EDITORIAL: Will Albanese blossom or wither on world stage?

For most Australians, blooming jacarandas herald the coming summer.

The explosion of mauve in our suburbs in late October signals to us to prepare for the year’s last gasp before Christmas.

For prime ministers, it means it’s time to get on a plane.

Welcome to summit season, the cluster of meetings of international leaders and diplomatic big-wigs that takes place every year in the southern hemisphere’s late spring and early summer.

Anthony Albanese, who only touched down from a US jaunt on Thursday will be back in the air on Sunday, and he will be hoping the jacaranda blossoms reflect the extension of his own purple patch.

The Prime Minister’s long-awaited meeting with Donald Trump couldn’t have gone much better.

The critical minerals and rare deal on which many are pinning hopes for a new mining and technological boom was signed. The President gave his full-throated support to the AUKUS defence pact, which had been looking shaky due to the Americans’ commission of a review of the deal.

The genuine warmth between the pair was obvious; a tactile Mr Trump repeatedly touched Mr Albanese and called him a friend.

The meeting even quelled discontent about the performance of Australia’s Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd. Mr Trump has made the former prime minister pay for his disparaging comments, and now “all is forgiven”, according to the President.

Mr Albanese now has the opportunity to build on his belated rapport with the world’s most powerful man and leader of Australia’s top security partner.

Both will travel to Kuala Lumpur for next week’s ASEAN/East Asia Summit.

It’s expected the pair will catch up informally while in Malaysia, where Mr Trump’s priorities are to sign a trade deal with the nation’s PM Anwar Ibrahim and to get his fingerprints on a peace accord between Cambodia and Thailand which will be finalised during the summit.

Then both leaders will scoot across to South Korea, where Mr Trump will again be the headline act. He will have his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping — with whom he is locked in a trade war — since his return to office in January.

By the time the last of the blossoms have fallen, Mr Albanese will have also made an appearance at South Africa for the G20 and potentially at the COP30 climate conference in Brazil.

It’s a frenetic few months and Mr Albanese is no natural statesman. So far his prime ministership has presented a mixed bag on foreign policy. Early successes in normalising the trade relationship with Beijing have been eroded in recent months. Stumbles in the Pacific have been largely recovered.

The PM’s packed travel schedule will open him up to inevitable criticism for taking his eye off domestic matters. But showing up at these summits is important.

As the episode with the Americans shows, facetime matters. Sometimes, it can be worth billions.

And as he outlined in his speech to the UN in New York last month, if moderate middle powers like Australia want to influence the world, they need to be in the room.

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