A beaming Scott Morrison, beer in hand, held court at the Australian ambassador’s residence on Thursday night in Washington, confident his US trip would leave Australia stronger militarily and diplomatically, and reassured French pique over its lost submarine deal will prove to be water off a duck’s back.
From the US President to the Austrian Chancellor and the Swedish, Japanese and Indian prime ministers, leaders from across the political spectrum, Australia’s supercharged role in underpinning security in the Pacific was welcomed and appreciated.
The press pack struggled to think of any Australian prime minister who had had so many high-level meetings with world leaders in such a short space of time.
One European leader, according to a senior European embassy staffer, had even described the PM as “very cool”.
The EU-Australia free trade negotiations look safe from French sabotage, at least as far as Austria is concerned.
For all the ever-accreting bureaucracy tying European nations together, old European enmities appear to loom larger, the ancient feud between France and Austria among the oldest.
The series of meetings between the PM and leaders in New York and Washington elicited the usual deluge of platitudes, but one thing was clear: the idea the Biden administration had cooled on Australia had proved quite wrong.
The AUKUS pact that will see Australia acquire nuclear powered submarines, announced last week, thrust Australia into the US media cycle like never before, revealing our privileged position in American orbit.
The President himself, far from the doddery caricature taking hold in the American public’s mind, was involved all the way. And he was methodical, alert and interested throughout discussions with the Prime Minister in New York and Washington, officials at the highest level insist.
Indeed, the UK and Australia were awaiting the President’s personal sign off on the submarine deal for weeks before the announcement on 16th September, which took even the best-informed talking heads in Washington by surprise.
Mr Morrison insisted he be in Australia for it, which the White House even accommodated by delaying the Washington announcement to 5pm, so the PM could be beamed into the press conference live at a civilised 7am.
The praise was bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans feted the Prime Minister on Capitol Hill, even if 79 year old House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s praise for Mr Morrison’s “leadership on climate change” — and inquiry as to what ANZUS stood for — left some wondering if she’d been fully briefed.
Congressional leaders appreciated the PM’s recognition that Congress too ultimately had to sign off on the subs deal, which still remains vague in its particulars.
Will Australia’s submarines come from the UK or the US? Fierce competition between the UK and US defence industries looks set to kick off.
Wherever the designs ultimately emerge, more UK or US nuclear submarines will be coming to Australia, manned by Australian navy personnel, far sooner than the first Australian-made sub emerges years down the track.
China, whose belligerence prompted AUKUS, already has the world’s largest navy. The aim of Aukus is not to lease or rebadge existing nuclear power submarines among the three Anglo powers but build more.
Mr Morrison’s seat in the opulent East room of the White House on Friday, knights of the round table-style alongside Joe Biden and Japanese and Indian prime minister, reflected Australia’s growing strategic importance. First the G20, now the Quad, and in the future perhaps an expanded G7. While France’s diplomatic clout appears diminished, Australia’s has been in the ascendant for years, a mix of savvy diplomacy and the reality being a resource rich nation in a key part of the world.
In a break from submarine chat, Mr Morrison visited the Federal Reserve, shocking chairman Jerome Powell with the fact the US was losing more people from Covid-19 every day than Australia had lost in the whole pandemic. More than 2,000 Americans died yesterday from Covid-19, up almost 30 per cent from a week ago.
It’s not through lack of effort in Washington at least, the most Covid-obsessed of all American cities. Australian journalists, all fully vaccinated, endured five separate Covid-19 test on their five day trip, including two to go anywhere near the President, and a bewildering array of masking requirements.
If some in the US have been shocked by Australia’s increasingly tough Covid response, in DC it’s nothing but admiration.
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