A quick meeting is a good meeting, as the saying goes, but no meeting at all might be best outcome for Prime Minster Anthony Albanese in New York this week, according to two leading experts.
Tue 23 Sep 2025 16.00 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
It appears likely that the PM’s much-anticipated first one-on-one with United States President Donald Trump, which many expected might happen on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, will not go ahead.
The Australian leader was left off a list of formal meetings Trump’s office had scheduled with world leaders.
With the PM due to meet his UK counterpart Sir Keir Starmer in London on Thursday, it leaves limited time for a first meeting between Albanese and Trump in New York.
However, given Trump’s history of humiliating his supposed allies, the so-called snub may be a blessing in disguise for Albanese, according to two foreign affairs experts.
“I find it extraordinary that Australia seems to be so eager to meet with this president,” said Dr Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs at the Australia Institute, on the After America podcast.
“[If it were to happen] surely the best possible outcome from that meeting is that the Prime Minister is only a little bit humiliated and not catastrophically humiliated.”
Former diplomat and Senior Advisor to The Australia Institute, Allan Behm, believes the unpredictability of the US leader makes it virtually impossible for Albanese to be confident of a good outcome when he eventually does meet with Trump.
“We’ve seen what happened when Zelenskyy made his visit to the Oval Office earlier this year,” Behm said.
“That was a surprise – it was a surprise for everybody in the office, excepting I think for Donald Trump.”
“What benefit is going to accrue to [Albanese] or Australia from a meeting with President Trump when you have no way of determining how that meeting might go in advance?”
“These things are normally very, very carefully choreographed.”
While there are some within the government who are quite comfortable that the Prime Minister and President are yet to meet face-to-face, it’s understood the Prime Minister’s office continues to negotiate with the White House to find the right time and place for a sit-down between the two leaders.
“I think the government is desperate for a meeting with Trump because Australia’s relationship with the United States is a kind of talisman for Australian foreign policy,” Behm said.
“If we’re getting on swingingly with America, then we feel that we’re getting on swingingly.”
But Australians seem less confident about Trump’s America and its role in the world.
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Australia Institute polling showed that more Australians thought Donald Trump was a threat to world peace (31%) than either Chinese President Xi Jinping (27%) or Russian President Vladimir Putin (27%).
The polling, conducted in May, found that 65.6% of Australians thought the election of Donald Trump was a “bad” or “very bad” thing for the world.
Uncertainty around an Albanese-Trump meeting came as Australia formally recognised the Palestine at the general assembly, joining Britain, Canada, France and several other European nations in doing so this week.
“Recognising the aspirations of the Palestinian people is about more than a seat, a voice, and a vote in the councils of the world,” Albanese said in his address to the assembly.
“It is about real hope for a place to call home.”
More than 150 countries now officially recognise Palestine, making the United States increasingly isolated in its support for Israel, according to Shortis.
“That support seems to be extending now to the United States attacking its allies for their positions on Palestine.”
Last week, high profile Congressional Republicans wrote a letter to the Prime Minister warning of “punitive measures” from the US in response to Australia’s recognition of Palestine.
“Its response to that isolation – which is a new experience for the United States – is not to try and persuade its allies that they should adopt a different policy, but to threaten to punish them,” Behm said.
“It’s a very worrying new behaviour of the United States.”
“It’s very Trumpian. It’s very much the sort of macho approach to foreign policy that you see in many other autocracies.”
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Keir Starmer is the United Kingdom’s sixth prime minster in the past ten years. For a country that likes to think of itself as the birthplace of modern democracy and a model of stability in a turbulent world, this is not a good look.
It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. “Shorter America” is a series where Dr Emma Shortis loops you in on what’s going on in America and shares news and analysis that you can trust.
