As the Australian prime minister prepares for his visit to the UN in New York next week, Robert Macklin looks into what Anthony Albanese might be hoping for on the trilateral security deal.

A repost from 20 September 2025

Is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese really committed to the continuing AUKUS fiasco, or is he playing the long game where he hopes America will let him off the hook, or the whole edifice collapses from within?

Since I have a rare respect for Albo’s Machiavellian scholarship, I think the latter. I also think he’s following Sun Tzu’s reported edict, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

Albanese was a Cabinet minister on two of the three occasions that led to the purchase of the world’s most advanced RAAF “platform” from the US, the penetrating attack weapon, the “Growler”. Some 13 of them were delivered to Queensland’s Amberley base in 2017 and since then have been melded into the RAAF’s guard duties. Last week, the Americans signed contracts for........

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