Mark Riley: Albo and Trump are Insta-official, but it’s what comes next that matters

Perhaps Anthony Albanese was experiencing a little jet lag.

Or maybe the incessant scream of sirens rising from the New York streets had shaken him from his slumber.

For whatever reason, the Australian Prime Minister found himself wide awake in his Manhattan hotel room at 3am on Wednesday, scrolling through his camera roll and posting photos to Instagram.

Well, one photo really. For him, an important one.

“Good to chat with President Donald Trump at the USA welcome reception for world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly,” the Prime Minister wrote.

Phones in the travelling media’s nearby hotel instantly began pinging with news that Anthony Albanese had posted conclusive — if a little visually confronting — evidence of his first personal encounter with the US President.

The Prime Minister had banged off the selfie on arrival at the presidential reception.

It showed himself grinning broadly and Donald Trump showcasing a panorama of presidential pearly whites that proved everything in America is indeed big. In this case, very big and very bright.

The image, lobbing at 5pm AEST and 3pm WST, went viral almost immediately.

But more importantly for Anthony Albanese, it appeared just in time to hit the nightly television news bulletins and the newspaper front pages.

It finally put an end to the endless will-he-or-won’t-he speculation about just when the two leaders would meet in person and drew attention to the greater fact that the White House had earlier confirmed that their first formal bilateral meeting would take place in Washington DC, on October 20.

Even those of us across the globe in New York could hear the collective sigh of “Phew!” emanating from the ministerial offices in Canberra.

Securing the meeting was important.

The lack of one, 10 months after Donald Trump was elected, was becoming an issue of increasing political irritation for the Prime Minister.

But while the “when” is now settled the much greater question of “what” will come of the meeting now replaces it in the national political discussion.

Anthony Albanese’s principal objectives will be to encourage a clear public statement from Donald Trump that he intends to see the AUKUS agreement through, despite the uncertainty generated by the Pentagon’s review of the deal.

He will also want to come away with some easing of Trump’s punitive tariffs on Australian steel, aluminium and pharmaceuticals.

Albanese has a good case for that. Trump insists his regime is designed to enforce reciprocal equity in America’s bilateral trading agreements.

But enforcing that principle in our relationship would mean increasing Australian tariffs on US goods, because America is by far the bigger beneficiary of our two-way trade.

Logic, though, often doesn’t seem to figure in the Trump White House.

As Anthony Albanese lands in London on Friday morning to begin his four-day English visit, he should take the opportunity to share notes on Trump-taming with British leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Despite his fumbling of domestic affairs, Starmer seems to have discovered the secret sauce to sweeten the relationship with the irascible, often irrational and always unpredictable President.

It is based on the principle of not poking the bear.

Britain, like Australia, has manifest differences with the Trump White House on a broad range of key policies, such as Palestinian recognition, tariffs, climate change, green energy, immigration and the sort of nutcase stupidology that blames headache tablets for autism.

But when he disagrees, Sir Keir does it politely.

That it has worked was obvious on Trump’s UK visit last week when he observed with a smile and a slap on the back that the two leaders held different views on Gaza but that they “don’t disagree on much, actually”.

Albanese often says that he, too, employs the polite approach to foreign engagement. He says it mostly when he is asked for Australia’s response to Trump’s latest utterance.

The Prime Minister avoids making any personal reflections by receding to a now well-worn declaration that Australia will exercise its sovereign right to determine what position best serves its own national interest.

That is a solid statement of self-determining principle that even Trump would respect.

And if Anthony Albanese wants to leave Washington next month with another selfie that leaves him shimmering in the reflective glow of the presidential pearly whites, he’d be well-advised to stick with it.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor.