Topics: Albanese should meet with Trump;
06:45AM AEDT
12 November 2024
Kenny Heatley: Anthony Albanese is jetting off for the G20 and APEC summits in Brazil and Peru today. The summits are typically about promoting a global economy, climate change action and addressing global inequalities, something an incoming Trump administration threatens to upend. Joining me live is shadow foreign affairs minister Simon Birmingham. Simon, good to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program.
Simon Birmingham: Morning, Kenny.
Kenny Heatley: Are you expecting the Trump election to dominate talks between world leaders at these summits?
Simon Birmingham: Kenny, I’m certain that it will be a significant factor in talks. Prime Minister Albanese has his work cut out for him. It’s important he uses these summits to engage, for example, with President Prabowo, whose inauguration he missed. To engage with Prime Minister Modi and to make sure that he is reaching out across the network of Australia’s regional partners and global partners to get serious outcomes for Australia in terms of our economic strength and our security position. But it should also be using these travels to South America to add one extra leg on, and that is to seek to go to the United States and get an early meeting with Donald Trump. Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump have never met. Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister seized the initiative a couple of months ago and while he was in the US, along with Narendra Modi from India, they went and saw Donald Trump as candidate and made sure they were forging those relations. There’s an opportunity here for Anthony Albanese to seek that meeting, to do so early, and would clearly be in Australia’s interests for him to show that initiative and that drive.
Kenny Heatley: Okay, because we know Joe Biden is going to be attending these summits and it is expected that these trips to these summits will be Anthony Albanese’s last overseas trips of this year. So would you expect that Anthony Albanese, or would you think that he should travel to the United States to meet Donald Trump ahead of Inauguration Day.
Simon Birmingham: Kenny, the Albanese Government should be doing all it can to try to get Anthony Albanese in the door for an early meeting with Donald Trump, and they should be seeking that and trying to attach it to these travels that have already taken Anthony Albanese to South America. The chance is there for him to go up to Florida, seek this meeting. That should be the type of proactive approach. As I said, we saw Keir Starmer do that. The UK prime minister a couple of months ago, before the election, before Donald Trump had won. That’s the type of initiative and drive that we should be wishing to see from Australia’s prime minister that wasn’t there. Anthony Albanese missed the opportunity when he was in the US for the Quad meeting to do the same thing as Narendra Modi did from that Quad meeting and meet Donald Trump or do the same thing that Keir Starmer did around that time and meet Donald Trump. Well, now Donald Trump has been elected Anthony Albanese should absolutely be doing what he can to get in there and have early discussions to ensure Australia’s security interests around AUKUS are trade interests in terms of securing the type of exemptions from the tariffs that Donald Trump says he will implement that Australia secured under the last Coalition government, and that is a key test for the Albanese government.
Kenny Heatley: Yeah. Just on that, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has moved to allay concerns about what a second Trump administration will mean for the Australian economy in a speech last night. What did you make of his speech on the economy and the risks to Australia in a US-China trade war scenario?
Simon Birmingham: Well, I think it is important that we seek to ensure Australia is as well positioned as possible and we seek to ensure that we have confidence to navigate the period ahead. But the tests of that will also be how the Albanese government can and do engage in these early stages with Donald Trump? And a big part of those tests will be whether our economy gets the same type of treatment under the second Trump administration that it did under the first administration, when there was a Coalition government in Australia. Our government was able to secure exemptions for Australia from Trump tariffs. Can Labor do the same? That is a very early but significant test for them. They ought to be seeking these early opportunities for engagement, to try to ensure the case is made strongly, that it is in the US interests for Australia to be as strong as possible for our economies, which are not competitors, to both be in the strongest possible position, and for that trade and flow of services and information and intelligence between our nations, to be as open and free as possible as had been secured under the Howard Government with the Free Trade Agreement and under the Morrison government with the AUKUS pact.
Kenny Heatley: Simon Birmingham, great to chat with you this morning. Thank you.
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