Richard Marles, what a coincidence.
The faintly farcical debate over whether the brief White House chat between Australia’s deputy prime minister and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week was a “meeting” or merely a “happenstance encounter” lit up plenty of phones around Canberra on Thursday — as well as chewing up a fair chunk of Question Time.
The episode has already been compared to the US television show Veep, but could also be easily linked to its more bleak and savage British cousin, The Thick of It, which brilliantly skewers the petty vanities of national politics.
The main problem stemmed from what Canberra officials are fond of calling “expectations management”.
Marles declared in a statement on Sunday that he was travelling (at rather short notice) to Washington DC to meet with Hegseth and other top Trump officials.
Unsurprisingly, both parliamentarians and journalists in Canberra assumed — reasonably enough — that Marles had urgent and very specific business with the defense secretary.
It soon became fairly clear that Marles might also be hunting slightly larger game, and that he was winging his way around the globe because there was a window open to meet even more consequential and elusive political players — including the US Vice-President JD Vance.
The Trump administration has been blunt that it wants Australia to spend much more heavily on defence, and one US government source said Marles was focused on reassuring its most senior figures that the federal government is willing to invest more in its military over time.
They also said his discussions with Donald Trump’s inner circle would help Anthony Albanese secure his long-awaited but not-yet-locked-in meeting with the US president, sooner rather than later.
A meeting between Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese is yet to be locked in. (Reuters/ABC News)
What happened in Washington?
Having arrived in town, the deputy prime minister duly sat down with a fairly impressive list of administration heavyweights — not just the vice-president, but also the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the controversial but influential Trump whisperer Stephen Miller.
But fixing a meeting with Hegseth seemed much harder, with Australian officials suggesting Marles had run headfirst into “scheduling issues” exacerbated by internal Pentagon dynamics which, under Trump and Hegseth, veer between the merely chaotic to the fratricidal.
A (very senior) visiting South Korean delegation and extremely long cabinet meetings with Trump probably didn’t help either.
A South Korean contingent led by Prime Minister Lee Jae Myung met with Donald Trump and senior officials at the same time Richard Marles was in Washington. (Reuters: Brian Snyder)
In the end, Marles got his handshake with Hegseth, who dropped by the vice-president’s office to say hello and canvas a few key issues in less time than it takes to run through a couple of Bluey episodes.
Unsurprisingly, the deputy prime minister then posted a photo designed to quieten the doubters, standing side-by-side with a smiling vice-president and defense secretary near the beating heart of US power, before winging his way back to Australia.
But as odd as the visit seemed, it would have been hard for Marles to predict its bizarre coda back in Canberra.
The deputy prime minister hadn’t provided abundant details about his high-powered meetings, and several Australian journalists had — as usual — written to the US defence department trying to get more information about his sit-down with Hegseth.
The response, attributed simply to a US defence official, was as bizarre as it was brief, and had more than a hint of derision.
“We can confirm there was not a meeting. It was a happenstance encounter,” they said.
A cold statement followed by a warmer recollection
In private, Australian MPs, officials and staffers used a host of different words to describe the missive.
To pluck out just a few: “weird”, “pass-ag”, “bizarre”, “odd”, “snarky” and “contemptuous.”
It might not have directly contradicted Marles (who was careful to never deploy the m-word while describing the tête-à -tête), but its authors must have been keenly aware it left the distinct impression the deputy prime minister was being cut down to size.
A “happenstance encounter” is what happens when you run into your mother’s cousin in the supermarket.
It doesn’t seem a generous way to describe even a brief discussion with the defence minister from a country that has been perhaps America’s most loyal military ally over a span of decades.
Marles open to defence spending hike after meeting Hegseth
It also seemed extremely unlikely that Hegseth had simply wandered into the vice-president’s office only to randomly stumble upon a smiling Marles, with cameras at the ready.
The political controversy which followed was predictable, with the Greens saying the US was being “contemptuous” and the Coalition demanding Marles explain himself.
A few hours later, the Pentagon blandly contradicted itself, issuing a fresh statement from its chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, saying that there had, in fact, been a “meeting” between the two men.
The tone was also very different, with Parnell saying the secretary “welcomed the opportunity to meet in person with Deputy Prime Minister Marles for the third time this year” and that “their meeting at the White House on Tuesday was co-Âordinated in advance”.
The opposition continued to prod a visibly frustrated Marles about the brouhaha during Question Time, who responded by mocking the Coalition and accusing them of trying to sabotage the US-Australia alliance.
An America First era meeting
It’s not easy to parse the entrails of this slightly bizarre episode, or to say why — “meeting” or not — Hegseth wasn’t willing to carve out more time for his visitor.
Perhaps the defense secretary simply wasn’t that keen to spend a long time face-to-face with Marles until the Pentagon’s AUKUS review is complete and the Americans have a clearer idea of what more (if anything) they want from Canberra under the pact.
Australia urged to give wartime AUKUS sub ‘commitments’ to US
After all, Trump is always urging his top officials to find what leverage they can with friend and foe alike, and find new ways to use it.
In the end, the incident probably just reinforces two things that are already well known in Canberra.
The first is that the chaos and dysfunction inside the US national security establishment under Trump and Hegseth make life difficult and unpredictable for even close allies like Australia.
Pity the Australian officials and diary managers trying to work out when (and where) the annual AUSMIN meeting is going to happen this year.
The second is that in the era of America First, Australia will have to grapple not just with a growing list of US demands but also with the occasional bout of American derision, alongside the usual bonhomie. Even when it seems totally pointless.
Given the way this president tends to operate, that’s one thing that probably isn’t a coincidence.
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