Scott Morrison warned Donald Trump off Vladimir Putin G7 invitation

Scott Morrison raised concerns with Donald Trump about Russia rejoining the G7 during his final one-on-one conversation with the US president.

Prime minister Scott Morrison and US president Donald Trump on the White House lawn in September 2019. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison raised concerns with Donald Trump about Vladimir Putin being potentially invited to rejoin the G7, urging the former US president to reject the idea almost two years before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The former prime minister’s warning about the Russian President was made during his final one-on-one conversation with Trump in July 2020.

The prescient advice, revealed in a new book, Plagued, released on Tuesday, was prompted after Trump publicly declared it was “common sense” for Putin to ­rejoin the G7 after Russia was kicked out following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

“Since the 2019 G7, Morrison had been quietly behind the scenes putting the case to the Americans that there was nothing remotely liberal or democratic about Russia,” the book says.

In his direct conversation with Trump, a few months before Joe Biden won the US election, Morrison told the president “I think you’re a bit more optimistic than we are.”

 

Morrison, whose warning of threats posed by autocracies was vindicated in February this year when Russia invaded Ukraine, held strong reservations about Mr Putin being admitted back into a forum founded on the “principles of the international rules based order”.

“The US president dealt breezily with the business part of the call, which was to invite Morrison to attend the G7 summit at Camp David later in 2020: ‘We’d love you to come to the G7’, Trump said.

“It was a demonstration of Australia’s emerging position in the world that for the second year in a row, it would participate as a guest member in this gathering of the world’s leading industrialised economies – the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.

“Morrison made the point that the 2019 G7 meeting in Biarritz, France, which he’d attended alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had been such a successful summit because it brought like-minded liberal democracies together in one room at a time when the world was facing increasing strategic challenges.”

After discussing preparations for the US-hosted G7 summit, later cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Morrison reminded Trump that Russia would “struggle to fall into any definition of a liberal democracy”. “He said Trump shouldn’t forget Russia’s role in downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014. Of the 298 people on board who were killed, 38 were Australians.”

Morrison also pressed Trump on the case for Washington to bring its focus back to the Indo-Pacific and talked him through points he had canvassed with like-minded leaders and the need to build stronger partnerships with India, Singapore, Japan and ­others.

“A feature of Morrison’s discussions with Trump through the year had been the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic ­alliance between the US, Australia, Japan and India, generally known as the Quad,” the book says.

“His thrust was the need to ­elevate the engagement to a leaders’ level meeting.

“He would maintain that position in his ongoing conversations with (former US secretary of state Mike) Pompeo and, eventually, the new US President, Joe Biden.”

In a speech at the Lowy Institute on March 7 this year, Morrison spoke about a “new arc of autocracy”, which was aligning to challenge and reset the world order in their own image.

“We face the spectre of a ­transactional world, devoid of principle, accountability and transparency, where state sovereignty, territorial integrity and liberty are surrendered for respite from coercion and intimidation, or economic entrapment dressed up as economic reward,” he said.

“This is not a world we want – for us, our neighbours or our ­region. It’s certainly not a world we want for our children.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Moscow last week. Picture: AFP