In which it's all reptiles on disunited states deck, with Will, the bromancer and "Ned's" natter picked from the ruck of lizard Oz coverage ...

 

The pond had hoped to begin with a reference to the unseasonal heat, what with climate science denialism strong in the Murdochians, but that had to be put on hold, because after weeks of anguishing, peddling saucy doubts and out right fearmongering by the reptiles at the lizard Oz, it all came down to this huge set of splashes this day...

Having spent months brooding and stoking anxieties, the reptiles had to resort to coping mechanisms ...

Albanese hits critical mass with Trump over AUKUS, minerals
In a meeting that removed any doubt about the strength of the US-Australia relationship, Donald Trump has backed Australia’s $368bn nuclear submarine deal and a $13bn critical minerals partnership.

That was by Geoff Chambers and Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang (and willing signatory to Pentagon "champagne-Russian-tie wearing-asset" Pete's attempt at press muzzling)...

The lesser Joe also had a standalone piece ...

FRIENDS OF AUSTRALIA
PM hails ‘game changer’ deals, sings praises of Rudd
Buoyed from his meeting with Donald Trump, the PM backed in his US ambassador and hailed the jobs that will be created from the minerals and AUKUS deals.
By Joe Kelly

In fact if it hadn't been for chairman Rudd, it would have been a complete wash for the reptiles, with Joe, member of the Hogsbreath gang of war reporting, on it...

‘Kevin works his guts out’: PM publicly endorses Rudd
Anthony Albanese has showered praise on Kevin Rudd, crediting the success of his Washington visit to Australia’s ambassador and stressing that his tenure won’t finish until 2027.
By Joe Kelly

They were all chomping on former chairman Rudd ...

Critics dreaming if they think envoy will be recalled
Donald Trump might not like Kevin Rudd much, but Rudd was a key architect of Anthony Albanese’s successful meeting in Washington.
By Cameron Stewart

Put it another way ...

Over on the extreme far right there were a few attempts at distraction...

 ... with a pearl of wisdom - more of him anon - and Dame Slap donning her MAGA cap again and singing a MAGA song...

ASX shake-up proves Trump insurgency rolls on
The ASX’s dramatic decision to dissolve its corporate governance council mirrors a global rebellion against excessive regulation that began in Trump’s America.
By Janet Albrechtsen

Strange, the pond had expected another gloat about the Lehrmann matter, but never mind, the pond had to go with the flow, beginning with Will pretending that the last few months in the agitated hive mind had never happened ...

The header: Albanese’s successful Trump meeting makes fools of far more than Rudd, After getting almost everything wrong about Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump, could we perhaps have a bit of modesty from Australia’s ‘America watchers’?

The caption, and never mind that it takes two to be in a handshake: US President Donald Trump shakes the hand of Anthony Albanese. Picture: AP

Our Will achieved an astonishing feat, blathering about doomsday predictions, as if the lizard Oz reptiles had been positive all the way.

It was a singular achievement, so astonishing that the pond just had to pay attention to Our Will, normally a nonentity the pond could safely ignore  ...

After getting almost everything wrong about Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump, could we perhaps have a bit of modesty from Australia’s “America watchers”?
Across the spectrum of this strange tribe, doomsday predictions were tossed about like so many Big Mac wrappers on Air Force One.
The AUKUS submarine project was to be confirmed dead, said the people who have been calling for the scrapping of that defence project since it was unveiled in 2022.
Australia’s defence spending would have to be hiked to avoid the President’s ire, said the group that has been demanding a doubling of Australia’s defence budget for even longer.
The Prime Minister had to demonstrate he shared Trump’s assessment of China, said the crowd who have argued that the government’s “stabilisation” policy was untenable for as long as it had been in place, despite its evident success.
Not to be left out, there was the claim by the AFR’s American-obsessed foreign affairs columnist that there was one word Albanese hoped Trump would not utter in the Oval Office: “Taiwan”.

Ah, all that nattering negativity safely offshored, as the reptiles offered a visual distraction, The Australian’s Washington Correspondent Joe Kelly and Political Editor Geoff Chambers report from outside the White House moments after Anthony Albanese met with Donald Trump. In a high-stakes meeting that secured an $8.5 billion critical minerals and rare earths agreement, both leaders projected warmth despite deep policy differences. With China’s dominance in rare earths tightening and Aukus assurances on the table, the encounter marked a major geopolitical moment and a political win for Albanese.

That snap of the tie is an astonishing tribute to the canny visuals to be found in the lizard Oz, as Our Will carried on with his carping ...

All up, a bevy of predictions and analysis that aged as well as the early 1990s trend to wear jeans backwards.
So after all the mass hysteria, what actually happened in the White House?
AUKUS was endorsed for the first time by the President. “There shouldn’t be any more clarifications because we’re just, we’re just going now full steam ahead,” said Trump.
Rather than telling off Australia over its defence spending (as so many self-appointed Australian Trump administration explainers had warned), Trump instead made excuses for Australia. “You can only do so much. I think they’ve been great,” he said.
And what of the claim that Canberra and Washington have profoundly different assessments of China? Or that Trump, a trade-obsessed leader who is trying to secure access to the Chinese market for America’s soybean farmers, would object to Australia exporting iron ore to China? Both were evidently of so little concern that Trump did not bring them up.
Despite all that, Trump still managed to prick the ears of many of our American watchers after he was asked by The Australian’s Geoff Chambers whether he thought AUKUS was a deterrent against Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
Trump’s answer poured cold water on a debate about Taiwan in Australia that has become cartoonish in recent years, no surprise as much of it has been noisily conducted by people who have spent little or no time working, living and in some cases even visiting Taiwan or China.
“I don’t think we’re going to need it. I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that,” said Trump.

Then came another distraction, Mr Trump greets Mr Albanese at the White House on Tuesday (AEDT). Picture: AP

Relax, there is a pond point to all this, but first Our Will must be given his head, allowed to canter where he will ...

“First of all, the US is the strongest military power in the world by far. It’s not even close. We have the best equipment,” he added. “I don’t see that at all with President Xi. I think we’re going to get along very well as it pertains to Taiwan and others. Now that doesn’t mean it’s not the apple of his eye, because probably it is. But I don’t see anything happening.”
That assessment, that a Chinese invasion on Taiwan is not imminent, is shared by most experts working on the US, China, Taiwan triangle. It is also shared by Taiwan’s government.
None of which is to claim that Beijing does not want to rule Taiwan. Of course it does, as Trump said himself. And no one should dismiss Beijing’s threats to go to war if Taipei was to formally declare independence.
But the evidence continues to suggest Xi Jinping’s strategy is to get control of Taiwan without fighting, while encouraging that process with the threat of the PLA’s ever growing might. Beijing’s efforts to split Taiwanese society are ceaseless – and not without signs of success.
At the weekend, Taiwan’s main opposition party, the “one China”-affirming Kuomintang (KMT) party, elected a new chairman, Cheng Li-wun. Beijing clearly has assessed she is a partner it can work with. Xi himself personally congratulated Cheng on her appointment, urging her to join him to “work together for a brighter future of the Chinese nation.”
In her reply, the new KMT chair said “people across the Strait are members of the same Chinese nation” and called for Beijing and Taipei to “strengthen cross-Strait exchanges and co-operation”. No one should misread any of that as a sign that Taiwanese voters are about to vote for Communist Party rule but it does underscore that Beijing has reason to believe it can bring Taiwan under its control in a manner short of war.
Let us all hope Beijing continues to have that view. The alternative is a war of inconceivable destruction.
The stakes are so high that claims Xi is preparing for an invasion in 2027 and, considerate man that he is, has given the world notice of the date he will do it should be laughed out of the room.

A final visual distraction, New Kuomintang party chair Cheng Li-wun in Taipei, Taiwan. Picture: AP

And then came Our Will's final, deepest thoughts ...

Of course, it makes perfect sense that Xi would use 2027, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, to motivate China’s corruption-plagued army, one that despite its increasingly potent capabilities is almost entirely without war-fighting experience. Similarly, it makes sense that Indo-Pacific-focused American defence officials have echoed that timeline as they jockey for funding in Washington and seek to make sure Xi continues to doubt his success in a military operation that could end the Communist Party’s rule.
Mercifully, the claim that China has publicly scheduled a war is an assertion in want of a lot more supporting facts.
As with so many supposed Trump surprises, his Taiwan comments were hardly novel. One year ago, on the cusp of his return to the White House, he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
“Would you use military force against a blockade on Taiwan?” the WSJ team asked. “I wouldn’t have to because he respects me and he knows I’m f..king crazy,” Trump replied.
It is a widely held assessment in capitals across the region.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, many of Australia’s America watchers have put far too much weight on the words of his officials and not enough on the President’s.
Albanese’s day with Trump has made it clear that’s a lousy way to assess this administration. Our government, including our shabbily treated ambassador, Kevin Rudd, appears to see things with clearer eyes.

The pond's reward for best reptile rewriting history and ghosting the hive mind past goes to Will ...

Speaking of doomsayers, the bromancer was front and centre ... and the pond was instantly transported back to September ...one of many reports from the reptile trenches that Our Will had strangely overlooked ...

Back in those days, the bromancer was mired in despondency, bogged in gloom ...

...The Trump snub of Albanese now is undeniable. Imagine what the nation’s commentators would be saying if it were a Coalition government that had such monumental failures in the South Pacific and then was unable to secure even a short meeting with our great ally.
This is a dangerous time for Australia across many measures – strategically with the emergence of the axis of authoritarian powers; regionally with the aggressive actions of Beijing; diplomatically with our inability to land any deal in the South Pacific, with our waning influence combined with American aid cuts and Beijing’s relentless push for influence power and ultimately military bases; militarily with our declining capabilities; and economically with soaring energy prices and our budget out of control and our productive industries under attack or in decline.
At a time like this, a responsible government in Canberra should focus on core national interests. Access and influence with the US President is a core national interest. We want the alliance to be as good as it can be under Trump, and to survive Trump. And we should try to influence the Trump administration’s behaviour in Asia. But on all these core national interests the Albanese government has eschewed substance and instead pursued symbolism and gesture.
There’s no doubt that Trump is an extremely tricky president who poses great challenges for any national leader who deals with him. That doesn’t excuse our leader from working for our national interests. Instead Albanese seems to be on a permanent holiday from history. His position on Palestine is no different from the position he might have had as an undergraduate in political economy at Sydney University all those decades ago.
Given that our gestures on Palestine will have no impact on anything at all, if they played a role in worsening the relationship with the White House, then Australia paid a measurable price in national interest for a self-indulgent gesture of no value.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, when asked what the practical consequences of our recognition of a Palestinian state would be, replied that official DFAT documents would in future not use the term “occupied Palestinian territories” but, rather, just Palestine. Wow!
I bet that has our opponents worried. She might have added that another practical outcome is that her government spends its time on anything except our core interests as they exist in the real world.

So how was the gloomster bromancer feeling now, what with all the other reptiles wildly excited?

How it must grieve him to scribble about it all, but, to be fair, amid the reptile excitation, he still managed a few saucy doubts and fears ...

The header: A good day, but an imperfect outcome for Australia in Trump-Albanese meeting, Anthony Albanese is surely the luckiest politician in the Western world. But this was an excellent day out for the government which got almost everything it could possibly wish for.

The caption: The Trump meeting was the single most successful foreign policy effort from the Albanese government, writes Greg Sheridan.

The pond has no idea why the reptiles resorted to a black and white snap, except perhaps to evoke the way that the bromancer likes to see the world ... blessed Catholic white, demonic Satanic black, and very few shades of purgatory grey ..

Mission accomplished! For Anthony Albanese, and for Australia, it was a very good day and a very good visit with Donald Trump in the White House.
Napoleon said: give me lucky generals. Albanese is surely the luckiest politician in the Western world.
China – announcing the intention to apply absurd restrictions to the export of any product containing any Chinese-sourced critical minerals – almost guaranteed that the rare earths and critical minerals deal that Kevin Rudd had been trying to sell in Washington for months would win enthusiastic acceptance from the US President.
Nonetheless, any politician who gets good luck must also make that luck work.
This has been the single most successful foreign policy effort from the Albanese government. It wasn’t a perfect outcome. There was no relief on tariffs even in the sectoral areas where some nations have received relief. There was no regional agenda from Australia, such as reviving the Quadrilateral Dialogue. And we still have to see how the rare earths agreement actually unfolds Nonetheless, this was a nine out of 10 performance by the Albanese government and it deserves credit for it.
The meeting was way too late in coming. A year of Trump’s four-year electoral cycle passed ­before the first substantial meeting and real engagement. But having recognised that problem, the government in recent weeks and months did everything it could, publicly and privately, to make the meeting happen and make it a success.
The government from the Prime Minister down sang Trump’s praises over the Gaza ceasefire; cabinet ministers – in particular Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy – visited Washington and worked up awareness and enthusiasm; so did Treasurer Jim Chalmers, so did senior officials; Rudd was his normal hyper-diligent self across every part of the US system he could gain access to.
This sort of effort is necessary when you’re dealing with Trump, but not always sufficient. Trump was in a very good mood and passed out rhetorical, and some actual, benefits for Australia.

At this point came an AV distraction, which was in effect a handy environmentally aware recycling, but what joy to see the tie was still in spiffing heady graphics department form ... The Australian’s Washington Correspondent Joe Kelly and Political Editor Geoff Chambers report from outside the White House moments after Anthony Albanese met with Donald Trump. In a high-stakes meeting that secured an $8.5 billion critical minerals and rare earths agreement, both leaders projected warmth despite deep policy differences. With China’s dominance in rare earths tightening and Aukus assurances on the table, the encounter marked a major geopolitical moment and a political win for Albanese.

There's nothing like the din of incessant reptile repetition, and mercifully that was the very last of the visual distractions. 

The reptiles allowed the bromancer to rant on without respite, harumphing and navel gazing and fluff gathering, and so will the pond ...

Albanese got almost everything he wanted from this meeting.
First, he got a personal benediction from Trump. The President is notoriously mercurial. He might love you one day and hate you the next. But the presidential personal blessing is immensely important for the rest of the US system. It’s a sign that no-one in the US system should be hesitant about being forward leaning towards Australia because of any hesitation on the president’s part.
It’s also the case that Trump pays little attention even to his own bureaucracy. Probably Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his eldest son, Donald Trump jnr, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a tiny handful of others are the only formal sources of advice Trump takes seriously. And those are based on personal relationships more than institutional positions.
Until now, Trump has not had a personal relationship with Albanese much at all. Now they’ve spent several hours in each other’s company. Trump would also be briefed that Albanese faces almost no opposition at the moment and is at the start of an electoral cycle, so there’s absolutely no incentive to try to play games inside Australian politics.
This is all good for Albanese within the US system, and also good for Albanese with the Australian electorate, which doesn’t like Trump but does value the ­alliance. It would be good if this is the start of a closer personal relationship, if Trump at least sometimes seeks to catch up with Albanese at multilateral meetings such as APEC. Similarly it would be a very good thing if Trump occasionally consults Albanese about the Australian view of China, or similar matters.
It remains to be seen whether that will happen, but it was a very good start.
Albanese also got an official Trump benediction for AUKUS and even a promise that Australia would definitely get its Virginia-class submarines in due course. This was hugely important. It won’t in the end be Trump’s decision because it is in 2031 that the then American president has to decide whether transferring Virginias to Australia would compromise US capability. Trump’s promise is nonetheless very important. If the next president is Vance, he will probably feel bound by a Trump promise that he will be deeply socialised into over three more years of AUKUS activity under Trump. If it’s a Democrat in the Oval Office, even a left-wing Democrat, it would be a huge thing for the US to repudiate a deal that was made under a Democrat, Joe Biden, confirmed by Trump, and for which Australia will by then have paid billions of dollars with many more billions to come.
That still doesn’t finally guarantee the AUKUS deal, not least because Trump said: “We (the US) have got plenty of submarines.”
That’s plainly wrong. The US Navy, the shipbuilders and every congressional report acknowledges the reality that the US is miles behind schedule in producing submarines for its own use. Trump is prone to changing his mind, when he decides one day to give weight to facts that he ignores another day. One day he tells Ukraine it can win all the territory back that it’s lost to Russia; the next day he tells Ukraine it must accept Russian occupation of the territory Moscow now controls.

But Albanese can’t be expected to cover every possible permutation of Trump’s future mood swings. It’s as good on AUKUS as Australia could have expected, especially given the previous eerie silence from Trump on the deal.

Oh perhaps one visual distraction is allowed ...

The bromancer carried on, entirely forgetting what he'd been scribbling for months, but in the reptile cornfield/hive mind, such forgetting is always good...

The rare earths deal is in some respects the most important. But the basic reality here is one that both US and Australian policy makers have been slow to confront. China will always produce rare earths at a price below cost. No company, indeed no defence force, will go to a non-Chinese supplier unless required to by their government, or unless the price of the non-Chinese supplier is effectively subsidised.
Thus you’re not spending a bit of seed money to help an infant industry (to mix the metaphors a bit) grow to maturity. You’re permanently subsidising an industry because you believe an allied supply chain is a security necessity. Some people call that socialism; others call it national security capitalism. It doesn’t really matter what you call it so long as you do it.
But what if Trump and Xi Jinping make a deal at APEC this month or early next month? What it Trump declares he has brought peace to trade tensions? It is in Australia’s interests to zealously implement this deal and keep the US up to its commitments.
By the way, the most significant thing Trump said all day was that he thought there was no chance the Chinese President would launch a military strike on Taiwan. Trump is flat out wrong on this. It’s not at all clear what Beijing will do. Nobody knows what Beijing will do. Certainly Trump doesn’t.
Finally the byplay between Trump and Rudd, and Rudd’s reported later apology to Trump about insulting earlier tweets from before his ambassadorship, seems to have cleared the air. Rudd was ill-advised to make those social media posts when there was a chance Trump would come back to office. But Vance used to say equally rough things about Trump. Trump “forgives” people who apologise, recognise his glory and are likely to be useful to him.
Rudd has been an extremely effective ambassador. He is the strongest element of the Albanese foreign policy team and far more a cold-eyed realist on China than any of the senior figures in the government. The opposition’s criticism of Rudd is inevitable but misplaced. They’re on much more convincing ground in pointing out that if the rare earths deal is to succeed, the Albanese government will need to revolutionise the manner and speed with which it approves new mines and the like.
Many things conspired to create a historic opportunity for Albanese. He is the gold-medal winning Steve Bradbury of Australian politics, prevailing simply because he stays upright as all his enemies and all his obstacles fall over of their own volition.
It’s still a government which pursues a lamentably anaemic ­defence policy, there was a spectacular lack of regional ambition in the meeting, and all of Canberra’s pre-existing weaknesses remain. But this was an excellent day out for the government which got almost everything it could possibly wish for, and by doing so served Australia’s national interest.

At last, a final bit of snark, a final attempt to regain lost turf, here have an infallible Pope to celebrate the coin toss ...

And so to "Ned" himself, returning for an extended natter about the great excitation ...

This meant the pond was forced to break it's only "two reptiles in the morning" rule, but on the other hand, even on a very hot day, an Everest climb is good exercise and a great way to better mental health ... with the realisation that while the world might be a troubled place, at least there's only one "Ned" ...

The header: PM triumphs in Washington; hapless Libs sink at home, The Albanese-Trump personal concord has left the Coalition outsmarted, having badly misread the dynamics of the alliance and having underestimated Albanese and Rudd.

The caption: Donald Trump greets Anthony Albanese outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC.

It was another tedious five minuter, so the reptiles clocked it, covering much of the same ground, but that's the thing with the hive mind ... a murmuration of reptiles, circling in the sky like starlings ...

Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump heralds his most successful day since winning the 2025 election. Albanese forged a personal connection with Trump and sealed the Australia-US partnership with head-of-government authorisation.
This was the main requirement from the meeting. For Albanese, it was the essential condition. It means that in one meeting Albanese has dispatched nine months of criticism that he couldn’t manage the alliance, wouldn’t be accepted by Trump and had compromised our most crucial partnership. The victory for Albanese is immense, domestically and strategically.
In domestic terms, Albanese has embedded his authority as our natural Prime Minister. Successful management of the US alliance has been a condition of such authority for the past 80 years. In strategic terms, Albanese now presides over a historic deepening of the alliance – via advancement of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine agreement, a joint US-Australia critical minerals agenda and a series of expanded investments in the US by our superannuation funds and more defence co-operation.
Decisions from this meeting along with Trump’s unqualified rhetorical endorsement of Albanese as PM will lay the foundation for another leap in the US-Australia partnership based on the Trump-Albanese concord. Albanese didn’t just survive this meeting, the essential condition defined by many analysts. The meeting became the occasion for a new chapter in the Australia-US story.

The reptiles flourished a snap full of flourishes, Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump sign a $8.5 billion rare earth minerals agreement during a bilateral meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Picture: NewsWire/ Joseph Olbrycht Palmer

The pond couldn't help thinking ...

"Ned" had no worries ...

The paradox of Albanese takes another twist. The once fierce leftist warrior has set up his prime ministership to constitute a significant deepening of the US alliance in strategic and military terms. He doesn’t put it that way, but it’s exactly what’s happening. The scale of Albanese’s election victory gives him political command of the Labor Party and means the Labor Left is largely powerless in terms of meaningful protest.
The serial successes Albanese achieved rest on a singular decision taken by Trump – to back Australia under Albanese based on the overwhelming transactional balance sheet. Australia is not a high priority for Trump – yet he remains favourably disposed towards Australia and seems a believer in the narrative this country has cultivated about our historical fidelity towards the US.
Under both AUKUS and the critical minerals agreement Albanese has offered a lot to Trump’s America, and the transactional deal-making has worked. Albanese was astute. This was always the calculation of Albanese and Kevin Rudd as ambassador and, while it took time, they are vindicated. The result is a win for Rudd – that’s right, a win for Rudd. The critical minerals deal didn’t fall from a clear blue sky. It has been landed after a long campaign from Rudd and the ties he has built everywhere but in the White House.
Trump praised Albanese as a “great prime minister” and said of Australia as an ally “there’s never been anyone better”.
This is a humiliation for the Coalition. The Albanese-Trump personal concord has left the Coalition discredited and outsmarted, having badly misread the dynamics of the alliance, having underestimated Albanese and Rudd, and having conducted shrill warnings for nine months about the multiple dangers and allegations about a precarious US-Australia relationship. Nearly everything they said now looks misconceived or plain wrong.
Albanese has taken a lot of risks with Trump but has prevailed. Consider the list: refusing any significant boost to defence spending, attacking Trump’s tariffs, turning against Israel, recognising a Palestinian state and pledging an expansion of economic ties with China. Moreover, while officials in the Pentagon had deep concerns about AUKUS, Trump has given it the presidential imprimatur.
Trump let Albanese off the hook on defence spending and agreed the tariffs on Australia were at the lightest level – he made no concession on tariffs and none was expected.
The strategic implications will infuriate Beijing. The AUKUS compact that it loathes is proceeding – with Trump even agreeing that AUKUS is a strategic deterrent against China – while the Australia-US critical minerals deal is entirely designed to combat Beijing’s massive control of critical mineral and rare earth global supply chains.

The reptiles interrupted with another snap, Kevin Rudd leaves after a meeting between Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C.

For some deeply perverse reason, the pond was reminded of Wanning Sun, first in Crikey back in July 2025 and outside the paywall here ...

If you’re looking for an example of how our media can turn a good story into a bad one, simply pay attention to how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s forthcoming visit to China is being reported.
A journalist from The Australian asked Barnaby Joyce, a ‘Coalition heavyweight’ (hasn't that worn well, like a fart in the bedroom?), whether it was not good to ‘make friends with China’. Joyce said we should do so, ‘but not at the expense of the US’, and that Albanese was playing a ‘very dangerous’ game. Criticising Albanese’s recent speech inspired by John Curtin, an op-ed by Greg Sheridan in the same newspaper was titled ‘Washington will not be impressed by Anthony Albanese’s Curtin call… but Beijing will lap it up’.
Sky News then outperformed The Australian by showing us that a good story is in fact a bad story. Speaking about Albanese’s imminent visit to China, Sharri Markson remarks with incredulity, ‘This is truly astonishing that he is about to meet President Xi for the fourth time, while he still hasn’t managed to secure a single meeting with the US president … This is deeply worrying.’
The framing of these stories seems to follow the logic of ‘it goes without saying’. That is, a story about diplomatic relations between Australia and China is necessarily a story about Australia and the US, and a story about Australia-US relations is necessarily a story about Australia and China.
In each case, our media and Coalition politicians seem to imagine Australia as a child whose parents’ protracted divorce proceedings have ended in a messy shared custody arrangement. Caught between a tempestuous dad and a needy mum (you can choose which is which), the child cowers, fearing every word spoken between the parents like a loaded gun. Anxious not to displease either parent, the child can’t decide whether to spend the holidays at mum’s or go on a trip with dad instead.

Sounds about right and for those who haven't already had enough bromancer in their diet, here's the archive version of that link to this ...

Meanwhile, oblivious to those past hauntings of the hive mind, "Ned" carried on ...

This is a defining statement of Australia’s serious and bipartisan national strategic interest.
Critical minerals are the fuel of the future, vital in smartphones, renewable energy, defence technology, magnets and batteries.
Signing the agreement, Albanese said: “This is an eight and a half billion dollar pipeline that we have ready to go.” Trump, typically, made the mad comment that in “about a year from now, we’ll have so much critical minerals and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them”. Many experts, by contrast, judge the US to be 15 to 20 years behind China in this race.
It won’t be easy sailing from this point for AUKUS or the critical minerals compact. The Albanese government must deliver by 2027 the proposed $8bn facility in the west to support US nuclear submarines, a vital replenishment base for US naval projection into the region. On the point of maximum angst in this country, Trump made clear he would sell Australia the proposed Virginia-class submarines, contradicting the critics in this country who think they know more about what the US will do than does its President.
The anti-AUKUS brigade in this country won’t be halted. And Trump’s remarks won’t solve the problems of the US submarine production line. But support from the three governments – the US, the UK and Australia – in pushing the AUKUS agenda will reinforce the confidence of the Albanese government. Presidential approval from Trump is a decisive step. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s how America works. His message to the US Navy was “full steam ahead”.
At the media conference Trump delivered the stunning addendum about China: while backing AUKUS, he didn’t really think it would be needed to deter China. He said “we’ll be just fine” in terms of China and Taiwan. Trump doesn’t believe President Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan, an optimism in conflict with the Pentagon’s warnings.
The implication: Trump doesn’t want a war over Taiwan and doesn’t believe there will be a war. Trump intends to cut a deal with Xi – he wants deals, not war. So much for the talk a few months ago the Trump administration will press Australia for a commitment over Taiwan in relation to AUKUS. Albanese got that right by dismissing any such query.

A final visual distraction, Richard Marles at the ASC holding a media conference regarding AUKUS. Picture: NewsWire / Tim Joy

And a final flourishing of saucy doubts and fears from "Ned", always ready to trot out his Chicken Little impression ...

Given Labor’s blunders with the resources sector and its ineptitude with state intervention, turning the critical minerals agenda into reality will be a daunting task. Can they do it? The timetable is fast, the government takes equity investment in projects and offers price guarantees.
In its response to the Trump-Albanese meeting, the Coalition sounded like a rabble. Grudging about the initiatives, it complained the meeting had taken too long to organise (that proved to be a plus in the end), that the delay was Rudd’s fault and that Trump’s comments meant Rudd had to go. The exchange, of course, revealed that Trump didn’t really know who Rudd was, let alone being obsessed by the abusive comments Rudd had made some years ago.
The Coalition has spent too long listening to the populist conservative media that made Rudd a whipping boy all year and implied his mere presence would doom any successful Trump-Albanese meeting. How is that looking? For this media, Trump was their hero; Albanese was their demon. They fantasised about Trump putting Albanese in his place and teaching him a lesson. Anybody believing them has been deceived, including the Coalition.
But the Coalition’s claim on Tuesday that the Australian government should now buckle at the knees and remove Rudd is beyond pathetic. It doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously on US issues. This meeting was a success for Rudd, who might have a role in facilitating a new industry for Australia.
As for Albanese, he has outfoxed the Coalition on the US alliance and Mr Trump. But the expectations are now huge.

The expectations are huge? 

Only a reptile intent on a snakes and ladders routine would deliver that assessment, hoping that Humpty Dumpty will take another great fall, to the reptiles' great delight.

If you can't get them going, always make sure to get them coming ...

King Donald, clearly in the grip of dementia and physical decline, and embarking on great constructions to preserve himself down through the ages - in the same way that Adolf did - can spin on a dime, and suddenly begin to rage like that Queen in Alice, "off with his head."

The best that can be done is sooth the beast, and hope that somehow the likes of Gaza and Ukraine survive the wild unpredictability.

Unlike those hapless, tortured lands, a mercantile solution seems like a quick, easy fix.

But how long can that beast be muzzled by a serve of rare mineral oats? Only the immortal Rowe knows, and it probably depends on what they put in the nose bag along with the minerals. Perhaps some Xanax?

It's always in the detail, and never mind former chairman Rudd in the Augean stables, look who's lurking in the shadows ...and blessed with exceptional headgear ...