Katina Curtis: Conflict in Iran and Israel will push Anthony Albanese talks down Donald Trump’s priority list

There’s a moment in the White House murder mystery show The Residence where the president’s top adviser explains why he needs a state dinner honouring Australia’s Prime Minister to go off without a hitch. “Do you know how shitty you have to be to piss off the Australians? That’s what the last administration did, time and time again, and we are trying to clean up that mess,” he says. The line seems prescient amid the current anxiety about the US-Australia alliance. Fictional president Perry Morgan’s political affiliation is never made explicit, but it isn’t hard to guess who “the last administration” might have been. Anthony Albanese is set to meet Donald Trump on Wednesday morning, Australian time, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada. Australians have main character energy when viewing our relationship with the US. It’s of massive importance to us, so of course Albanese must be the main priority for Trump this week. The truth is — especially with the conflict between Israel and Iran escalating in a spectacular and worrying fashion — the chat with a middle power ally is unlikely to be top of mind for the President this week. In fact, White House officials speaking to reporters flying into Calgary confirmed only Trump’s meetings with the Canadian, Ukrainian and Mexican leaders. From the Australian side, there is pressure on the Prime Minister to walk away with deals or at least promises on tariffs and Defence cooperation, specifically on AUKUS. From the American side, who knows? It’s clear the Trump administration wants Australia to spend more money on its defence forces, just as it wants the Europeans and other allies to step up. But the other tensions in the relationship that have sprung up over the past five months are hardly of Australia’s making. That makes them difficult for the Government to fix on its own. Yet it’s hard to see that Trump has the will to smooth anything over. His tariffs on Australian goods are unfair and unjustified. But Australia already has one of the best bargains going — not even the UK, which was one of the first to strike a post-tariff trade deal, got the imposts completely struck out. This week’s relationship hurdle is also entirely the initiative of the US: the Pentagon review of the AUKUS pact. The Labor Government has largely been playing down the review’s significance. It points out the UK Government also reviewed the defence technology-sharing agreement, and there’s been a degree of retrofitting of our defence strategic review (which happened at the same time as details of the AUKUS submarine deal were being hammered out) as the Albanese Government’s version. But ministers are nevertheless sharpening their arguments for why AUKUS is a great deal, a beautiful deal for the Americans. A key addition to their talking points is the importance of WA’s Henderson defence precinct. In its revamped form, the shipbuilding facility will add a fifth well-placed maintenance facility to the US network. Trump has proven receptive to Australia’s repeated arguments about America’s trade surplus Down Under. He may well be persuaded that AUKUS is a good deal for him, especially if we can speed up the building of those Henderson docks and maybe throw an extra couple of hundred million at the US submarine production lines. Trump has shaken up global affairs and the nature of diplomacy. The Government’s dance over the past week around whether a meeting would happen, what might be discussed and what outcomes are likely is reminiscent of how it approached Albanese’s first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2022. The analogy is apt: the caution in trying to line up a leaders’ meeting has taken on the feeling of going to the court rather than catching up with our closest ally. “A successful meeting is one where … I, as the Australian Prime Minister, am able to put forward our position,” Albanese said on Monday. Again, the echoes of three years ago, when he said the mere fact of the meeting with Xi was a successful outcome. Quietly, many within the Government think the best-case scenario regarding Trump is that Australia manages to hold on and ride out the presidential term without too much breaking in the alliance. Otherwise, there will be much mess to clean up with the next administration.