Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s successful meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington DC this week demonstrates that the modern-day Labor Party is better at base politics than the modern Liberal Party.

Albanese’s media coverage was supportive at best and sympathetic at worst. After all, he had a positive story to tell involving Trump’s apparent support for AUKUS – the security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

AUKUS Pillar 1 involves advanced technology including Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. AUKUS Pillar 2 turns on the sharing of advanced technology in the area of defence and intelligence. In addition, Australia has entered into a partnership with the US to develop critical minerals and rare earths.

All this took place against the background of the concerns about the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party in the region. Here the position of the AUKUS trio is shared with such nations as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and more besides.

In other words, strategy-wise, it was a good time to meet with the US president in the White House. Moreover, Albanese performed at his best – benefiting from the fact that quite a few commentators expected otherwise, especially since it took a long time to arrange the meeting.

So, what was the Coalition in opposition to do? Opposition leader Sussan Ley initially focused on the passing of words between the US president and Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the US, at the media conference. Some years before, the latter had called the former a “village idiot” and more besides.

However, the tension was relieved when Trump gave a telling but funny response when the issue was raised by Sky News journalist Andrew Clennell. Even Albanese joined in the laughter.

For his part, deputy opposition leader Ted O’Brien regretted the fact Albanese went along with Trump’s proposal that more Australian superannuation funds should be investing in the US. But this overlooks the fact that the US is a good market.

What was the alternative? Well perhaps the Coalition could have claimed at least some of the praise for Albanese’s success. Look at it this way. AUKUS, which came into operation in September 2021, was an initiative of the Scott Morrison-led Coalition government.

The story is told in Paul Kelly’s Morrison’s Mission: How a beginner reshaped Australian foreign policy (Penguin, 2022). The key move was to negotiate with the US and the UK over submarines. And do it before junking the arrangement entered into by the Malcolm Turnbull-led Coalition for Australia to purchase French conventional submarines became known to French President Emmanuel Macron.

The secrecy from the Australian end was so tight that Albanese and several shadow ministers received a two-hour briefing on AUKUS on the afternoon of September 15, 2021. The proposal was soon endorsed by the shadow ministry and presented to the Labor Party caucus on the morning of September 16, 2021.

As Kim Carr, a member of the Labor left, wrote in The Guardian on March 21, 2023: “Caucus did not endorse the deal; no vote was taken because a vote was not proposed; the Caucus simply noted the report.” Later that day, Opposition leader Albanese, foreign affairs shadow minister Penny Wong and defence shadow minister Brendan O’Connor put out a statement that “Labor looks forward to strengthened cooperation with our close allies through the AUKUS partnership announced today”.

All important foreign policy and trade agreements are negotiated by many – political leaders, ambassadors and their staff, public servants and sometimes outside advisers. However, if AUKUS has an Australian parent – it is Morrison, not Albanese.

And then there is rare earths. Australians watching the news out of Washington this week would be entitled to conclude that the Albanese-Trump agreement on rare earths was a breakthrough. Well, it was a development.

On October 11, 2019 The Australian carried a report which stated that “Australia and the US will finalise a joint strategy on rare earths and critical minerals within weeks, as the Morrison government commits to directly back new mines across the nation”.

On November 18, 2019 the US Department of the Interior released a statement titled “The United States and Australia Formalize Partnership on Critical Minerals”. It contained a photo of Australian Resources Minister Matt Canavan (a Nationals senator) and the US Geological Survey Director signing the agreement. Which suggests that the father of the current critical minerals agreement is, once again, Morrison.

Labor is good at running lines. Modern Labor likes to credit its former prime minister John Curtin with establishing the Australian American Alliance. But Joseph Lyons of the United Australia Party (the predecessor to today’s Liberal Party) formed close links with the US before the Second World War. And the formal ANZUS alliance was a product of the Robert Menzies-led Liberal Party government in 1951.

The problem with many contemporary Liberals is that they do not know their party’s history – including its contemporary history, which weakens them in arguing their case.

And then there is Labor’s flexibility. In their White House exchange, Trump said this with respect to the Australian prime minister “I think he’s doing a really good job and we’ve had a very good relationship. I don’t want to compare one with the other but I’ll tell you this one – they’ve got a great, they really have a great prime minister”. To which Albanese replied: “I’ll use it in my ads in ’28.” That is, the 2028 election. This is the same Albanese who campaigned on an anti-Trump administration platform in the May 2025 election.

There was concern that Albanese was Labor’s first left-wing leader – and he brought with him such leading members of the left faction as the foreign minister Senator Penny Wong. But Albanese and Wong now head a government which boasts about AUKUS – despite the fact that the intended submarines will be nuclear-powered. There was a time when both were in Labor’s anti-uranium camp.

Labor policy may change. But its approach to politics is highly professional and it can sell messages as their own even when they are inherited. Which leaves the opposition to AUKUS with the leftist Australia Institute and, oh yes, former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Turnbull who backed the French submarines.

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Gerard Henderson is Executive Director of The Sydney Institute.

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