This Labor minister’s Q&A answer sums up Anthony Albanese’s Trump problem

In April, Clare O’Neil got up on her Q&A soapbox and delivered a speech that perfectly encapsulates what Labor really thinks of Australia’s alliance partners in Washington, writes James Morrow.

If you want to know what Labor’s true feelings are on an issue, have a listen to what they say when they think no one is listening.

Or at least what they say when they go on the now defunct ABC town hall show Q&A, which given its ratings, was for a long time the next best thing.

Back in April, at the height of the dispiriting 2025 federal election, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil got up on her Q&A soapbox and delivered a stump speech that perfectly encapsulates what Labor really thinks of Australia’s alliance partners in Washington.

“I would just say, like, it is so clear to me that Australia is a better country than America, right?”, O’Neil said to patriotic cheers.

“Like, we have a better healthcare system. We look after each other. We protect each other,” she continued.

Q & A panellist, Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness, Clare O'Neil. Picture: ABC

“We have equal opportunity … we have a country today led by a prime minister who grew up with a single mum with a disability in public housing. That could never happen in America. Never, ever.”

The audience naturally lapped it up, forgetting among other things the chaotic childhood circumstances of former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and current vice president JD Vance.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Senate Leader and Foreign Minister, Penny Wong have faced criticism over their dealings with the USA. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

O’Neil was so proud of herself that she even posted the clip to her Instagram account as a bit of campaign material, underlining Labor’s “we’re caring, the Coalition is cruel” messaging.

It was a moment that, far more than any of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s patient appeals to “progressive patriotism” against the supposed “divisiveness” of the Trump administration, summed up Labor’s dilemma.

Albanese has managed to give Labor supporters an excuse to express natural feelings of pride and even patriotism and love of country, emotions that have been off limits to them since at least the days when John Howard drove the cultural left off into a corner to sneer and gripe about Australia Day.

Yet Albanese has only been able to do this by setting Australia up as an alternate parallel universe to the nation’s most important defence and intelligence relationship, namely, the alliance with the United States at a time when such ties are more critical than ever.

Former Prime Minister John Howard was the last to give Labor supports a national feeling of pride. but for entirely different reasons.

And because Labor under Albanese is unable to really conceive of foreign policy without first filtering it through all the calculations of domestic politics (recall his government’s near gleeful cutting loose of Israel to help appease western Sydney electorates) they don’t really see the damage they are doing.

Yet make no mistake, damage is already being done.

Australia, once one of the US’s closest partners and allies is now considered a “tier three” relationship in Washington, according to one high level observer of the relationship.

Even without Labor ministers rubbishing the administration, advisers in the Trump White House have long thought that Australia is a cautionary tale of what happens when a nation drops its trade barriers, raises its energy prices, and becomes overly reliant on China because it is unable to make anything.

Albanese’s constant jabs at the US (“Australians voted against importing conflicts and ideologies that have no basis in our national culture or character,” he told the Press Club recently), and simultaneously muted criticism of China, don’t help.

Nor does having an ambassador in Washington, Kevin Rudd, who has previously called Trump “a traitor to the West”.

Now at a critical geopolitical moment, Australia finds itself increasingly out in the cold.

The prime minister and his party should have a good think about whether this is something to feel good about.

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Originally published as This Labor minister’s Q&A answer sums up Anthony Albanese’s Trump problem