Time to land ‘Airbus Albo’. Letting fly over PM’s travels is plain silly

The last thing Anthony Albanese wanted to do when he left the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro was talk any more about the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. The prime minister left the gathering of the world’s biggest economies on Tuesday afternoon, local time, and boarded the Royal Australian Air Force jet waiting to take him home. He spoke briefly to the journalists on board, walked to his seat at the front of the plane and turned his sights on Canberra.

Illustration by Simon Letch.Credit:

If you did not notice Albanese was away, that was probably fine with him. He would be comfortable if few voters saw the pictures of him wearing a fine vicuna scarf at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru or laughing with the world’s most powerful at the G20 in Brazil.

Only one message mattered for the prime minister over the past week: that he was spending time away so he could create jobs at home. He wanted voters to know the international visit was all about domestic priorities, that he was in Lima and Rio to talk about global inflation and open trade. The talking points for the trip repeated this message every day.

Albanese made a rational decision in Australia’s political hothouse – a place where anyone who steps outside is slammed for being away. But there was a smallness to the approach, also, because it meant the PM had to shrink the global agenda to fit the local requirements, and calculating that too many Australians would be angry or anxious to see their prime minister on the world stage.

There was, in fact, a bigger picture to the trip – and everyone at APEC and the G20 knew it. These were the last summits for United States President Joe Biden before he steps down. They were the last chance for world leaders to meet before Donald Trump replaces him on January 20.

Trump did not figure much in the conversations, according to one of those involved in the talks. There was certainly no open discussion about the president-elect in the plenary sessions at either summit. Even so, the messages about open trade were absolutely about Trump and his high-risk plan for big, expensive, inflationary tariffs that will push up household costs and slow economic growth.

So when Albanese spoke with fellow leaders about free trade, he was doing what he could to prepare for the second Trump administration. He also spoke with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about AUKUS to cement the foundations of the submarine deal before the Trump turmoil begins. And he backed an effort to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine – an important move by Western democracies when there is so much concern that Trump will force a peace deal that favours Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Did the Rio summit change anything? No. The host, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wanted a statement on fixing world hunger and climate change, so the group produced a declaration with some fine words. It also negotiated a statement of the obvious on the catastrophes in Ukraine and the Middle East, with no sign of an answer to either. The summit agreed on the problems and split on the solutions.

The unfortunate fact is this G20 was never going to shield the world from Trump. How could it? Americans have chosen their president and everyone else has to duck for cover. Certainly, things have changed at the G20 since the buoyant Brisbane summit of 2014, when Australia hosted with grand hopes for economic reform that would lift global growth. Ambitions at the G20 have shrunk over a dismal decade of conflict, pandemic and drift in world affairs.

If this assessment seems too grim, consider the timing of the Brisbane summit. Putin had just annexed Crimea and was sending soldiers in cheap disguise into eastern Ukraine while doing deals to make Europe dependent on Russian gas. In China, President Xi Jinping was building military bases in the South China Sea, suffocating free speech on the streets of Hong Kong and scaling up naval and air power. And things only grew worse. The last 10 years have been the decade of the dictator.

Could Albanese have stayed home? Of course not. He had no choice but to fly overseas. Australia helped create the APEC group and turned the G20 into a leadership forum so smaller economies could have a say alongside the major powers. An Australian leader who skipped APEC, or the G20, would only look small.

China’s President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the G20 on Tuesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

So the complaint that the prime minister travels too much – the “Airbus Albo” line in parts of the media – is puerile. That did not stop The Daily Telegraph from using its front page on Wednesday to smash Albanese for being away. What was revealing, however, was that newspaper had to resort to using the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative group loyal to the Liberals, to offer a quote saying there was a problem. And this was after the critics wanted Albanese to fly to Israel, Indonesia and a NATO summit at various points this year. Some even suggest he should fly to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump. The hypocrisy is rampant.

The government’s mistake was planning two weeks of parliament at the same time as the G20 when it knew Albanese would have to be away. It could have moved the sittings one week later so parliament ended in the first week of December rather than November 28. In the end, the prime minister’s absence for three sitting days did not slow the government or the parliament.

While there were some conservative conniptions when Albanese met with Xi, there was no sacrifice of Australian sovereignty in talking to the Chinese president. Albanese listened to Xi across the table and then put Australia’s position on fair trade and the need to maintain the status quo on Taiwan. He also expressed concern at the treatment of Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who is in prison in China after receiving a suspended death sentence.

So the prime minister made effective use of the summits. Yes, the plenary sessions were padded with platitudes. All the real work was in the face-to-face talks. The two big ones were the prime minister’s bilateral meetings with Starmer and Xi, but there were meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There were also casual conversations with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Albanese spent at least 45 hours in an aircraft over the past eight days. Nobody does that without a good reason. Some delegation members did not make it home on time, thanks to bad food and infections. And the reward was to be attacked for leaving Canberra.

The domestic dividend from international summits is often uncertain, but Albanese did good work in the national interest at APEC and the G20. Perhaps that is why his critics were so unhappy.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.