Albanese’s pilgrimage to pay homage at the feet of our lords and masters, the United States of America, is over and he’s back on our selection at the Lodge. Yes, he’s finally come home with cattle now, our Anthony who’s gone a-droving, and he’s returned to enjoying the usual perks of office he loves so well. And who could deny him his perquisites after the extensive display of diplomatic foot-bathing he lavished on The Donald?

Most of you are unlikely to need a recap, but in case you missed it, last week Kevin Rudd sat down at a White House meeting table with Donald Trump – oh and by the way, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was there, too.

According to a White House fact-sheet, (I’d caution against placing too much emphasis on the word fact here) the purpose of the meeting was, ‘ACHIEVING CRITICAL MINERAL AND ENERGY DOMINANCE!’ and ‘DEEPENING DEFENSE COOPERATION.’ That’s the Trump White House’s all-caps+bold+exclamation-mark style, not ours. Trump’s White House media statements about Albanese’s visit go further, with other stratospheric and fantabulous outcomes for the USA amounting to eleventy bazillion dollars, but we’ll spare you the Netflix, all-caps details.

So there was our PM, a man who talks and lives in all lower-case letters, sitting up at the table with the man who lives permanently in an all-caps world. For anyone who missed the meeting, the United States produces THE BEST SUBMARINES IN THE ENTIRE WORLD because THIS UNPRECEDENTED INVESTMENT WILL CREATE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF NEW, HIGH-PAYING JOBS FOR AMERICANS while THE USA HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE BEST FRIEND OF AUSTRALIA. Except of course when they’re applying 50% tariffs to Australia’s kitchen cabinets (I don’t know either) or steel and aluminium products, then you can all go hang.

Despite over nine months of will-they-wont-they meeting wrangling, Albanese could not have timed his visit more perfectly. Earlier this month, the Chinese government, as is their want, imposed more stringent export controls on their rare earths, curbing their rare earths and related technologies exports in a move China claimed was to, “prevent the misuse of minerals in the military and other sensitive sectors.” Which is the nicest, diplomatically Sinitic way of telling Donald Trump’s America to get fucked.

Enter rare earth-rich Australian Prime Minister, stage left, with Trump at the meeting insisting that rare minerals were “Australia’s greatest asset”, while every Australian knows it’s actually Kath and Kim. This unTrumpian-like fawning may go some way to explaining why Trump, a man who likes to figuratively and often literally, screw anyone he does business with, laid out the red carpet for Albanese and team. There hasn’t been such deference from The Donald since he paid the last interest installment on his Russian loans.

And while Albo sat there smiling across at men (and yes, it was all men) like John Phelan, the Secretary of the US Navy with zero military experience who owns a ranch charmingly called Big Rack, and Pete Hegseth, the aptly named Secretary for War and part-time alcoholic wife abuser, it was almost the most golden of meetings. If not for the fact that it was overtaken, in Australia’s media at least, by the delusion that Kevin Rudd’s presence was apparently far more newsworthy.

Andrew Clennell, emerging from the colon of Sky News, provided the grist to the 24-hour news content mills by breaking through the press pack, asking: “Have you had any concerns with this administration – with the stance on Palestine, climate change, or, even things the ambassador said about you from the past, the Australian ambassador?” Erm, one of those three things is not like the other, good sir. If you’re not familiar with Mr Clennell, he’s described on the Sky News homepage with breathtaking modesty, as being solely responsible for, “driving the national agenda”, an awe-inspiringly prodigious control over Australians and their lives I’m sure they’re completely unaware of.

However, when Trump faked confusion about who the Australian ambassador might be, when he was almost within reach of letting the matter go, in true Aussie school-boy dobbing fashion, Albanese helpfully pointed to Kevin Rudd at the other end of the table. “That’s him there,” he said, like the stone throwers in Monty Python’s Life Of Brian screeching, “She did, she did, she threw the stone.” No mention from our Albo™ about the time back in 2017 when he told a Splendour In The Grass audience, “He scares the shit out of me,” about Trump, now his brand-new bestie.

Where this Murdoch culture-wars, plot device becomes an injustice for Australians is that for most of the next 72 hours, the news from the Australian-US meetings was dominated by whether Donald liked Kevin or whether Kevin had or hadn’t apologised for remarks from a decade ago that nobody except National-Agenda-Driving-Andrew appears to remember.

What Australians mostly missed out on was the news that the Albanese government promised to contribute another $1 billion to the U.S government to expand and modernise the United States’ submarine industrial base in Newport News, Virginia. That’s on top of the $1 billion the Albanese government has already spent so far on upgrading the United States’ submarine facilities for them. $2 billion for us to build the USA a manufacturing facility for USA submarines on USA soil? What a bargain for us. That must be what Trump calls, “the art of the deal.” But excuse me, did you know Kevin Rudd said something about Trump 10 years ago? 

While the media were obsessing over Kevin’s ancient indiscretions, Australians also missed out on the news that the US Department of War (no, that’s not a Futurama episode) will construct a 100 metric tonne-per-year advanced gallium refinery at the Alcoa plant in Wagerup, Western Australia. 

The White House expanded on this minor factoid by adding that the facility will further advance the USA’s “self-reliance in critical minerals processing.” How about that for a win for Australia? Our minerals being dug up for the USA, and processed here by the USA, by a USA-owned corporation, to ship to the USA? But did we tell you Kevin Rudd once said something about Trump?

It is true the Albanese government had a very low bar to jump after the 2022 election. Anthony Albanese only had to be less shit than his predecessor, Scott Morrison, but can our best hope for the future really be begging for a few scraps in a deal where Australia pays billions to prop up America’s naval shipyards without a guarantee the US will hand over a nuclear-powered submarine in return? Oh Donald, yes please.

Can we really be that thrilled the Albanese government promised the US that Australia’s superannuation funds would increase their investments in the US to $1.44 trillion by 2035, an increase of almost $1 trillion from current levels? Oh yes please Anthony, inject more of our money into the USA. 

Are West Australians ecstatic yet that the US has secured the HMAS Stirling facility outside of Perth to “store” US submarine’s nuclear waste in perpetuity? You bet you are. You bet I am.

Both men used each other in their recent meeting (and we don’t mean agenda driving Andrew), but it is and always will be, an unequal relationship. The USA holds most of the cards, while Australia’s subservience to this arrangement brings an almost pathetic indignity upon us. This is what happens when you have a political field dominated by one player and a centralised, spoon-fed media. It’s what happens when Australia’s centralised ruling political party answers to nobody but themselves – you get actions and policies that nobody asked for.

But on the bright side, a man who lies like three-day old road kill, who once said he likes to grab women by their genitalia, who claimed that not catching sexually transmitted diseases was his own personal Vietnam War, (bone spurs don’t hold you back on your back, my brother) a man who has embarked the USA upon its own internal Gleichschaltung, has now become our Prime Minister’s new best friend.

As so often happens in Albanese’s meek, conflict-allergic administration, while the US has unfettered access to Australia’s wealth of critical minerals and Australia becomes a dump for US nuclear waste, while Australia pumps billions of Australian dollars into US infrastructure on US soil all while bending the knee like a fence-sitting vacillator, surely it’s Australia that’s finished up getting grabbed by the Albo™.