Anthony Albanese denies he’s prioritising Beijing over Washington, says Donald Trump meeting will come

Anthony Albanese has rejected the idea he should be “embarrassed” about not yet meeting Donald Trump, as he suggested he could score multiple meetings with the US President in the second half of the year on the sidelines of multilateral summits.

Amid mounting pressure on him to meet the US leader, the Prime Minister on Tuesday dismissed suggestions he was prioritising Australia’s relationship with China over the United States, and said he would meet with Mr Trump in “the coming months”.

“We’ll see each other a lot in the last months of the year - that’s when summit season occurs,” he told Sky News in a morning media blitz.

“Australia and the United States are both members of the G20, of the Quad, of APEC. We’ll see each other quite a lot in coming months.”

But with Foreign Minister Penny Wong currently in Washington to meet with her Quad counterparts, the Prime Minister shrugged off suggestions it was “embarrassing” he was the only Quad leader to have not yet met with Mr Trump.

“We’ll have a meeting. We’ve had a few constructive discussions. I’m sure when we meet, it will be constructive as well,” he said, going on to describe their relationship as “respectful”.

With the deadline for negotiating on Mr Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs approaching next week, Mr Albanese was keen to stress on Tuesday morning that Australia has one of the best deals on the US President’s “reciprocal” imports.

“There’s no country in the world that has a lower tariff than Australia. So, that’s the starting point,” he said.

In a later interview with Sky News, Mr Albanese rebuffed claims he was prioritising China above the US. The Prime Minister is slated to travel to China later this month if a meeting with Xi Jinping can be locked in.

Challenged on why he had met the Chinese President more times than he had met the American, Mr Albanese took umbrage.

“Well, Xi Jinping has been in office for some time and the person who had Xi Jinping address our national parliament here was Tony Abbott, just for the record,” Mr Albanese said.

“I’ve met with the US President more than I have met with the President of China since I’ve been the Prime Minister and I’ve travelled five times to the United States and one time to China.”

Later in the day, shadow defence minister Angus Taylor criticised Mr Albanese for heading to China before he met with Mr Trump.

“The truth of the matter is whether Anthony Albanese likes the US president or not, the alliance is bigger than that. But it seems to me he’s more interested in his meetings with the president of China than the president of the United States,” Mr Taylor said.

Mr Albanese on Tuesday also defended his Government’s approach to the US, telling Channel 7 Australia was using all of its “assets” in the US to get a leg up with the Trump Administration.

Asked if that included Gina Rinehart or Greg Norman, who the Prime Minister has confirmed spoke to before the ill-fated G7 bilateral meeting, Mr Albanese said he was working in Australia’s interests.

“Well, we talk to all of our assets, if you like, the great Australians who make a difference around the world,” he told Sunrise.

The Prime Minister was also asked about reports in the Australian Financial Review covering an auditor-general’s report that revealed military chiefs failed for almost 2.5 years to provide formal updates to Defence Minister Richard Marles on the readiness of the army, air force, and navy to be deployed on missions.

The report released on Friday reportedly showed Defence stopped giving Mr Marles half-yearly “preparedness” reports.

Mr Albanese dismissed the AFR’s reporting as “absurd”.

“We meet regularly. I certainly have met with heads of all of the armed forces regularly. And, you know, that is just completely incorrect,” he said.

“The idea, this $57 billion that we’ve added to our defence investment of our capability, has come directly after discussions and engagement, obviously, with defence . . . Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”