EDITORIAL: Trump’s Albanese snub shows alliance is in strife

It is, apparently, a “good thing” that Anthony Albanese is incapable of convincing the leader of Australia’s only formal security ally to sit down with him for a 10 minute chat.

That’s the wildly optimistic view of Assistant Foreign Minister Matt Thistlethwaite, who said Donald Trump’s snub of the Prime Minister in New York, contrary to appearances and logic, actually means everything is just great.

“It means that the President, who’s been meeting with world leaders to try and reach agreements on trade policy, he’s trying to do deals with other nations around tariffs and trade policy. He doesn’t need to do that with Australia,” Mr Thistlethwaite said.

It’s top level galaxy brain thinking. We can only assume Mr Thistlethwaite was speaking from a high-altitude hypobaric chamber, his brain slowly starving of oxygen, when he made those remarks.

The fact is Australia needs the US

Those of us functioning down at sea level however can see that it is most definitely not a good thing that the Australian PM in the US’s diplomatic deep freeze.

The very best Mr Albanese can hope for out of this trip is a quick happy snap and handshake at a drinks reception to be hosted by the President on Wednesday morning, Australian time.

Already, the PM’s team is talking up other opportunities for the pair to meet for their long awaited bilateral. But this meeting of the United Nations General Assembly was already supposed to be a make-up opportunity, after the President pulled the pin on a sit-down scheduled on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June.

That Mr Trump has chosen not to make meeting with Mr Albanese a priority yet again is a deliberate snub. It is a message that all is not well in the Alliance.

Add to that the fact that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Mr Trump views the move by Western leaders to recognise a sovereign Palestine as a “reward to Hamas” for its campaign of terror, and you have the makings of a crisis.

The lack of urgency with which Mr Albanese is treating this issue is deeply worrying.

He knows that Australians on the whole share his distaste for Mr Trump and his brash ways. And he’s taking the punt that the domestic advantages of being in the President’s bad books outweigh the diplomatic drawbacks.

That is an extraordinarily shortsighted and self-serving view.

The fact is Australia needs the US. We do not have the capacity to defend ourselves against a foreign military threat. We need a powerful friend who will come to our aid in the terrible event that it is required.

The good news is that the Australia-US relationship is far bigger than individual personalities — even ones as gargantuan as Mr Trump. It will survive this. But it may not escape completely untarnished.

That would be an indelible stain on Mr Albanese’s record as Prime Minister.

To avoid that, he must stop focusing on the issues which separate him from Mr Trump, and instead find the many things they agree on, and work towards those common goals.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.