When the PM sees the US president, he sees someone he can work with. Only time will tell whether he’s right
At
a refuelling stop in Honolulu on our way to Washington, a fellow
reporter and I, trying to distract ourselves from the Cat Stevens
ukulele covers wafting through an empty airport terminal, wondered what
could happen over the coming week to disrupt Scott Morrison’s first
visit to Washington as prime minister.
Our musing wasn’t malicious. It was recognition that Big Overseas Visits™ by Australian leaders, and this was certainly one, have a habit of colliding with major geopolitical events. John Howard was in America on 9/11 and during the London bombings. Malcolm Turnbull was in Berlin during the Paris terror attacks. We wondered – in a bout of long-haul flight inspired free-floating trepidation – what might lie before us.
It turned out the wildcard was impeachment.
Questions about Donald Trump and a call he made to Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, were coming thick and fast from the moment we were wheels down in Washington at Andrews airforce base. Morrison arrived in a febrile atmosphere in the American capital.
At the root of the gathering storm was a complaint from a whistleblower – believed to be an intelligence official – that Trump was using the power of his presidential office to solicit interference from a foreign country
in the 2020 election. Extraordinary doesn’t even begin to describe that
behaviour by the president of the United States, even if the president
we happen to be talking about is Trump.Our musing wasn’t malicious. It was recognition that Big Overseas Visits™ by Australian leaders, and this was certainly one, have a habit of colliding with major geopolitical events. John Howard was in America on 9/11 and during the London bombings. Malcolm Turnbull was in Berlin during the Paris terror attacks. We wondered – in a bout of long-haul flight inspired free-floating trepidation – what might lie before us.
It turned out the wildcard was impeachment.
Questions about Donald Trump and a call he made to Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, were coming thick and fast from the moment we were wheels down in Washington at Andrews airforce base. Morrison arrived in a febrile atmosphere in the American capital.
This scandal rolled in over the course of the week as Morrison gave practical effect to one of his most significant judgments in his still new prime ministership – the decision to lean into the US alliance, and to the relationship with Trump specifically, at this moment in history, a moment when much appears to be running off the rails.
The Australian prime minister is deepening the relationship with America at a time when many world leaders are keeping their distance from Trump and the circus of his presidency.
Quite frankly, in assessing this trip and its consequences, we need to dwell less on the pomp and circumstance of the visit, less on the South Lawn and the great honour of the state dinner and Trump graciously opening Anthony Pratt’s new paper business in woop woop Ohio, and think more about this risk, and why Morrison is taking it.
I sought to try and get to the bottom of this question on the road with the prime minister this week, and I also sought to try and get some insight into Trump by watching him during our short windows of direct exposure.
In terms of the why for Morrison, I think the answer to that is relatively simple. When he looks at Trump, he sees someone different to him, but someone he can work with.
Trump looks less chaotic to Morrison than he does to the rest of us because, unlike us, the Australian PM comprehends at a deeper level how the Americans are thinking – on trade, China, the tension with Iran, and a host of other issues relevant to Australia.
Understanding where the Trumpites are coming from – insofar as that can be understood when you are dealing, fundamentally, with a loose unit in the Oval Office – allows Australia to separate the signal from the noise.
Given Trump specialises in misdirection and distraction, if you are a partner and an ally, and you can get close enough to find a tethering point, then it becomes easier to screen out the chaos and focus on the transactions – what are the common interests, and how can they be advanced.
Trade is an obvious case in point. Australia’s position on Washington’s trade dispute with China is more complex than it seems. Australia has been a loud diplomatic voice urging Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to come to terms and desist from the retaliatory behaviour that is imperilling global growth. But the government also hopes Trump will be able to crash through on this issue and reset the rules of the road, because if he does that will benefit Australia.
Morrison is trying to craft a position with Trump where he counsels both restraint and persistence in the trade war, which takes a certain amount of diplomatic deftness. I think the prime minister pulled that off this week.
The other insight that I gained, apart from a better understanding of why Morrison was taking the risk of leaning in to a president others are stepping back from, was about Trump himself. At close range, you can actually see method in his shtick.
It was fascinating to be with Trump in the Oval Office so I could see the way he operates. From a distance of only a couple of metres, I could see the mental calculations he was making second-by-second. He had a simple objective: stonewall, redirect and destabilise the room. It was stream of consciousness insanity, no doubt, but what I learned by watching him over half an hour was it was calculated stream of consciousness insanity – at least in that outing.
When I saw that, I gained a better understanding of why Morrison was taking the risk. Fundamentally, Morrison sees a rational actor lurking behind all the demagoguery. Because I was there, I could put the two elements of the equation together – Morrison’s core calculation and Trump’s method – and better understand the building blocks of the judgment.
To be clear: I’m not at all sure Morrison has made the right judgment here. I’m not sure I would be confident enough, in his position, to back myself as a Trump whisperer, given the person occupying the presidency is not only unpredictable but in many respects absolutely reprehensible. We are going to have to watch and wait to see whether Morrison is correct to take this calculated risk.
The other big issue of the week in the states for Morrison was climate change, and that was a hot mess.
Morrison used the trip to telegraph that Australia now wants China to be considered a developed (rather than developing) economy for the purposes of global climate agreements, and that is a significant departure from recent convention.
This argument was also framed simplistically. By inference, China was painted as a destructive free rider in the global climate effort. That’s not actually right. China is taking steps to reduce emissions, and in a much more comprehensive way than Australia currently is.
To be clear. The world needs China to reduce emissions, and it desperately needs the US not to be plonkers, because these two countries, more than others, will play a major role in determining the fate of the planet.
But while the actions in Washington and Beijing are critical, the world also needs Australia not to be a plonker as well. Australians need a government prepared to face up to the transition that the country needs to make.
Morrison is trying to lull voters into thinking the government has an acceptable climate policy and any view to the contrary is just noisy progressive activism.
Sorry, but this is crap. Facts are facts, and the facts are emissions are rising, and there is no coherent plan to stop them rising, and if you listen carefully to what Morrison is saying about this, increasingly he’s saying don’t worry everyone, this is all fine, and technology will sort it.
In New York, Morrison also introduced another thought, perhaps inspired by watching Trump’s utter contempt for the media during their half hour together in the Oval Office. He suggested people were being misled about Australia’s wonderful record on climate change because they’d read something to the contrary somewhere.
“Now, where do they get their information from,” he wondered rhetorically, while inspecting a recycling plant in Brooklyn. “Who knows. Maybe they read.”
He was trying to do fake news without doing fake news.
Now, I imagine people do read, yes. Perhaps they read the government’s regular forecasts that confirm the trajectory of rising emissions. Maybe they’ve heard one or two (hundred) of the many hostile interventions by Morrison’s colleagues to renewable energy and to policies driving any meaningful abatement.
Maybe they watched when the Liberals tried to kill the same renewable energy target that they now claim, warmly, like a long lost relative. Perhaps they read George Christensen’s Facebook page, or heard Matt Canavan blasting resources companies for talking about climate risk.
Perhaps they watched a government yank Malcolm Turnbull out of the prime ministership when he tried for a second time to legislate an absurdly modest mechanism to reduce emissions in electricity. Maybe they heard Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin fess up that they’d invented a “carbon tax” in order to hammer the last nails into Labor’s electoral coffin.
I actually think Morrison is capable of repositioning the Liberal party on climate change and not blowing the government sky-high. I think it’s possible he could do it, and frankly, the country needs him to do it, but right now he’s showing every sign of pulling in the opposite direction.
I’ll dare to hope the policy wheels are turning behind the scenes. But in the meantime, I’ll persist with keeping him honest.
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