View from The Hill: Albanese left off Trump’s meeting list, as Ley oversteps the mark

The foreign policy performances on both sides of politics currently have a dash of the amateur hour about them.

Anthony Albanese has seemingly again received the brush off, after months of diplomatic effort to secure a bilateral meeting with Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations leaders’ week in New York.

The prime minister was not on the list of leaders, announced by the White House, with whom the president has bilaterals during his brief time in New York, where he addresses the UN General Assembly.

The Australians say, variously, a meeting will occur soon, or, no matter if it doesn’t happen (sub-text: an encounter with Trump is always a potential hazard anyway).

Some in the Australian camp have not written off the possibility of a meeting time still emerging this week. For what it’s worth, Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles declares a meeting will be “at some point in the near future”.

Nobody can predict Trump or his chaotic White House. But as things stand, the first Albanese-Trump face-to-face encounter unfortunately remains a matter of outstanding business.

The Australian PM does need to establish a personal relationship with Trump (and a handshake at a very large reception, if that happens, is no substitute).

While the government insists that on the important fronts, including AUKUS and tariffs, things are okay between the US and Australia, Lowy Institute executive director, Michael Fullilove, has described the relationship as “presently quite thin”, given the lack of a meeting (and the fact that as yet no US ambassador has been appointed to Canberra).

Fullilove said ahead of the Albanese trip, “the main priority for Mr Albanese when he meets with President Trump will be to thicken up the relationship”.

After a planned meeting in Canada fell through, Australian government sources and the prime minister himself talked up the opportunity this UN week would present.

A likely meeting certainly seemed imminent when the president, in attacking ABC correspondent John Lyons last week, suggested he’d soon see Albanese. “Your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you,” Trump said.

It’s anyone’s guess why Albanese is not on the announced New York schedule. It could be the president is too busy and the claims of other leaders are more pressing. Or that he is dismissing Albanese for the moment, for any one of a number of reasons.

Of course Trump is critical of Australia recognising Palestine, but then, so has the United Kingdom and that’s not affected Trump’s positive relationship with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The Palestinian question is one of the major issues Albanese is pursuing this week. He told the Two State Solution Conference at the UN, “we must break this cycle of violence”.

Perhaps Trump doesn’t rate Australia highly enough to go out of his way to accord it any special respect, seeing it as just that useful country down under.

Whatever the diplomatic implication, another failed date night wouldn’t do Albanese any harm domestically. Australians are, for the most part, anti-Trump.

But that should not be the measure. What’s more relevant is that we are, strategically, in a highly uncertain region, elevating the importance of trying to understand where the US is at.

Reinforcing the point, Albanese has had two recent failures diplomatically. A proposed $500 million deal with Vanuatu fell over and, more significantly, the prime minister was unable to sign a much talked-up defence deal with Papua New Guinea. The government says it is confident the PNG agreement will be signed soon, but delay always opens the possibility of slippage and the Chinese are urging PNG not to sign it.

Three diplomatic misses in as many weeks? Not a good look.

Meanwhile at home, it wasn’t surprising Sussan Ley reiterated a Coalition government would withdraw recognition from Palestine.

What was surprising was that Ley reached out directly to the 25 members of the US Congress who had written to Albanese and other leaders objecting to their countries’ recognition.

Ley said in her letter the recognition “does not enjoy bipartisan support here in Australia. The Federal Opposition opposes this decision.”

“It is also important to note it does not reflect the view of a majority of Australians,” she wrote.

“According to the reputable Resolve Political Monitor, just 24 per cent of Australians support recognising Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly. 44 per cent of Australians do not support changing Australia’s previously longstanding and bipartisan position on the recognition of a Palestinian state. 32 per cent of Australians believe recognition should only occur once Hamas is removed from power and when Palestinians recognise Israel’s right to exist.”

Ley’s letter breaks the convention (which admittedly some reject as old-fashioned) of keeping the arguments about foreign policy on home ground – the so-called dictum that “politics stops at the water’s edge”. Ley looks to be venturing onto to foreign soil, figuratively speaking, to play domestic politics.

For its part, the Israeli government has been quick this week to wade into Australia’s internal partisan politics. The Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar contacted Ley to talk about the recognition, and bilateral relations between Australia and Israel.

The Middle East conflict continues to produce ever-widening fractures in Australian politics and the Australian community.