June 19, 2025 • 22 mins
This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to the G7 summit with high hopes of scoring a sidelines-meeting with US President Donald Trump. The PM wanted to discuss the AUKUS pact, and the tariffs that the US government has put on Australian aluminium and iron ore among other things.
But events overtook, and Trump left the summit to deal with the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Albanese did not get his meeting. He didn’t even get a phone call cancelling the meeting.
So what does this mean for our relationship with our supposed closest ally? Will Albanese be able to stalk Trump at the upcoming NATO summit instead? And was it really the loss of face some critics said it was?
Plus, attempts to reform the Liberal party, both at the NSW and the federal level.
Joining Jacqueline Maley to discuss, is federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos and climate and energy correspondent Mike Foley.
Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, June 20th.
This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to the G7
summit in Calgary, Canada, with high hopes of scoring a
sidelines meeting with US President Donald Trump. The PM wanted
to discuss the Aukus pact, which the Trump administration has
(00:24):
placed under review. And he also wanted to discuss the
tariffs that the US government has put on Australian aluminium
and iron ore, among other things. But events overtook and
Trump left the summit to deal with the escalating conflict
between Israel and Iran. Albanese did not get his meeting.
He didn't even get a phone call cancelling the meeting.
(00:44):
So what does this mean for our relationship with our
supposed closest ally? Will Albanese be able to stalk Trump
at the upcoming NATO summit instead? And was it really
the loss of face that some critics said it was? Plus,
we'll talk about attempts to reform the Liberal Party, both
at the New South Wales and the federal level. Joining
me to discuss all this, we have our federal political correspondent,
(01:05):
Natassia Chrysanthos, and our climate and energy correspondent, Mark Foley. Welcome, guys. Hello.
S2 (01:10):
Hi, jacki.
S1 (01:15):
Mike and Taz. Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile
fire in the Middle East. As we're recording, the situation
is very volatile. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump abruptly
left the G7 summit in Canada to return to Washington
and deal with the escalating crisis. This meant that he
basically ghosted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had hoped to
catch up with him on the sidelines of the summit,
(01:36):
to discuss the Aukus deal in particular and tariffs more generally.
Tell us, where does that leave the Australian government and us,
the Australian people on these important issues, aukus and tariffs?
S3 (01:47):
Yeah, well, for the Australian government and for Albanese in particular,
there was a lot riding on this for him. The
domestic political context, you know his kind of failure to
get phone calls with Trump earlier in the year. That
was a big attack line for the coalition throughout the
election campaign. You know, they're kind of push or the
expectation that Albanese would secure some exemption to Trump's tariffs
(02:11):
for Australia. It was added to that and the fact
that he hasn't spoken to the president since that tariff
decision was made several months ago now doesn't look good
for him in that domestic context. It also means that
he hasn't gotten to have those conversations with Trump. Um,
and then in the last week or so, you had
the whole aukus issue.
S1 (02:32):
So, yeah, as in Aukus is now officially under review
by the US administration.
S3 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah. Correct. The US has decided to review Aukus.
The US sticking with Aukus is obviously what's in Australia's
interest here. And the Australian government's interests more specifically. So
not ideal that Albanese didn't get to have that meeting.
We're now hearing him and his advisers talk about potentially, um,
Albanese attending NATO next week and trying to get the
(02:59):
meeting there, but I don't think it sounds like he's
going to attend unless he can actually lock in that
meeting with Trump. And given everything that's happened in the
world and the fact that Trump did just walk out
of the conference with all else going on the other
day maybe makes that unlikely.
S1 (03:16):
Yeah, it just seems to me that even if you
lock in a, you know, so-called lock in a meeting
with Trump, there's no way that that lock in will
be respected by the man himself.
S2 (03:23):
On that, I found it very interesting over the past
couple of weeks, given what you say, how will he
or won't Trump actually going to meet a world leader?
That situation is that Albanese and his press office have
really leant in to building up expectations that Albo would
arrange a meeting with Donald Trump. He is going to
(03:44):
meet him face to face. And this is in response to,
I think, a bit, maybe a bit unfairly, but I'd
class as some wet lettuce sort of criticism from the
coalition about Albaneses so-called inability to secure a meeting with Trump.
I just can't figure out why Albanese was so keen to, um,
to declare that he.
S1 (04:04):
Telegraph that this meeting was definitely going to happen.
S2 (04:07):
Yeah, it's a false test because I think Australians know
that Trump is very capricious. There's the threat of war
erupting in the Middle East, and Trump is going to
be called away at any moment.
S1 (04:18):
I'm interested in both of your takes on that, because
in some quarters Trump was, you know, he was portrayed
basically as blowing Albanese off, as ghosting him, standing him up.
Is that fair? I mean, he obviously had a very
good reason to lead the conference and to not honour
this meeting. But at the same time, he didn't even
make a phone call. I mean, this was our closest ally.
What does that say about the respect that he has
(04:39):
for Australia, but also the respect he has for Albanese
as a man?
S3 (04:43):
I think, and our colleague James Marcello, who's in Canada
with Albanese this week, wrote something to this effect. He
said it exposes Australia for, for what it is at
the end of the day, which is at best a
middle power like Trump met other G7 leaders. I think
he called the leader of Mexico when he left the
(05:03):
summit early. But it does just show, I suppose, the
reality of where we sit on the world stage.
S1 (05:11):
I just wonder if you would have done it to
say Scott Morrison. I mean, it's an impossible, you know, counterfactual,
but I'm just they don't seem to have any kind
of personal relationship at all, and there doesn't seem to
be any kind of respect. There's no it's just not
simpatico between them.
S3 (05:25):
Well, and I think part of that is they have like,
that lack of personal relationship is because they haven't had
a face to face meeting like Trump came in earlier
this year. Albanese has been re-elected, but even before that
there was no face to face. They had the 1
or 2 phone calls at the beginning of this year,
and I've also read commentary. These face to face relationships,
personal relationships are really important for Trump, which probably adds
to the imperative of Albanese getting one sooner rather than later.
S1 (05:48):
He needs to get an invitation from from Greg Norman
to for them to play golf together or something. Um,
Albanese used to walk on the golf course at Marrickville,
I think.
S2 (05:57):
Well, Jacqui, I think the point is long term. How
how much is it in Albanese's interest to have that
close personal tie to Donald Trump and receive his calls?
When we've seen, you know, Trump is going to Trump,
he is going to be, like I said, capricious. And
he lashes out in public meetings with world leaders. He
(06:19):
ditched Narendra modi and the prime minister of South Korea
as well at the G7. So is there any advantage
in terms of domestic politics, the optics of Albo looking
like he has influence over the US, when that could
all fall apart on a whim of Donald Trump? I
think it's sort of a 50 over 50 call about
(06:39):
how advantageous it could be for Australia to be close
to Trump.
S1 (06:43):
Well, I agree. And when you think about the reality
of a white House visit, if that were to happen,
I mean, an invitation has to be extended first, which
hasn't happened, but we've seen how humiliating and utterly globally
degrading that experience can be. If you get on the
wrong side of Donald Trump when you're in, you know,
in front of the press, in the white House, and
that the chilling effect of those press conferences with Zelensky.
S4 (07:06):
Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying
to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going
to feel.
S5 (07:11):
I'm not telling you.
S4 (07:12):
Because you're in no position to dictate that that's exactly
what you're doing. You're in no position to dictate what
we're going to feel. We're going to feel very good.
S1 (07:23):
I mean, the chilling effect of those public confrontations is enormous,
isn't it? I mean, if you're Albanese, why would you
walk into something or, you know, even the smallest risk
of something like that happening?
S3 (07:32):
Yeah. And I think all the kind of survey, polling,
research that we've seen on Australians attitude toward Trump, it's
it's up there in terms of negativity in a global
context like Australians at large don't like Trump. I don't
think there's like Mike said, a lot in in it
for Albanese Domestically to be buddy with Trump. I think
(07:53):
people's expectations is for a productive relationship that's in the
interests of Australians. And, um, you can probably do that
in a couple of ways.
S1 (08:00):
Yeah. Okay. So the conflict in the Middle East, I mean,
it's very uncertain what the outcome will be even as
we sit here. We're recording on Thursday morning more sort of, um, domestically. Mike,
what does this mean for oil prices? In recent times,
we've been led to believe that the the RBA might
continue to cut interest rates at the next few meetings.
But oil prices, if they surge and that will possibly
(08:21):
add to inflation and it will have flow on effects
for the Australian economy. Talk to us about that.
S2 (08:26):
Sure. Well, it's obviously a massive question for the global
economy at the moment, but I can give you some
context on the what the oil price has done on
the news of conflict in the Middle East and look,
baby steps. But it's not catastrophic at the moment, Jackie.
So at the moment the US are dollars per barrel
(08:47):
of oil. It's 76 bucks for a barrel of oil.
It's surged, but it has gone nowhere near the 2022 peak.
That was after Russia invaded Ukraine and there was an
embargo on the oil out of Russia. And global disruption there.
And that was when in 2022, oil prices are connected
(09:08):
to the global energy price. They drove up electricity prices
in Australia, and that had a material effect on inflation
and really helped fire the inflation dragon in Australia. And
at the moment we're not headed towards that.
S1 (09:22):
Okay. In terms of other geopolitical issues that might affect
the Australian economy. Where are we at with tariffs? I
mean the US tariffs haven't yet been imposed. I think
they're due to be imposed in July. Have they had
a chilling effect on the Australian economy already. Are they
likely to slow growth. What will they do.
S2 (09:40):
Well, Albanese was pretty upbeat on the question of tariffs.
When you boil it right down, he was at the
G7 and he said sort of quite cheekily to the
global press pack there, that Australia is continuing to export
more to the US, he said. And that's in the
face of a 50% tariff about to hit Australian aluminium
(10:01):
and steel. But it's three 3/5 of bugger all what
Australia sends in terms of aluminium and steel to the US.
In terms of the global picture, it's worth about $1
billion a year. That's that's not a hell of a
lot in terms of Australia's export balance. Our biggest export
to the US beef is worth about $3 billion a year,
and that's set to face a 10% tariff. And Albanese,
(10:25):
when he was flagging that our exports continue to go up.
The US has a big growing demand for beef.
S6 (10:32):
Australia continues to importantly continues to export to the United States.
It's just that the purchasers of those goods and services
are paying more for them. So there hasn't been a decline.
S2 (10:48):
Here's my favorite stat out of the the the whole
turmoil is that that's going to affect about 6 billion burgers.
That's how much Australia supplies of beef into the US.
And that the.
S1 (10:58):
Lifeblood, the lifeblood of the of the Trump administration right there.
S2 (11:01):
Well, it'd cost Trump's consumers, his voters, an extra $600
million in terms of the burger tariff. And it's not
affecting the volume of Australian exports, and it doesn't look
like it will.
S1 (11:12):
Okay. So the message at the moment is that it
will hurt them more than it will hurt us.
S2 (11:16):
Mhm.
S1 (11:27):
I want to turn now just to developments closer to home.
And let's talk about the opposition because they're a bit
undercooked at the moment. We're not hearing a lot from them.
The federal Liberal Party has decided to extend its federal
takeover of the New South Wales Liberal Party. Now listeners
may or may not remember this happened after the state divisions,
the New South Wales State Division massively bungled nominations for
(11:48):
candidates for the local elections in New South Wales last year,
so they failed to nominate 144 candidates. They just didn't
do the paperwork. Apparently. Um, tasks. Can you just refresh
us on what happened after that in terms of the takeover?
S3 (12:01):
Yeah. So, um, Peter Dutton last year appointed three men
as administrators to run that New South Wales division after
the local government bungle and a period of dysfunction for
that New South Wales division of the Liberal Party. Now
two of them were from Victoria, which caused some consternation
up in Sydney. And then you had this episode a
(12:25):
couple of weeks ago in a post federal election context,
where the liberals have kind of all been wiped out
of major cities and suffered a bad defeat in New
South Wales again, where one of the administrators, former Victorian
Treasurer Alan Stockdale, joked that, you know, in this conversation
about women in the Liberal Party that women were now
(12:47):
sufficiently assertive, um, that we might even need to consider
reverse quotas for men. And that did not go down well.
S1 (12:56):
No, the comments were very quickly leaked. And there was
some there was widespread outrage, particularly amongst the sufficiently assertive
women of the Liberal Party New South.
S3 (13:04):
Wales.
S1 (13:04):
Branch.
S3 (13:05):
Yeah. So you had a meeting this week then under
Susan Lee's leadership, and they have appointed new administrators.
S1 (13:14):
For the New South Wales. Yeah. So Nick and its
former former New South Wales premier Nick Greiner who's heading it.
So um, that was decided at the federal executive meeting
on Tuesday. Yep. Separately I want to talk about the
federal review, which is a sort of bigger deal, I suppose.
This always happens after every election loss, um, that a
political party will sort of institute a review, but this
(13:37):
one's going to be even broader in its scope, I
think so. Liberal leader Sussan Ley and this week announced
the people that she's going to appoint to conduct the
review after their devastating loss in May. Who has she chosen?
S3 (13:49):
So, yes, like you said, Jack, that's the review that
they do every election. Last time Jane Hume was the
co authors, one of the co-authors of that review. This
time it's no one in the parliament. It's Pru Goward
who is a former New South Wales minister and former
sex discrimination commissioner, and Nick Minchin, who is a former
(14:12):
federal minister and a well-known conservative powerbroker in the party.
And Pru Goward, I think, was aligned with the centre
right when she was in Parliament.
S1 (14:20):
Yeah.
S3 (14:21):
So they'll be doing this? Uh, yeah. The kind of
typical review which looks at the election campaign, the term
in Parliament as well, but particularly around how the campaign operated.
A big point of commentary since the election result has
been how many recommendations from the last review weren't followed
(14:45):
in the intervening three years?
S1 (14:48):
There's no point having a review if you don't, if
you don't take up the recommendations.
S3 (14:51):
Yeah. And the other one, though, the special thing that
the liberals have said they're going to do this time
in the context of what was a particularly disastrous result,
is do another big inquiry that will run alongside this review.
But that is not specific to the election. That is
more an inquiry into the Liberal Party, what it stands for,
why it exists anymore.
S1 (15:11):
Yes, that's the policy work right there. So, Mike, I
want to ask you about that, because the biggest thing
on the table in terms of the fissures within the
Liberal Party and within the coalition, is the commitment to
net zero. And Sussan Ley has been very cautious in
her language around this. We know that there are elements,
particularly within the National Party, part of the coalition, who
want to ditch net zero. What's the latest on that?
(15:34):
What how is it sort of looking? Well.
S2 (15:36):
Jackie, you said it cautious is the word because that
question of whether the coalition, the nationals themselves or the
liberals on their own remain committed to the ambition to
achieve net zero emissions by 2050. I mean, you can
get caught up in hype, political hyperbole, but that really
is a powder keg that could explode the coalition. It
(15:58):
could cause a rift within the Liberal Party itself between
moderate and right factions. There is a lot of soul
searching going on within the Liberal Party about how, let's say,
the political hardheads that have taken a lesson out of
Peter Dutton's historic defeat where he, you know, the Labor
(16:18):
Party won 17 seats and surfed to just a thumping
majority against all expectations. They're saying we need to appeal
to urban electorates. Azar said the coalition's been booted out
of metropolitan Australia, by and large, and there's a pretty
hefty Cohort in the Liberal Party room that sit to
(16:41):
the right of politics that, I think it's fair to say,
would be very happy to see a commitment to net
zero go. They are just ideologically opposed to it. Now,
within that, there's all sorts of really interesting policy levers around.
Does the coalition, does the Liberal Party remain supportive of
renewable energy? A lot in the party would like to
just halt development of renewable energy and rely on coal
(17:04):
and eventually nuclear power. So it really is boiling down
to energy. The climate wars have shifted from being a
national debate. I think it's fair to say that that
national debate is settled, and voters are extremely happy to
vote for ambitious climate action in the form of the
Albanese government's renewable energy push. And the climate wars are
(17:26):
now sort of reap what you sow. Tony Abbott kicked
that off earlier in the in the 20 tens, fomenting
big dissent against Kevin Rudd's ambitious moves to impose a
carbon tax. And now that's become less of a national
debate and an internal debate for the Liberal Party itself
and the coalition more broadly. And there's nothing coming out
(17:48):
of the party in answer to your question, because they're
asking themselves those questions. They don't have answers.
S1 (17:53):
The other thing that, um, I mean, this is in
the in the context of, you know, the sort of
disastrous female vote that the coalition achieved at the last election,
which has been on a downward trajectory for over a
decade now. There is a question about whether or not
they should institute a quota system which labor has, you know,
did very successfully many decades ago and now has basically
(18:15):
50 over 50 representation in Parliament. Tas Nick mentioned made
some comments about that this week. I mean, Nick Minchin
is a sort of very much a conservative. He's ideologically opposed,
you might say, to quotas, but he did seem sort
of open to them, didn't he?
S3 (18:29):
Yeah. This is an interview with another publication called The Nightly. Um,
he said, you know, quotas are an anathema if you're
talking about merit. But our position among women is so
bad that maybe we need to or we should revisit
that conversation. I think that's interesting. I think that's telling.
I think you've heard a lot of people in the
last month or so say, well, we're desperate. We need
(18:53):
to we do need to go back to the drawing
board and see what we can do. Um, whether that
actually leads to a recommendation like this review is being
led by Minchin and by, uh, Pru Goward. Pru Goward
as well has has not spoken in favour of quotas
throughout her political career. She's always been pretty against quotas. Again,
(19:13):
whether the the extremity of this situation leads people to
change their views or leads her to change their views
is yet to be seen. Like she hasn't said anything
on it recently. Um, but I think it would be
a pretty big step if the two of them did
come to recommend quotas at the end of the day.
Like again, Susan Lee has welcomed that conversation over the
past several years. But even in the context of the
(19:36):
defeat last month, it's not like she's come out swinging
in favour of quotas. So it could be something that, again,
is is kind of put on the table in the
interests of saying, hey guys, we are looking at everything.
We're not going to be close minded about this.
S1 (19:48):
Yeah, it's just amazing that there's sort of like this,
this very, very rusted on sort of cultural.
S3 (19:53):
Yeah. I wonder if.
S1 (19:54):
It's.
S3 (19:54):
Too late. It feels too late. Like you're jumping on
board with it in 2025. Like it took Labour, for example,
two decades to get that result.
S1 (20:02):
It did, but they ratcheted it up. I mean, you know,
there are probably ways you can do it because it
doesn't seem to have evolved more naturally, does it? It's
a really interesting I find that that particular issue really fascinating,
and also just whether or not they're going to hang
on to net zero.
S2 (20:16):
On both quotas and net zero and climate action, they're
issues that the coalition is going to have to have
an all in, all out brawl within itself before those
positions are settled. And, you know, as you know well, Jacqui,
it's not unusual to have those fights in politics, but
it is in the last few years, and we saw
Peter Dutton in the previous three years of federal parliament
(20:39):
avoiding a fight among the coalition over policy issues at
all costs. He went. I can't exaggerate how the extremes
he went to on climate policy to keep the nationals happy.
He announced just this globally ambitious nuclear policy that was
completely economically unfeasible hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers
money being given to private companies to build plants, for example,
(21:03):
completely antithesis to the market based policy of the liberals,
just to keep the nationals happy. And it's now this
gargantuan test for certainly whether she embraces that fight, you know,
and risks angering the nationals or she goes into this
shibboleth of quotas in um, as well. And he's willing
to have the fight because that was just not on
(21:24):
the table in the past three years.
S1 (21:26):
Yeah, I know. And whether I mean, the most interesting
to me is whether or not she has the authority
to to pull off that fight and to pull off
whatever it is that she decides to do. We'll definitely
revisit this. So we want to have you guys back
on another time. Thanks for being so generous with your time.
Thank you for being insufficiently assertive, woman.
S7 (21:43):
You're welcome.
S1 (21:43):
Thank you for being insufficiently assertive, man. Mike.
S2 (21:47):
Oh my pleasure.
S1 (21:52):
Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics
on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your
podcasts and to stay up to date with all the politics,
news and exclusives, visit The Age and The Sydney Morning
(22:14):
Herald website to support our journalism. Subscribe to us by
visiting The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank
you for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, June 20th.
This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to the G7
summit in Calgary, Canada, with high hopes of scoring a
sidelines meeting with US President Donald Trump. The PM wanted
to discuss the Aukus pact, which the Trump administration has
(00:24):
placed under review. And he also wanted to discuss the
tariffs that the US government has put on Australian aluminium
and iron ore, among other things. But events overtook and
Trump left the summit to deal with the escalating conflict
between Israel and Iran. Albanese did not get his meeting.
He didn't even get a phone call cancelling the meeting.
(00:44):
So what does this mean for our relationship with our
supposed closest ally? Will Albanese be able to stalk Trump
at the upcoming NATO summit instead? And was it really
the loss of face that some critics said it was? Plus,
we'll talk about attempts to reform the Liberal Party, both
at the New South Wales and the federal level. Joining
me to discuss all this, we have our federal political correspondent,
(01:05):
Natassia Chrysanthos, and our climate and energy correspondent, Mark Foley. Welcome, guys. Hello.
S2 (01:10):
Hi, jacki.
S1 (01:15):
Mike and Taz. Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile
fire in the Middle East. As we're recording, the situation
is very volatile. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump abruptly
left the G7 summit in Canada to return to Washington
and deal with the escalating crisis. This meant that he
basically ghosted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who had hoped to
catch up with him on the sidelines of the summit,
(01:36):
to discuss the Aukus deal in particular and tariffs more generally.
Tell us, where does that leave the Australian government and us,
the Australian people on these important issues, aukus and tariffs?
S3 (01:47):
Yeah, well, for the Australian government and for Albanese in particular,
there was a lot riding on this for him. The
domestic political context, you know his kind of failure to
get phone calls with Trump earlier in the year. That
was a big attack line for the coalition throughout the
election campaign. You know, they're kind of push or the
expectation that Albanese would secure some exemption to Trump's tariffs
(02:11):
for Australia. It was added to that and the fact
that he hasn't spoken to the president since that tariff
decision was made several months ago now doesn't look good
for him in that domestic context. It also means that
he hasn't gotten to have those conversations with Trump. Um,
and then in the last week or so, you had
the whole aukus issue.
S1 (02:32):
So, yeah, as in Aukus is now officially under review
by the US administration.
S3 (02:36):
Yeah, yeah. Correct. The US has decided to review Aukus.
The US sticking with Aukus is obviously what's in Australia's
interest here. And the Australian government's interests more specifically. So
not ideal that Albanese didn't get to have that meeting.
We're now hearing him and his advisers talk about potentially, um,
Albanese attending NATO next week and trying to get the
(02:59):
meeting there, but I don't think it sounds like he's
going to attend unless he can actually lock in that
meeting with Trump. And given everything that's happened in the
world and the fact that Trump did just walk out
of the conference with all else going on the other
day maybe makes that unlikely.
S1 (03:16):
Yeah, it just seems to me that even if you
lock in a, you know, so-called lock in a meeting
with Trump, there's no way that that lock in will
be respected by the man himself.
S2 (03:23):
On that, I found it very interesting over the past
couple of weeks, given what you say, how will he
or won't Trump actually going to meet a world leader?
That situation is that Albanese and his press office have
really leant in to building up expectations that Albo would
arrange a meeting with Donald Trump. He is going to
(03:44):
meet him face to face. And this is in response to,
I think, a bit, maybe a bit unfairly, but I'd
class as some wet lettuce sort of criticism from the
coalition about Albaneses so-called inability to secure a meeting with Trump.
I just can't figure out why Albanese was so keen to, um,
to declare that he.
S1 (04:04):
Telegraph that this meeting was definitely going to happen.
S2 (04:07):
Yeah, it's a false test because I think Australians know
that Trump is very capricious. There's the threat of war
erupting in the Middle East, and Trump is going to
be called away at any moment.
S1 (04:18):
I'm interested in both of your takes on that, because
in some quarters Trump was, you know, he was portrayed
basically as blowing Albanese off, as ghosting him, standing him up.
Is that fair? I mean, he obviously had a very
good reason to lead the conference and to not honour
this meeting. But at the same time, he didn't even
make a phone call. I mean, this was our closest ally.
What does that say about the respect that he has
(04:39):
for Australia, but also the respect he has for Albanese
as a man?
S3 (04:43):
I think, and our colleague James Marcello, who's in Canada
with Albanese this week, wrote something to this effect. He
said it exposes Australia for, for what it is at
the end of the day, which is at best a
middle power like Trump met other G7 leaders. I think
he called the leader of Mexico when he left the
(05:03):
summit early. But it does just show, I suppose, the
reality of where we sit on the world stage.
S1 (05:11):
I just wonder if you would have done it to
say Scott Morrison. I mean, it's an impossible, you know, counterfactual,
but I'm just they don't seem to have any kind
of personal relationship at all, and there doesn't seem to
be any kind of respect. There's no it's just not
simpatico between them.
S3 (05:25):
Well, and I think part of that is they have like,
that lack of personal relationship is because they haven't had
a face to face meeting like Trump came in earlier
this year. Albanese has been re-elected, but even before that
there was no face to face. They had the 1
or 2 phone calls at the beginning of this year,
and I've also read commentary. These face to face relationships,
personal relationships are really important for Trump, which probably adds
to the imperative of Albanese getting one sooner rather than later.
S1 (05:48):
He needs to get an invitation from from Greg Norman
to for them to play golf together or something. Um,
Albanese used to walk on the golf course at Marrickville,
I think.
S2 (05:57):
Well, Jacqui, I think the point is long term. How
how much is it in Albanese's interest to have that
close personal tie to Donald Trump and receive his calls?
When we've seen, you know, Trump is going to Trump,
he is going to be, like I said, capricious. And
he lashes out in public meetings with world leaders. He
(06:19):
ditched Narendra modi and the prime minister of South Korea
as well at the G7. So is there any advantage
in terms of domestic politics, the optics of Albo looking
like he has influence over the US, when that could
all fall apart on a whim of Donald Trump? I
think it's sort of a 50 over 50 call about
(06:39):
how advantageous it could be for Australia to be close
to Trump.
S1 (06:43):
Well, I agree. And when you think about the reality
of a white House visit, if that were to happen,
I mean, an invitation has to be extended first, which
hasn't happened, but we've seen how humiliating and utterly globally
degrading that experience can be. If you get on the
wrong side of Donald Trump when you're in, you know,
in front of the press, in the white House, and
that the chilling effect of those press conferences with Zelensky.
S4 (07:06):
Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying
to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going
to feel.
S5 (07:11):
I'm not telling you.
S4 (07:12):
Because you're in no position to dictate that that's exactly
what you're doing. You're in no position to dictate what
we're going to feel. We're going to feel very good.
S1 (07:23):
I mean, the chilling effect of those public confrontations is enormous,
isn't it? I mean, if you're Albanese, why would you
walk into something or, you know, even the smallest risk
of something like that happening?
S3 (07:32):
Yeah. And I think all the kind of survey, polling,
research that we've seen on Australians attitude toward Trump, it's
it's up there in terms of negativity in a global
context like Australians at large don't like Trump. I don't
think there's like Mike said, a lot in in it
for Albanese Domestically to be buddy with Trump. I think
(07:53):
people's expectations is for a productive relationship that's in the
interests of Australians. And, um, you can probably do that
in a couple of ways.
S1 (08:00):
Yeah. Okay. So the conflict in the Middle East, I mean,
it's very uncertain what the outcome will be even as
we sit here. We're recording on Thursday morning more sort of, um, domestically. Mike,
what does this mean for oil prices? In recent times,
we've been led to believe that the the RBA might
continue to cut interest rates at the next few meetings.
But oil prices, if they surge and that will possibly
(08:21):
add to inflation and it will have flow on effects
for the Australian economy. Talk to us about that.
S2 (08:26):
Sure. Well, it's obviously a massive question for the global
economy at the moment, but I can give you some
context on the what the oil price has done on
the news of conflict in the Middle East and look,
baby steps. But it's not catastrophic at the moment, Jackie.
So at the moment the US are dollars per barrel
(08:47):
of oil. It's 76 bucks for a barrel of oil.
It's surged, but it has gone nowhere near the 2022 peak.
That was after Russia invaded Ukraine and there was an
embargo on the oil out of Russia. And global disruption there.
And that was when in 2022, oil prices are connected
(09:08):
to the global energy price. They drove up electricity prices
in Australia, and that had a material effect on inflation
and really helped fire the inflation dragon in Australia. And
at the moment we're not headed towards that.
S1 (09:22):
Okay. In terms of other geopolitical issues that might affect
the Australian economy. Where are we at with tariffs? I
mean the US tariffs haven't yet been imposed. I think
they're due to be imposed in July. Have they had
a chilling effect on the Australian economy already. Are they
likely to slow growth. What will they do.
S2 (09:40):
Well, Albanese was pretty upbeat on the question of tariffs.
When you boil it right down, he was at the
G7 and he said sort of quite cheekily to the
global press pack there, that Australia is continuing to export
more to the US, he said. And that's in the
face of a 50% tariff about to hit Australian aluminium
(10:01):
and steel. But it's three 3/5 of bugger all what
Australia sends in terms of aluminium and steel to the US.
In terms of the global picture, it's worth about $1
billion a year. That's that's not a hell of a
lot in terms of Australia's export balance. Our biggest export
to the US beef is worth about $3 billion a year,
and that's set to face a 10% tariff. And Albanese,
(10:25):
when he was flagging that our exports continue to go up.
The US has a big growing demand for beef.
S6 (10:32):
Australia continues to importantly continues to export to the United States.
It's just that the purchasers of those goods and services
are paying more for them. So there hasn't been a decline.
S2 (10:48):
Here's my favorite stat out of the the the whole
turmoil is that that's going to affect about 6 billion burgers.
That's how much Australia supplies of beef into the US.
And that the.
S1 (10:58):
Lifeblood, the lifeblood of the of the Trump administration right there.
S2 (11:01):
Well, it'd cost Trump's consumers, his voters, an extra $600
million in terms of the burger tariff. And it's not
affecting the volume of Australian exports, and it doesn't look
like it will.
S1 (11:12):
Okay. So the message at the moment is that it
will hurt them more than it will hurt us.
S2 (11:16):
Mhm.
S1 (11:27):
I want to turn now just to developments closer to home.
And let's talk about the opposition because they're a bit
undercooked at the moment. We're not hearing a lot from them.
The federal Liberal Party has decided to extend its federal
takeover of the New South Wales Liberal Party. Now listeners
may or may not remember this happened after the state divisions,
the New South Wales State Division massively bungled nominations for
(11:48):
candidates for the local elections in New South Wales last year,
so they failed to nominate 144 candidates. They just didn't
do the paperwork. Apparently. Um, tasks. Can you just refresh
us on what happened after that in terms of the takeover?
S3 (12:01):
Yeah. So, um, Peter Dutton last year appointed three men
as administrators to run that New South Wales division after
the local government bungle and a period of dysfunction for
that New South Wales division of the Liberal Party. Now
two of them were from Victoria, which caused some consternation
up in Sydney. And then you had this episode a
(12:25):
couple of weeks ago in a post federal election context,
where the liberals have kind of all been wiped out
of major cities and suffered a bad defeat in New
South Wales again, where one of the administrators, former Victorian
Treasurer Alan Stockdale, joked that, you know, in this conversation
about women in the Liberal Party that women were now
(12:47):
sufficiently assertive, um, that we might even need to consider
reverse quotas for men. And that did not go down well.
S1 (12:56):
No, the comments were very quickly leaked. And there was
some there was widespread outrage, particularly amongst the sufficiently assertive
women of the Liberal Party New South.
S3 (13:04):
Wales.
S1 (13:04):
Branch.
S3 (13:05):
Yeah. So you had a meeting this week then under
Susan Lee's leadership, and they have appointed new administrators.
S1 (13:14):
For the New South Wales. Yeah. So Nick and its
former former New South Wales premier Nick Greiner who's heading it.
So um, that was decided at the federal executive meeting
on Tuesday. Yep. Separately I want to talk about the
federal review, which is a sort of bigger deal, I suppose.
This always happens after every election loss, um, that a
political party will sort of institute a review, but this
(13:37):
one's going to be even broader in its scope, I
think so. Liberal leader Sussan Ley and this week announced
the people that she's going to appoint to conduct the
review after their devastating loss in May. Who has she chosen?
S3 (13:49):
So, yes, like you said, Jack, that's the review that
they do every election. Last time Jane Hume was the
co authors, one of the co-authors of that review. This
time it's no one in the parliament. It's Pru Goward
who is a former New South Wales minister and former
sex discrimination commissioner, and Nick Minchin, who is a former
(14:12):
federal minister and a well-known conservative powerbroker in the party.
And Pru Goward, I think, was aligned with the centre
right when she was in Parliament.
S1 (14:20):
Yeah.
S3 (14:21):
So they'll be doing this? Uh, yeah. The kind of
typical review which looks at the election campaign, the term
in Parliament as well, but particularly around how the campaign operated.
A big point of commentary since the election result has
been how many recommendations from the last review weren't followed
(14:45):
in the intervening three years?
S1 (14:48):
There's no point having a review if you don't, if
you don't take up the recommendations.
S3 (14:51):
Yeah. And the other one, though, the special thing that
the liberals have said they're going to do this time
in the context of what was a particularly disastrous result,
is do another big inquiry that will run alongside this review.
But that is not specific to the election. That is
more an inquiry into the Liberal Party, what it stands for,
why it exists anymore.
S1 (15:11):
Yes, that's the policy work right there. So, Mike, I
want to ask you about that, because the biggest thing
on the table in terms of the fissures within the
Liberal Party and within the coalition, is the commitment to
net zero. And Sussan Ley has been very cautious in
her language around this. We know that there are elements,
particularly within the National Party, part of the coalition, who
want to ditch net zero. What's the latest on that?
(15:34):
What how is it sort of looking? Well.
S2 (15:36):
Jackie, you said it cautious is the word because that
question of whether the coalition, the nationals themselves or the
liberals on their own remain committed to the ambition to
achieve net zero emissions by 2050. I mean, you can
get caught up in hype, political hyperbole, but that really
is a powder keg that could explode the coalition. It
(15:58):
could cause a rift within the Liberal Party itself between
moderate and right factions. There is a lot of soul
searching going on within the Liberal Party about how, let's say,
the political hardheads that have taken a lesson out of
Peter Dutton's historic defeat where he, you know, the Labor
(16:18):
Party won 17 seats and surfed to just a thumping
majority against all expectations. They're saying we need to appeal
to urban electorates. Azar said the coalition's been booted out
of metropolitan Australia, by and large, and there's a pretty
hefty Cohort in the Liberal Party room that sit to
(16:41):
the right of politics that, I think it's fair to say,
would be very happy to see a commitment to net
zero go. They are just ideologically opposed to it. Now,
within that, there's all sorts of really interesting policy levers around.
Does the coalition, does the Liberal Party remain supportive of
renewable energy? A lot in the party would like to
just halt development of renewable energy and rely on coal
(17:04):
and eventually nuclear power. So it really is boiling down
to energy. The climate wars have shifted from being a
national debate. I think it's fair to say that that
national debate is settled, and voters are extremely happy to
vote for ambitious climate action in the form of the
Albanese government's renewable energy push. And the climate wars are
(17:26):
now sort of reap what you sow. Tony Abbott kicked
that off earlier in the in the 20 tens, fomenting
big dissent against Kevin Rudd's ambitious moves to impose a
carbon tax. And now that's become less of a national
debate and an internal debate for the Liberal Party itself
and the coalition more broadly. And there's nothing coming out
(17:48):
of the party in answer to your question, because they're
asking themselves those questions. They don't have answers.
S1 (17:53):
The other thing that, um, I mean, this is in
the in the context of, you know, the sort of
disastrous female vote that the coalition achieved at the last election,
which has been on a downward trajectory for over a
decade now. There is a question about whether or not
they should institute a quota system which labor has, you know,
did very successfully many decades ago and now has basically
(18:15):
50 over 50 representation in Parliament. Tas Nick mentioned made
some comments about that this week. I mean, Nick Minchin
is a sort of very much a conservative. He's ideologically opposed,
you might say, to quotas, but he did seem sort
of open to them, didn't he?
S3 (18:29):
Yeah. This is an interview with another publication called The Nightly. Um,
he said, you know, quotas are an anathema if you're
talking about merit. But our position among women is so
bad that maybe we need to or we should revisit
that conversation. I think that's interesting. I think that's telling.
I think you've heard a lot of people in the
last month or so say, well, we're desperate. We need
(18:53):
to we do need to go back to the drawing
board and see what we can do. Um, whether that
actually leads to a recommendation like this review is being
led by Minchin and by, uh, Pru Goward. Pru Goward
as well has has not spoken in favour of quotas
throughout her political career. She's always been pretty against quotas. Again,
(19:13):
whether the the extremity of this situation leads people to
change their views or leads her to change their views
is yet to be seen. Like she hasn't said anything
on it recently. Um, but I think it would be
a pretty big step if the two of them did
come to recommend quotas at the end of the day.
Like again, Susan Lee has welcomed that conversation over the
past several years. But even in the context of the
(19:36):
defeat last month, it's not like she's come out swinging
in favour of quotas. So it could be something that, again,
is is kind of put on the table in the
interests of saying, hey guys, we are looking at everything.
We're not going to be close minded about this.
S1 (19:48):
Yeah, it's just amazing that there's sort of like this,
this very, very rusted on sort of cultural.
S3 (19:53):
Yeah. I wonder if.
S1 (19:54):
It's.
S3 (19:54):
Too late. It feels too late. Like you're jumping on
board with it in 2025. Like it took Labour, for example,
two decades to get that result.
S1 (20:02):
It did, but they ratcheted it up. I mean, you know,
there are probably ways you can do it because it
doesn't seem to have evolved more naturally, does it? It's
a really interesting I find that that particular issue really fascinating,
and also just whether or not they're going to hang
on to net zero.
S2 (20:16):
On both quotas and net zero and climate action, they're
issues that the coalition is going to have to have
an all in, all out brawl within itself before those
positions are settled. And, you know, as you know well, Jacqui,
it's not unusual to have those fights in politics, but
it is in the last few years, and we saw
Peter Dutton in the previous three years of federal parliament
(20:39):
avoiding a fight among the coalition over policy issues at
all costs. He went. I can't exaggerate how the extremes
he went to on climate policy to keep the nationals happy.
He announced just this globally ambitious nuclear policy that was
completely economically unfeasible hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers
money being given to private companies to build plants, for example,
(21:03):
completely antithesis to the market based policy of the liberals,
just to keep the nationals happy. And it's now this
gargantuan test for certainly whether she embraces that fight, you know,
and risks angering the nationals or she goes into this
shibboleth of quotas in um, as well. And he's willing
to have the fight because that was just not on
(21:24):
the table in the past three years.
S1 (21:26):
Yeah, I know. And whether I mean, the most interesting
to me is whether or not she has the authority
to to pull off that fight and to pull off
whatever it is that she decides to do. We'll definitely
revisit this. So we want to have you guys back
on another time. Thanks for being so generous with your time.
Thank you for being insufficiently assertive, woman.
S7 (21:43):
You're welcome.
S1 (21:43):
Thank you for being insufficiently assertive, man. Mike.
S2 (21:47):
Oh my pleasure.
S1 (21:52):
Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics
on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your
podcasts and to stay up to date with all the politics,
news and exclusives, visit The Age and The Sydney Morning
(22:14):
Herald website to support our journalism. Subscribe to us by
visiting The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank
you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com