Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responds to the backlash for his frequent overseas trips
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, dubbed ‘Airbus Albo’ for his 18 overseas trips in 18 months, has lashed Peter Dutton as he revealed what will come for Australia from the APEC summit.
Anthony Albanese says he is looking forward to returning home from his 18th overseas trip in 18 months, but the Prime Minister maintains the busy travel schedule is a necessary part of his job.
Speaking at the end of the APEC summit in San Francisco, Mr Albanese lashed out at Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for telling him to skip the trip, while also pointing out that he travelled less in his first year in office than his predecessor Scott Morrison.
Mr Albanese, who will arrive back in Australia on Sunday, said it had been a “very successful summit” and hinted at “concrete announcements” that would soon be revealed as a result of his visit to the US.
“It is just a fact that part of the job of being the Australian prime minister is to represent Australia … In today’s globalised economy, what happens here has a direct impact on Australian jobs and the Australian economy,” he said.
“I just say to Peter Dutton: if you want to be the alternative prime minister of Australia, you need something more than just opportunism and comments like that. I frankly think that it diminishes him as a leader to make the comments that he did.”
The Prime Minister told reporters: “I look forward to heading home, I’ve got to say.”
But he said that he was “very humbled by having the honour of representing Australia at forums such as this”.
“Our voice is valued in these forums … Our engagement in the region really does matter,” Mr Albanese said.
It comes as Mr has refused to repeat Joe Biden’s description of Xi Jinping as a dictator after it sparked an angry response from China in the wake of the long-awaited meeting between the American and Chinese presidents.
The Prime Minister, when asked multiple times if he agreed with Mr Biden, said Australia and the US had “different political systems from China”.
“Australia is a democracy, China has a very different political system – they don’t have democratic elections,” Mr Albanese said on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco.
Mr Biden said his four-hour meeting with Mr Xi was productive and constructive, but then called him “a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that is based on a form of government totally different from ours”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning hit back, saying the statement was “extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation”.
“There will always be some people with ulterior motives who attempt to incite and damage US-China relations; they are doomed to fail,” she added.
Mr Albanese caught up with Mr Biden and Mr Xi the day after their talks, and said he did not believe the meeting’s outcomes had been overshadowed by the war of words.
“The impression that I get is that the discussions were very positive,” he said, pointing particularly to the breakthrough on restarting military-to-military communications to avoid conflict.
The Prime Minister said he would leave it to the Chinese government to announce whether they would lift their remaining trade bans on Australian lobster and beef before the end of the year.
Inside APEC: Watch Tom Minear’s video below:
While Mr Albanese has been in the US, his government was forced into a deal with the opposition in Canberra on tough new rules to monitor criminals released from immigration detention after a High Court ruling.
He told reporters in San Francisco that he was “fully involved” in the negotiations, and when asked if he was confident the matter was properly handled, he maintained the government “responded appropriately”.
During the summit, Mr Biden also spearheaded talks on the US-led Indo-Pacific Framework for Economic Prosperity, a new economic initiative that was watered down this week when his administration pulled out of its trade agreement amid domestic political pressure.
That element of the IPEF deal was kicked into 2024, when Mr Biden is facing an election campaign likely against Donald Trump, the former president who pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and up-ended America’s support for free trade.
Mr Albanese refused to criticise the President, saying: “That’s the nature of these international negotiations … We know that trade agreements are difficult.”
The Prime Minister held bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit with a series of world leaders and business chiefs including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The pair compared notes on the bushfire risk in both countries as Mr Albanese said he was “very worried about our upcoming summer”.
The summit wraps up on Friday (local time) before the Prime Minister returns home from his 18th overseas trip in his 18 months in office.
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Originally published as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responds to the backlash for his frequent overseas trips
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