{"id":593958,"date":"2026-04-08T18:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T18:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593958\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T18:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T18:50:09","slug":"when-it-comes-to-trump-albaneses-tactic-has-been-dont-buy-in-and-dont-bite-back-why-has-that-changed-australian-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593958\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to Trump, Albanese\u2019s tactic has been don\u2019t buy-in and don\u2019t bite back. Why has that changed? | Australian foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Albanese has adopted a careful and deliberate strategy for dealing with Donald Trump since his return to the White House in early 2025: don\u2019t buy-in, don\u2019t bite back.<\/p>\n

The approach is a calculation that there is little to be gained from responding to Trump\u2019s every Truth Social post, lest it distract the government, provoke the president or, heaven forbid, threaten the Aukus pact.<\/p>\n

The prime minister has refused to stray from it even when Trump has made absurd and inflammatory suggestions such as transforming war-ravaged Gaza into the \u201cRiviera of the Middle East\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Albanese would argue his polite, non-confrontational brand of diplomacy has been a success: Aukus is \u201cfull steam ahead\u201d, a multi-billion dollar critical minerals deal has been inked, Julian Assange is free and Australia is no worse off when it comes to US trade tariffs than most other countries.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

But as Trump\u2019s outbursts have escalated since the start of the Iran conflict, including with repeated criticisms of Australia, the approach has become less and less tenable.<\/p>\n

When Trump threatened the widespread bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran if the regime did not surrender, silence was not an option.<\/p>\n

Albanese did respond this time, describing the threat as an \u201cextraordinary statement to make\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s appropriate to use language such as that from the president of the United States. And I think it will cause some concern,\u201d he told Sky News.<\/p>\n

The rare criticism was carefully worded and delivered in the comfort of a pre-recorded television interview, without the opportunity for other reporters to interrogate it.<\/p>\n

It should not be significant that an Australian prime minister has called out what was a brazen threat to commit a war crime.<\/p>\n

But so disciplined has Albanese been in refusing to offer a \u201crunning commentary\u201d on Trump that Wednesday\u2019s comments warrant further examination.<\/p>\n

So what explains the shift?<\/p>\n

The prime minister clearly believed that Trump\u2019s threat of mass bombings of bridges and power plants crossed a line that hadn\u2019t been crossed previously, necessitating a public response.<\/p>\n

Many \u2013 including Labor elders and members of the party\u2019s rank-and-file \u2013 would argue the line was breached long before that incendiary Truth Social post, including when the US and Israel started bombing Iran in what experts assessed was a clear breach of international law.<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s criticism of Trump\u2019s language came after he last week started questioning the objectives of a war that the government had endorsed from the outset.<\/p>\n

The two developments should not be interpreted as the first signs of a de-coupling from the US, or that Albanese is about to join the likes of French president, Emmanuel Macron, in openly challenging Trump.<\/p>\n

Rather, it strikes as the prime minister reacting to the Australian public\u2019s resentment of Trump and the war in Iran, which is directly responsible for the spiralling petrol and diesel prices<\/a> that motorists are paying at the bowser.<\/p>\n

It is, as is so often the case with Albanese, a political calculation.<\/p>\n

As prime minister, Albanese perhaps cannot afford to be as colourful in his criticism of Trump as Andrew Hastie or the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, who on Wednesday described the president\u2019s threats as \u201cwell beyond the realms of acceptability\u201d.<\/p>\n

But, to borrow another line from Canavan\u2019s appearance at the National Press Club, he should be able to \u201ccall a spade a spade at times like these\u201d.<\/p>\n

We now await to see Albanese\u2019s response to Trump\u2019s next outburst.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t been too long.<\/p>\n

Dan Jervis-Bardy is Guardian Australia\u2019s chief political correspondent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Albanese has adopted a careful and deliberate strategy for dealing with Donald Trump since his return to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-593958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}