Comment

Paul Bongiorno
Albanese braces for meeting with tattletale Trump

Of all the things that could have gone wrong ahead of Anthony Albanese’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, few would have predicted the involvement of one of Australia’s most lauded journalists.

The United States president’s verbal stoush with award-winning ABC reporter John Lyons, who questioned Trump over his business dealings while in office, will no doubt give the prime minister something to ponder as he flies out of Sydney this weekend for a round of engagements at the United Nations. Albanese is expected to meet Trump at a reception in New York on Tuesday night and maybe for a more formal sit-down that is yet to be locked in.

Defence Minister Richard Marles began smoothing the way for the meeting with a rushed trip to Washington three weeks ago, where he received assurances over the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and Trump’s benign disposition towards Prime Minister Albanese.

Relations were further massaged with the announcement last weekend of a $12 billion upgrade of the Henderson shipyards in Western Australia, to service and host the American Virginia-class submarines that Australia is hopeful of buying.

The US president is, not surprisingly, proving to be a very slippery customer.

Midweek, a belligerent Trump warned Lyons, the ABC’s Americas editor, “In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now”.

No one in Canberra is quite sure what Trump meant by that.

Lyons had turned up with the press pack that gets to throw questions at the president as he’s about to board the Marine One helicopter that regularly ferries him to Air Force One, the official Boeing 747. On this occasion, Trump was departing for the United Kingdom to be feted by King Charles and the British government.

A displeased Trump noted that Albanese was about to finally meet him personally and wants to “get along with me”.

“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon,” he instructed Lyons, adding: “I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.”

Unperturbed, Lyons attempted to ask another question about the Trump family’s $3 billion cryptocurrency deal with the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. The president pointed to the ABC correspondent and told him: “Quiet.”

The episode was risible for its petulance. For this administration, however, it was something to trumpet as a lesson for anyone in the media who dares to do their job of holding power to account. The White House posted a clip of the exchange on one of its social media accounts with the caption: “POTUS smacks down a rude foreign Fake News loser (many such cases)”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers was unwilling to read anything negative into Trump’s abuse of an Australian journalist, instead noting that Albanese and the president already had four “very warm conversations”. He did say journalists have a job to do and as far as he could tell Lyons was “just doing his job in Washington, DC”.

The Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young branded Trump a “bully” and said the president thinks “he can bully Australia”. She called on the prime minister to forge “a more independent path away from the US under Trump”.

If actions speak louder than words, Albanese is already doing that on some key issues. On Tuesday Australian time, the prime minister will part company with Trump by attending a high-level international conference on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Australia will join France, the United Kingdom, Canada and dozens of other nations voting for recognition of a Palestinian state on the floor of the United Nations, as a way of putting pressure on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as an expression of the international community’s condemnation of the way war is being waged in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Albanese will address the UN General Assembly. In his allotted 20 minutes he will outline Australia’s response to climate change, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Australia’s willingness to join the Coalition of the Willing supporting Kyiv.

Even when Albanese is actively supporting Trump’s agenda – such as by encouraging resistance to China’s competition in the Pacific – he has found it tough going.

This week it was the former colony of Papua New Guinea that failed to deliver the much-touted prize of signing a defence treaty with Canberra. The reluctance to finalise the deal during celebrations for PNG’s 50th anniversary of independence was linked to concerns in the country’s cabinet over issues of sovereign independence. It was not all that far from Vanuatu’s reluctance to quickly ratify a security agreement with Australia the week before.

Albanese and PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape settled for second best, signing a joint communiqué committing to a mutual defence treaty that is expected to be signed within a matter of weeks.

Marape rejected suggestions of Chinese interference in the process, saying his policy of being “a friend to all and an enemy to none” stands. He respects China and is confident it respects PNG’s security alignment with Australia.

As this was happening, Australia marked one of its most significant departure points with Trump’s America – commitment to the Paris climate agreement. Trump pulled out of the agreement early in his term and “drill, baby, drill” became a catchcry for fossil fuel extraction.

On Thursday, the prime minister unveiled a target range of 62-70 per cent emissions reduction by 2035, which Albanese said was ambitious but achievable. He announced a new $5 billion Net Zero Fund to help deliver it.

The leader of the Australian Greens, Larissa Waters, slammed the target as an “utter failure”, citing the modelling of the National Climate Risk Assessment and National Adaptation Plan released on Monday.

“The prime minister’s legacy will be climate catastrophe as forecast in the risk report: 1.5 million people at risk of flooding in their homes and communities, rolling disastrous weather events, surging heat deaths and mass extinction,” she said.

Consistent polling across various Australian sectors shows most people support climate change action, do not doubt the science and want the government to do more. Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen says he is meeting this demand and has the backing of the independent Climate Change Authority’s chairman, Matt Kean, who is confident the target can be overshot. It’s more a floor and not a ceiling.

The Coalition is tearing itself apart over the issue, with a severe return to the climate wars, egged on by commentators on Sky News, a final refuge of climate sceptics and outright deniers.

The Nationals’ Matt Canavan and the Sky News after dark cheer squad questioned the validity of the science in the risk report, despite the status of its contributing authors, the CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology and others.

Canavan said it was “a cynical attempt to spread fear and panic among people”. His assertions that the report contradicts itself on key claims were debunked by climate scientist Bill Hare on Radio National Breakfast as sheer nonsense. Hare was a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

He says the risk report was alarming because the facts are alarming and the report was more restrained than the evidence demanded.

Hare, however, says the new target “should be at least 76 per cent to be in line with the ambition of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees. Bowen counters that, on the current science, beyond 70 per cent is not achievable without damaging the economy.

Economist Richard Denniss, The Australia Institute’s executive director, says the report deals with a disaster pending in just 25 years’ time. A 20-year-old Australian could see their superannuation shattered by the time they come to retire. Someone in their 30s with a 30-year mortgage could see the value of their home plummet and the property become uninsurable.

“We are not just talking about future generations,” Denniss says.

Canavan is a tireless opponent of the net zero target and, ominously for Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, he is joined in his position by senior members of the Coalition’s front bench. Andrew Hastie, Jonathon Duniam and several others were prepared to warn against confirming the target when the current reviews are complete.

Hastie, touted as a future Liberal leader, said he would have to quit the front bench if the target is adopted. He believes it will destroy the country’s economy. Later in the week he thought he was in a minority in the Liberal party room. Still, Ley could yet be the next Liberal leader to fall victim to climate change power struggles.

Net zero has become totemic for climate action, even though observers such as Denniss say it is an empty slogan providing cover for increased coal and gas extraction.

Denniss believes the opposition is making it easy for Labor to look good on climate. There is, however, an ominous warning for the government: two of Labor’s hitherto safest seats, Bean in the Australian Capital Territory and Fremantle in Western Australia, were almost lost to climate action independents.

It’s a threat that has many in Labor sweating, but which the Liberals are yet to grasp.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 19, 2025 as "‘POTUS smacks down a rude foreign Fake News loser (many such cases)’".

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