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The Albanese government is pushing ahead with plans for Joe Biden to visit Australia in less than a fortnight as the US debt ceiling crisis throws the US president’s trip into doubt, raising the prospect Vice President Kamala Harris may be sent as a substitute to the Quad leaders’ meeting in Sydney.
As well as a personal blow to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has developed a strong rapport with Biden, foreign policy experts warned the president’s absence would be a propaganda coup for China and undermine America’s efforts to restore its influence in the Pacific.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden have formed a close relationship over the past year.Credit: Bloomberg
Biden has insisted he is committed to the trip, but that he will have to miss it if congressional negotiations to extend the US debt ceiling require him to stay in Washington.
If Biden stays in the US, he could also miss a planned address to a joint sitting of parliament in Canberra, as well as next week’s G7 summit in Japan and a visit to Papua New Guinea where he is set to sign a landmark security agreement with Prime Minister James Marape.
The Quadrilateral security dialogue leaders’ meeting will also feature Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida appearing alongside Albanese at the Sydney Opera House, the most significant geopolitical event held in the city since the 2007 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
The elevation of the Quad to a leaders-level grouping has been a central feature of Biden’s push to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Modi will also appear before thousands of members of the Indian-Australian community at Quodos Bank Arena in Homebush on May 23 in his first visit to Australia in almost a decade.
Sources involved in the planning of the summit said preparations were proceeding uninterrupted and there had been no official communication from the White House that Biden may need to withdraw from the event.
Michael Green, the chief executive of the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, said there was an unfortunate precedent of US presidents being forced to pull out of such events at the last minute.
“I still think Biden’s visit will happen, but both presidents Clinton and Obama missed summits because of similar budget crises, so it is worrisome,” said Green, who, as a senior White House official, played an important role establishing the Quad.
Vice President Kamala Harris could be called upon to represent Biden at a Quad summit.Credit: AP
“It would be unfortunate as critics of the US would point to this and say that America can’t be relied upon. China would say, ‘See I told you so.’”
Barack Obama had to skip summits in Indonesia and Brunei in 2013 because the US government had been forced into shutdown, while Bill Clinton pulled out of the APEC summit in Japan in 1995 during a debt ceiling dispute, sending vice president Al Gore instead.
Green said it was possible that Biden could send Harris to represent the US in Sydney, but that she may also be needed in Washington to help with debt ceiling negotiations.
The so-called X-date – when the US Treasury runs out of money to pay its bills, forcing the government to default – has moved from mid-August to as early as June 1 because of lower-than-expected tax collections.
A default on the US federal government’s debt would be catastrophic for the US economy and financial markets and potentially trigger a global financial panic, threatening the US bond market’s status as a safe haven and the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
Speaking at an event in Washington DC, Erin Murphy – a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies – said that if Biden was unable to attend the Quad “hopefully they send very senior-level folks to go there, trying to burnish Vice President Harris’s credentials if they do send her”.
Murphy said China would seize upon Biden’s absence to paint the US as a divided and unreliable partner, saying it would have a “short-term impact” on America’s standing in the Indo-Pacific.
Biden told reporters after meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday (AEDT) that missing the G7 meeting in Japan was “possible but not likely”.
“I’m still committed, but obviously this is the single most important thing on the agenda,” he said of the debt ceiling negotiations.
“In other words, if somehow we got down to the wire and we still hadn’t resolved this, and the due date was … when I was supposed to be away, I would not go. I would stay until this gets finished.”
Sanjay Deshwal, head of the Harris Park Little India Association, said he expected between 12,000 to 15,000 people would attend Modi’s community event in Homebush.
He said he hoped Modi would visit Harris Park, a hub for Sydney’s Indian-Australian community, to lay the foundation stone for a gate describing the suburb as Little India.
– with Chris Zappone
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
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