thought they were going to get movement on the tariffs.

No, I don't think they did either.

And I think what really jumped out at me was that what we did hear from Donald Trump about the tariffs was exactly the argument that the government, the Australian government itself had been making.

But I will say this: Australia pays very low tariffs.

Very, very low tariffs.

In fact,

Australia pays among the lowest tariffs.

Which exactly parrots what Anthony Albanese and his ministers have been saying.

So, PK, I think even the not the win was still somehow a win because it reinforced the domestic argument that Anthony Albanese had been making.

Yeah, I mean, I think what they did was really smart.

Like, if this is how I see it, and I'd love to get your thoughts, guys, in terms of the way they've handled this, this is the Albanese government.

In the last term, particularly, you know, in the sort of when they were in the doldrums, opinion polls were bad.

Everyone was, you know, thinking what's going to happen.

Are they going to be onceers?

What we found was that they appeared to be quite bad at politics.

In this case, I feel like they've managed the politics really well here, and I think they need to be given some credit for that.

On tariffs, for instance, I'll give you my big point.

They have expectation managed managed the tariff issue so well going into this meeting.

They had lowered expectations that there would be any deal for such a long period of time.

They had decoupled any minerals

deal, which they ended up getting, like all of the rare earth stuff that we saw.

Remember, guys, Katina, you'd remember, that was meant to be linked to maybe getting lower tariffs.

Didn't that disappear, mate?

Didn't that go off the boil?

Yeah, that's right.

Because it was originally floated during the election as the response to the Liberation Day announcement.

And that critical minerals strategic stockpile, when the PM announced it during the election campaign, everyone in the industry was a bit like, whoa, never heard any, I haven't heard anything about this before.

It seemed to be underdone.

But definitely, I actually, I really think, and I know this is the thoughts of some ministers as well, that delay in the meeting, you know, even though they've worn a lot of heat from the opposition, from us in the media over the delay, If you look at what they've done since June,

when they were supposed to meet Trump and Albo

in Canada, think about what's happened since June.

They've got the critical minerals deal actually sorted, more or less.

They've got the policy and a bit of timing with China's.

The China thing was incredibly lucky.

Very helpful.

They've announced the $12 billion for the Henderson base.

They've announced that they're going to buy the Ghost Shark submarine drone things from know from someone who happens to be a mate of Donald Trump's but also runs a defence industry company you know so they've really and all of that

and the beef they sorted the beef thing

has been changed all of that's happened since June so actually

Maybe it's a good thing that Donald Trump ended up having to ditch that meeting.

And I think we've also seen in that time Donald Trump's intense focus on the levels of defence spending wane somewhat.

I mean, a couple of months ago, ago, he was in his full focus on NATO countries about their levels of spending.

They were copying it when he went to meetings with European leaders about their level of spending.

There's been intense domestic political debate in Australia with the coalition saying it needs to be at least 3%.

They kept pointing to words from Pete Hegsteth, the Defence Secretary or Secretary of the Department of War as it is now, talking about 3.5%,

suggesting it needed to be much higher.

I think we even saw the Australian government doing a bit of groundwork.

After long not wanting to put a figure on their own spending and saying, look, it has to be project-based, not figure-based, they then, before this meeting, dropped out that, oh no, our spending's 2.8% of GDP if you calculate it the same way NATO countries do.

They were clearly preparing to marshal these arguments.

And what they got in response from Trump was, well, I'd always like more, but you can only do so much.

I mean, that's a completely different tenor from Donald trump than what we were seeing a month or two ago that would have been music to anthony albanese absolutely i mean it's but yeah and it is basically

again mirroring the argument that our government is making so just as he did on tariffs you know similar on defence spending and i think the other thing that has happened is that the kind of extra time has actually given um the our ministers as well the chance to actually get some good relationships happening with key Trump administration officials.

So Richard Miles and Pete Hegseth, by all accounts, get on pretty well.

They're texty, texty, texty, apparently.

I love it.

And I think Don Farrell and Jamison Greer are also on sort of texting level relationships.

Well, Don Farrell confirmed on afternoon briefing that he doesn't mind a text.

Yeah, yeah.

And Marco Rubio, you know, and so sort of Hegseth, Rubio, definitely key figures in the Trump administration.

Miles had that meeting with J.D.

Vance as well.

The delay, really, it comes back to that again.

It's given them time to lay a lot more groundwork.

I think that's right.

And look, you know, and we're going to get to the Rudd stuff because I think it's still relevant and I'll explain how.

But

for me, there's so many angles out of this meeting.

Obviously, the minerals deal, the sort of, you know, strengthening the relationship, all of that, blah, blah, blah.

But for me, the defence stuff was actually, you know, as I saw the reporting, I'm going to critique the media now.

I thought that...

Donald Trump not putting any pressure on Australia on defence spending was the strongest story to come out of that meeting because that goes squarely into our domestic in terms of our domestic debate around defence spending and all of the pressure that the coalition wanted to heap on the government that it's not doing enough.

Man, talk about taking the air out of the tires of that campaign.

Like you can't kind of do a, you know, we've got no credibility with the US if the US president is like, I think they're doing what they can, they're doing enough.

Are you with me?

Am I like, did you see that?

Yeah, no, I think you're right.

It's really taken, as you say, taken the air out of most of those arguments the coalition's put up.

I think there's also, if we're talking about the diplomatic groundwork that was done ahead of this meeting, if we're offering out elbow beers to the team that have been doing this work, I think the Pacific team at DFAT probably also need to get some beers because that's an area that has been of intense focus for the federal government.

And while it's been a little bit rocky in trying to get Vanuatu and PNG over the line to sign these security deals.

It feeds into the argument that Australia has been making to America that we're looking after our patch, that in the US administration they are worried about China, the Pacific is the central playground for that issue and we are very focused on our area and that's a really tangible sign of something that you can show as progress that's being delivered by an ally that the US doesn't have to do but can be done by one of their closest allies.

So again, just another thing to rack up in the months between when we expected the meeting to first place, take place, to when it now has actually taken place.

It's yet another thing that has progressed and probably helped the government's case.

But for all of that, we do have to mention Kevin Rudd, even though I don't think it's necessarily warranted all of the attention that it's got.

It was a moment, and I think it was a moment where there was a bit of an intake of breath on the Australian side of, oh, which way is this going to go?

Watching Watching the face of the media advisor in the room was quite something.

I don't know anything about him.

I mean if you said bad then maybe he'll like to apologise.

I really don't know.

Where is he?

Is he still working for you?

Yeah yeah.

You said bad?

Before I took this position Mr.

President but I don't like you either.

I don't like that.

And probably never will.

Go ahead.

Watching Kevin Rudd take a big gulp of water from his glass after the moment had passed through I thought was really telling as well.

But I want to look at as much as we've I think we've had plenty of passing of what actually happened on the day but I want to look at what's happened since and how the opposition have responded to that.

Initially we saw the coalition pretty quick out of the gate saying look Kevin Rudd's position is untenable.

He was a butt of jokes.

They were laughing at him.

It's clearly on President Trump's radar.

Then we had Jane Hume intervene and say actually he's doing a pretty good job.

It's a bit churlish to criticise him.

The call for Kevin Rudd to resign or stand down is probably a little bit churlish.

The work clearly has been done by Kevin Rudd personally and I think that he should be acknowledged for that.

And then Susan Lee wasn't prepared to repeat her earlier comments that his position was untenable.

Kevin Rudd is the Prime Minister's choice for ambassador.

It's a big job.

What was clear yesterday was that the Prime Minister has a lot of catching up to do with respect to the relationship with the Tina.

Did the coalition go in a bit too hard and overreact on this absolutely yeah i think it was a step too far on this i mean how can you come out of what

as we've been saying has been widely acknowledged as a hugely successful meeting massive deal um signed orcas backed in how can you come out of that and say that the man who has been helping put all this together should be sacked like really

you know um i also i mean i also think jane hume's been thoroughly enjoying herself getting on radio and TV a couple times a week and just speaking, saying what everyone says.

She's living her best life.

Well, what she's doing, I mean, look, it's, you know, Psychology 101.

She's been dumped from the front bench.

She's now got the freedom to say what she really thinks.

Look, you know, my own analysis is that she's probably got a little bit of grievance, which is helping out with saying what she really thinks towards Susan Lee and the way that they've managed her.

And she told us what she really thinks about the Kevin Rudd situation.

Now, today, okay, so we're recording on a Thursday, we've got James Patterson, who is a senior conservative, also saying it would be ideal to have an ambassador who hadn't previously attacked the president.

Well, you know, okay, sure, but not calling for the removal.

Like, it's completely shifted.

And I just think we should be honest here.

I think this was a bad judgment call from Susan Lee, right?

Like, this was a bad call.

She made a bad call to go hard on Rudd.

They should have just eaten humble pie and gone, okay, this meeting seems to have gone reasonably well.

There was this one little skirmish.

You can maybe mention it in a sort of cheeky way, but not recalling an ambassador.

And not only did it not warrant

recalling the ambassador, as far as I can see it.

Also, which is really something I'm quite obsessed with and not afraid to say it 500 times, like we are not subservient to the United States that we recall our ambassadors because a mood swing of the president happened.

Like we, that is embarrassing for our country.

Can you see this, Mel?

The threshold for when you would move an ambassador shouldn't be a brief quip in a meeting.

Especially when half the people in the room seem to think it was a joke.

Absolutely.

And I think when we see, you know, a great example is let's look at the UK, where they have recalled their ambassador, Peter Mendelssohn, for his involvement with a convicted child sex offender.

And somehow we're suggesting that a joke about some previous comments, what we presume to be a joke about previous comments, even if there's a barb of truth about it, it clearly wasn't enough that Donald Trump was bothering to linger on it.

He's the one that moved things on very quickly from that discussion.

It's clearly at a very different level.

I will say though, PK, as much as I absolutely agree with both you and Katina that this was an overreach from the opposition, I think we should probably give a little bit of credit to Susan Lee for for quickly correcting it because we've seen plenty of opposition leaders in recent times and as prime ministers as well.

I'm thinking Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton here, where they've made errors, either of judgment or even of just having misspoken.

I think Scott Morrison's description of a one-China policy when talking about the wrong thing and then refusing to concede that he'd just made a misspeak.

The fact that she saw that it was the wrong move, moved to quickly correct it, didn't dig her heels in, I think that's a sign of a responsive leader that we haven't seen from Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison in recent times.

Is that fair, PK?

I can see you're nodding.

Yeah, no, thank you.

No, I do think that if you overreach or say something that kind of isn't going the way it should, that you should correct 100%.

I agree and credit for that.

Having said that,

I still think it's worth making making the point, which I already have, but I will again, that the judgment

was really off.

Really, really off.

Like there is lots of things to extract politics on.

But the sense of, you know, and I hate these sort of jingoistic terms, but I also use them, that you want Team Australia to do well here.

Like, you know, that this should be your primary interest.

And knowing that the Australian public, in terms of the politics, they want that.

Overegging things is not actually not only not in the national interest, but not I don't think how punters feel Mel.

That's my point.

Like people want this stuff to go well.

I think so.

And when it comes to international relations, I think the idea is as much as we might be happy to jump in partisan trenches at home when it comes to representing Australia on the world stage, everyone wants a good outcome.

I do want to move on to one of the other elements, though, of this meeting, and particularly because we have you, Katina Curtis, from the West Australian newspaper, which I know keeps a very close eye on the resources sector.

So, of course, a multi-billion dollar critical minerals deal, a framework agreement between the two countries, some joint investment announcements, particularly on a gallium project in WA, and then promises effectively of more investment to come with sort of letters of interest or letters of intent from the various export financing bodies from the US and Australia is a pretty serious commitment to helping develop critical mineral mining processing and development in Australia.

But Katina, we're still waiting to learn more about Australia's own domestic policies here when it comes to the stockpile and a floor price.

How do you read the progress that was made in this meeting?

So it was a huge deal for the sector.

Basically, Australia has been trying to get America interested in this actually back to 2019 when Scott Morrison met Donald Trump.

And things, you know, sort of muddled along.

There was a little bit of chatter with the Biden administration when Elbow went over, you know, a couple of years ago.

But the sort of tightening of things with China and Trump's approach to China has really crystallized the minds.

And then that move by China a couple weeks ago to slap these huge export restrictions on critical minerals and rare earths and not just resources themselves but you know things like phones and batteries and things that contain these products um suddenly at very fortuitous timing for us really because we've been this deal i think donald trump himself said this deal's been in the works sort of four or five months this specific deal um but it really suddenly actually everyone switched on and was like oh my goodness we've got to do something this is the moment this is the moment the moment has arrived and really i mean from my perspective absolutely wa front and centre.

Madeleine King was sitting opposite Donald Trump, eyeballing him, you know, during the moment.

That's really interesting, right?

Because normally in these meetings, you would expect the Foreign Minister and the Defence Minister to be by the Prime Minister's side, but on this occasion, it was the Resources Minister and the Industry Minister and Madeline King and Tim Ayers.

That was really telling, I think.

Yeah, so I mean, you see that, like, that's who they're taking over.

Okay, we knew this deal, it was going to come together.

And the other thing is, like, the pipeline of projects, probably estimates are half to two-thirds of them are in WA.

So again, massive for the for the state.

Now, I guess in terms of where these projects are up to, like the reason the financing deal is so big is because there's sort of a small handful of projects that are actually up and running doing these critical minerals stuff in Australia at the moment.

And there's a lot more companies that are getting around being like, well, we've got this pile of dirt and we know it's got stuff in it, but it's really expensive to get it out because often it's actually like waste from other mines.

It's the leftover stuff.

And now suddenly we're like, oh, actually, all that stuff, one of the projects is actually, they buried all their waste dirt and now they're digging it back up again, you know.

But it is quite expensive to extract.

So they really do need a lot of money.

And the fact that China has got so dominant in processing in this area means that, and the way that China's economy works means that China's been able to really push the prices down and, you know, undercut everyone else but also as we as we've seen it means they can cut off everyone else as well.

So getting a project off the ground, very expensive, not guaranteed that you get the return on

the volatile prices.

Yeah, with the prices going up and down and subject to this sort of market manipulation stuff.

So the key things about what's been decided here is both the government financing, so they're saying they'll put in about $3 billion Australian and up to $13 billion for the pipeline, but it's expected to unlock about $50 billion in private investment.

So it's basically the governments,

US and Australian governments saying we have faith in these projects that they can do what needs to be done.

And then other investors will come and join in.

And then the other piece, which you touched on before as well, is sort of getting the agreements to buy the stuff.

And this is looking like...

it might include a floor price, so like a guaranteed price on the things.

And there's also actually some stuff in there about perhaps restrictions around asset sales, which is being read as, it obviously doesn't mention China, but basically it's being read as saying, well, we can decide that we can ban companies from selling the products to China.

That deal, I think you've done a beautiful job explaining it, but it is, you know, quite big for Australia.

And I think for the sort of...

geopolitical situation too, given the stranglehold China has over critical minerals, right?

But I think timing is everything.

And I think it's really interesting if I can bring up another thing which will be very dominant as Parliament sits next week and the week after.

And that is the sort of overhaul of environment laws, which are very close now, it seems.

Murray Watt has confirmed that there won't be a so-called climate trigger.

Now, it's good that that's confirmed.

It's very controversial, but can I just say there was never going to be a climate trigger.

Sorry, but like Anthony Albanese was never going to have a climate trigger in this thing.

He has been so risk averse and not wanting to upset WA or whatever.

But I do think they're actually weirdly linked.

You know, having approvals for big projects through a new set of laws and what those laws will look like, Katina, like

it's all kind of the same thing in many ways, isn't it?

Absolutely.

The sorting out the environmental approvals is going to be key to the energy transition because you need the approvals for building

the big solar and wind farms

and it's getting these critical minerals projects happening as well.

I was talking with a...

critical minerals company yesterday.

They're in Victoria and they have already spent like years going through the Victorian system and it's just like, you know, they do all these studies and then stuff, there's delays in the bureaucracy, then there's problems, they say there's problems with the paperwork, and then they come back to them four years later and say, you've got to do all these studies again.

That's $30 million worth of research work.

And that's, they haven't even started with the federal

process yet.

And the other interesting thing they were saying, which could be a problem,

when the new laws come in, which the whole promise that the government is giving, though the business side hasn't seen actual black and white details on this yet, but the promise is that it will speed up the approvals processes.

However, any projects that are already in the mix won't go onto the new laws.

They'll be grandfathered under the old process.

So, this person I was talking to was being like,

unfortunately,

we won't go into the new system.

Because there really is a lot of hope.

And you're right, PK.

It's really going to be essential.

Murray was saying now he wants to get this through by the end of the year, which realistically means the end of November.

That's like four weeks, like next weekend, two weeks and then two weeks off and then the final week of Parliament.

I mean, it's not much time to scrutinise this giant piece of work.

It's nothing.

It's nothing.

And especially if there's so much controversy in it, right?

And

I think if we look at the strategy here, it's quite interesting because there's an accelerated push to get this sorted sooner rather than later.

But what we see from Murray-Watt is a very strategic...

gradual dripping out of details of what is and what isn't in there.

So yes, no climate trigger.

Yes, we're going to have some harsher penalties for those who don't follow approvals.

We're not giving the climate trigger, but we're going to make the bigger companies give information about their climate footprint and at least outline a plan for dealing with it, even though that's not something that the approval is going to hang on or off.

So he's dribbling out little details, but we still don't know the really fundamental things.

He's holding back those key things.

He's holding back the key things like, okay, how are we going to do this removal of duplication with the states?

What are the standards going to be?

and does the minister have sign-off which is the minister have sign-off uh do the standards do the new standards have to be in place before we remove the duplicative process because that is something that has previously been a hurdle when the last coalition government tried to change environment laws so the really crucial stuff isn't being dribbled out yet i think he's holding it back for negotiations because he's still he is still actively talking to the coalition and the greens neither side was happy yesterday no this is the real crunch period if either going to try and pass it in the next month or so then no one is going to get to this point and say oh actually it's looking pretty good you're going to be pushing as hard as you can yeah and don't forget they love it when the greens and the coalition are all complaining because then it's it absolutely feeds into their overall narrative which is we are just centrists we're not the lunatics right isn't that their entire vibe that's what the whole government's i fully anticipate Murray standing up next week when he introduces the bill and saying, look, we've got the balance right between the environment and industry interests because nobody likes this.

Well, we will find out soon enough.

Now, how can we not, you know, not even dabble in a bit of a conversation?

And I say a bit of a conversation because, like, let's give it a bit of proportion.

But, oh, Barnaby Joyce, a man who just wants to be talked about.

So let's do it.

Let's give him what he needs.

Barnaby Joyce is flirting with going into One Nation.

Is he in the Nationals?

Is he not?

What's he doing?

Messing with people's heads.

That's what I think.

But also, now Pauline Hanson's like, he's not going to come and be the leader of One Nation.

Katina, is it all just smoke and mirrors?

Something happening here?

I mean, they definitely are talking.

I actually did ring her last night.

I sat on the front step because I thought, seeing they're talking about us all, I might as well speak to each other rather than speak through the media.

Said good day.

There's nothing, nothing is is locked in, nothing is, you know, and I've gone from not even from

in a matter of minutes, I've apparently resigned from the Nationals, which I haven't actually done yet,

joined One Nation, which I haven't actually done, and then I'm leading, within a few hours, I'm actually leading One Nation, and then I've even watched on television last night people complaining about my leadership of a party I'm not even a member of.

I mean Barnaby is so insistent that it and the people in the Nationals say as well that this news came out before he wanted it to.

It didn't come from him.

I mean,

I half wonder if it wasn't that Pauline Hansen got sick of him holding, keeping her on a line and, you know, keeping dancing and maybe

flush it out and get it out there that she was trying to get him on board just to try and get an answer from him one way or the other.

But I don't know what you think, Mel, but it really seems like he's sort of half in, half out of the Nationals at the moment.

I don't really see how it's workable.

No, we're going to have to come to to a crunch point pretty quickly when Parliament starts sitting next week to declare is he going to whether he retains his membership or not is sort of one thing.

The more crucial thing is what does he do when he is in Canberra?

Does he formally sit with the Nationals and vote with them or does he put himself on the crossbench to sit alongside Andrew Gee, another Nationals departee who's now an independent

and see what he can do with that full freedom.

But I think what's become really clear is that this is largely about relationships.

As much as Barnaby Joyce is presenting this as being a net zero policy position that he can't abide by.

And his bill's back up on Monday, so we'll see.

We'll see who actually talks on it.

But this is something, I mean, for Barnaby, the personal and the political and the policy have always combined in a way like no others.

But it is clear that personality is at the heart of this and that the relationship that has broken down between Barnaby Joyce and David Littleproud in particular is central here, right, Peter?

Yeah, and I think there are question marks about David Littleproud's leadership.

So I had Susan Macdonald on the program, you know, shadow minister, sits in the Nationalist Party room from Queensland.

I think she just said something that I thought, hmm.

She said, it is the responsibility of the leadership.

to make sure that people like Barnaby feel included, basically, i.e.

pressure on Little Proud and how he's managed these issues.

Now, Little Proud has lots of issues, not just with Barnaby.

I mean, Barnaby might be his chief

problem.

But Little Proud has some management issues of his party room, as far as I can see, Mel, like with many characters in his party room, and that's a problem for him.

He does, but I also don't know who else in the Nationals would do a better job at managing all of those personnel issues that David Little Proud does.

I actually have a bit of of sympathy for him on that front.

Sure, but is he managing it well?

Look, I think the Nationals have a lot of bluster about their performance.

They like to talk about hanging on to their seats, but the reality is they lost the seat of line because Andrew Gee defected and then ran as an independent and succeeded in holding it.

They consider that not a loss because they had already lost the member before the election came around.

It defies logic to me.

So they have lost a seat there.

They've lost just into numpajimpa price from sitting in the National seat as well.

Exactly.

And they almost lost Cowper.

And there's actually liberals who think that the Nats will lose that next time.

Absolutely.

And lost Cowper to a teal-like independent

and yet also losing senators like Jacinta Numpajimpa Price on the other end of the spectrum within the Nationals.

So at both ends

the Nationals are struggling.

That's a problem.

And we don't see any realistic resolution around key issues that are dividing them.

And if we're talking about net zero, that Barnaby puts as the issue, yes, they have a review process underway being led by Ross Cadell and Matt Canavan.

But, you know, Matt Canavan's position isn't going to change regardless of what the review settles down on.

People's views on net zero aren't going to be changed.

They're not going to agree on a compromise.

So it's more as, is there an accommodation that can keep

any further, that can stem any more losses, or do they just have to find a way to live with massively different opinions on how to deal with one of the biggest policy challenges facing the nation?

That sounds pretty hard to me.

Yeah, look, the next couple of weeks are going to be, I think, very unpredictable and quite huge.

So next week, sitting week, the week after sitting week, like quite frenetic.

A few surprises, I suspect, will happen in all of those, you know, both internals and at a policy space too.

Look, you know, we just talked about Barnaby Joyce and the dancing with One Nation.

I just want to sort of spruke that on Politics Now on Tuesday, I'm going to be speaking with one of your absolute favourites, Anthony Green, chief elections analyst emeritus, for a historical look at One Nation.

I mean, this is what I love about Anthony.

I'll tell you the secret.

He writes to me a manifesto, because that's the sort of guy he is, about his analysis of what's happening and the history of One Nation.

PK, really want to talk about this.

And I'm like, Anthony, everyone wants to hear you talk about this.

absolutely this is going to be compulsory listening so we're going to make a special it's the prime minister's favorite green how good is my job right and if you told me in high school that that would be the case one day i would not have believed you it's a it's a happy life so next week is going to be huge for us as we cover the political week and see exactly the devil and the detail of the government's bills and just i got to say guy guys what i'll be looking for as well is just the way the opposition manages their questions in question time, like what angles they take, because they are at sixes and sevens.

Like, they are really, I think, having some confusion and difficulty at the moment with where to go.

Katina, like final thoughts from you?

Yeah, I think you're right.

Question time will be really interesting, especially in the wake of the Donald Trump meeting going so well.

That sort of takes a lot out of them.

The PM, I believe, is actually going to miss much of Parliament next week, so that always changes the dynamic in the chamber as well.

He's off at some more of these international summits where Donald Trump will be again as well.

And so it'll be good to watch.

I think that's going to be really interesting because as much as we've got a big focus on the domestic politics, how Parliament is going to go looking at the changes to the EPBC Act for the environment laws, the government will no doubt try and push its reformed superannuation tax concessions through the Parliament as well.

But the Prime Minister is going to be in Malaysia for the APEC meeting.

Donald Trump will be there.

He'll then hop to Japan and then South Korea.

And in South Korea, he's going to be meeting Xi Jinping to talk about the trade and embargo

that we have been talking about earlier around critical minerals and other trade.

And in some ways, that meeting that doesn't involve Australia at all could potentially be far more consequential for the Australian economy than the meeting we've just seen at the White House.

So we're going to need to keep our eyes both on Canberra and in Kuala Lumpur and in Seoul as well.

All right.

Well, Katina, it's been great to talk to you.

Really glad we could mine your knowledge, pun intended, on all things critical minerals and prime ministerial action.

What in the periodic table have we managed to get out of Katina?

The whole periodic table we have just taken from Katina.

Thank you, Katina.

Thank you.

Questions without notice?

Are there any questions?

Members on my route.

Prime Minister has the call.

Thanks very much, Mr.

Speaker.

Well, can I give the call to the Honourable, the Leader of the Opposition?

Thank you, Mr.

Speaker.

My question is to the Prime Minister.

The bells are ringing.

that means it's time for question time.

This week's question comes from Lily.

Hi, Party Room.

My name's Lily.

I wanted to start by saying that I'm 22 years old now and I've been listening to the podcast since I was 15.

It's led to a huge passion for politics that I carry with me in everything that I do.

I did my bachelor's degree in political science and international relations and I now work in the legal system and I think a big part of the passion that I've got for politics and Australian politics has come from the party room.

So thank you so much for inspiring me and for keeping me informed for so many years.

My question today is about ex-politicians and how they are able to exert influence over policy.

We've heard so much in the past couple of weeks about Tony Abbott and Paul Keating and how they've influenced things like the Liberal Party shadow frontbench shuffle and the super reform coming from Labour.

I'm curious as to how these people can still have an element of control over policy when they're no longer in Parliament, particularly considering that we don't really hear much from ex-prime ministers like Scott Morrison, who may be left in a little bit of a different fashion.

Could you explain how the back end of these political machinations work in order for these people to still have a role in policy when they're no longer publicly elected officials?

Thank you so much.

Excellent question, Lily.

Well, my vibe is it's all about influence.

It's not so much formal.

Like I think your question sort of goes to whether it's formal or not.

None of it is formal.

It's about stature.

So Paul Keating, a legend of the labor movement, yes, in recent times, some comments around China and other issues have been a little difficult for people like Penny Wong, who he's not a great fan of, but broadly still, an absolute legend in the labor movement.

So if he says something, if he gets on the blower and he's not afraid to do it,

if you get a call from Paul Keating, you know, it's a good day or not.

He certainly will tell you what he really thinks.

He will call people and tell them his views and he has influence.

He has heft.

And so the way it works is in the sense of that kind of political muscle in your influence rather than anything formal.

Mel, have I got that wrong?

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

It's because someone like Paul Keating

can take the ear of people in position in power today because they respect him.

It comes down to the level of respect that is there for these former luminaries.

And we know that Jim Chalmers has a lot of respect for Paul Keating and looks up to Paul Keating.

So if he is making sharp criticisms of something that the Treasurer is doing, he's likely to pay attention.

There's no guarantee he'll end up agreeing.

And the China policy for Paul Keating is probably a good example of that.

It's not as if those in power are jumping to Paul Keating, but it is influential.

And I think the flip side is true, perhaps, of Scott Morrison, who doesn't have the respect of a lot of his former colleagues who are still in Parliament,

and therefore his interventions have less influence when it comes to the current Liberal Party sitting in Canberra today.

Tony Abbott is perhaps a bit of a different example because he's using his influence less through connections with the Liberal leadership in the Parliamentary Party.

He's exerting his influence through the Liberal Party infrastructure, through the party infrastructure infrastructure that is set up in place.

So this is perhaps where sometimes power can be wielded by those in official parliamentary positions.

But when it comes to policy decisions, some of that influence also comes through party structures, through a membership base or through the architecture of a party system.

And Tony Abbott is very good at working in that part of the system of influence.

And look, I think there's also probably examples we can talk to of former senior ministers who are exerting what influence they have, the respect they garnered, the networks they developed, and are using that through commercial or lobbying outfits and are able to exert influence that way.

Again, these are informal processes of having earned respect, built connections.

They're quite amorphous things, but they can be quite powerful things.

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

Really good question.

Thank you for sending it.

Keep sending your questions in because I've missed them actually on my month off, which, yeah, your questions are really good.

We're fond of the voice notes so we can hear your voice.

Send them to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

And remember to follow Politics Now on the ABC Listen app.

That way you will never miss an episode.

And that's it for the party room this week.

David Spears though, he's going to be back in the feed for Politics Now with Insiders on Background on Saturday.

He's speaking to Justin Bassey from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

if you've seen David Spears's analysis piece on the ABC website about Donald Trump's comments about China, they're super interesting and perhaps not what many in the security and defence space were expecting.

So he's going to have a chat to Justin about those perspectives.

And of course, PK, now you're back behind the microphone.

So we're going to hear lots more of you now back in the Politics Now feed.

That's right.

On Monday, I'll be back with Jacob to mop up probably a very big weekend.

Also, can I say, beginning of a sitting week.

So we'll get lots of the sort of

excitement and the government's agenda for the week too.

So thank you for that, Mel.

Mel, I'm really excited to be back with you.

That was good.

I'm very excited you're back.

It just feels like a lovely, comfortable party room.

I won't get too comfortable because Fran Kelly will be coming back soon.

Nah, you're allowed to get comfortable.

You're allowed to get comfortable.

Fran wants you to be comfortable, but yes, you will be back.

And I'm enjoying it.

I'm really glad you're back.

All right.

See you, Mel.

See you, Piquet.