Quad summit cancelled after Joe Biden scraps Australia trip

The Quad summit in Sydney will not go ahead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says, with Joe Biden set to return to the US.

Joe Biden’s last-minute decision to cancel his trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea is a major blow to America’s standing in the region, experts have warned, and has forced the cancellation of the Quad summit in Sydney.

The US President called the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning to tell him he was postponing next week’s historic visit, just hours after Mr Albanese announced Mr Biden had accepted his invitation to address Parliament.

Mr Biden will now fly to Japan on Thursday for the G7 summit, where he will meet Mr Albanese and the other Quad leaders from Japan and India, before returning to Washington DC to negotiate a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and avert an economic crisis.

Mr Albanese said Mr Biden apologised to him and invited him to the US for an official state visit later this year, in an apparent bid to make up for the diplomatic slight.

Anthony Albanese and Joe Biden during the AUKUS announcement in San Diego in March. Picture: Sandy Huffaker

After trying briefly to revamp the meeting of Quad leaders – a crucial bloc to respond to China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific – Mr Albanese said it would not go ahead as planned at the Sydney Opera House.

Ashley Townsend, a senior fellow for Indo-Pacific security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Mr Biden’s cancellation was an “incredible own goal by the US system”.

Gregory Poling, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters it “adds to the evidence that US domestic dysfunction weakens us abroad”.

With a looming June 1 deadline to lift the US government’s $US31.4 trillion debt limit, Mr Biden told reporters: “Defaulting on the debt is simply not an option.”

He also cancelled a historic stopover in Papua New Guinea – which would have been the first visit to the Pacific Islands by a sitting president – where he was due to sign a defence co-operation agreement.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre maintained that “revitalising and reinvigorating our alliances and advancing partnerships like the Quad remains a key priority for the President”.

“This is vital to our ability to advance our foreign policy goals and better promote global stability and prosperity,” she said.

Mr Albanese said the President was “looking forward to getting to Australia as soon as possible”, as he took the unusual step of criticising congressional Republicans who were refusing Mr Biden’s demands to lift the debt ceiling without conditions.

“One thing I’m absolutely certain of is that the President certainly wishes that this wasn’t happening,” the Prime Minister said.

“It is behaviour that clearly is not in the interests of the people of the United States, but it’s also because the US has a critical role as the world’s largest economy. It has implications for the global economy as well.”

Joe Biden shakes hands with Anthony Albanese prior to their meeting during the Quad Leaders Summit at Kantei in Tokyo in 2022. Picture: AFP

Before the cancellation was confirmed, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby argued the President could travel overseas and work with congressional leaders to raise the debt limit at the same time, although he acknowledged preventing a catastrophic default was Mr Biden’s focus.

“If the trip gets truncated or changed or modified in any way, it should be nothing more than a statement of the President putting his priorities where he believes they need to be,” Mr Kirby said.

“We wouldn’t have to have this conversation … if Congress just did the right thing.”

Barack Obama twice cancelled trips to Australia before he eventually arrived in 2011 and addressed the nation’s parliament.

The Quad summit will not go ahead in Sydney next week, after US President Joe Biden was forced to cancel his planned trip to Australia.

Mr Biden  has scrapped his visit just hours after Anthony Albanese announced the US President had accepted his invitation to address the nation’s parliament.

Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 2022 Quad meeting. Picture: AFP

Mr Biden will still travel to Japan this weekend for the G7 meeting, but has abandoned his plans to travel onwards to Papua New Guinea to sign a security pact; and to Australia for the now cancelled summit.

He had been due to attend the summit alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.

Mr Albanese confirmed the summit would not be going ahead and that the four leaders would instead attempt to get together in Hiroshima for a meeting.

Originally published as Quad summit cancelled after Joe Biden scraps Australia trip