The US president apparently needed to be reminded what the Aukus deal was today, but Australian politicians did not seem bothered by the slip.
Asked about the agreement during an Oval Office meeting with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, Trump initially responded: “What does that mean?”
Once prompted by a reporter that Aukus is “the Australia-US defence alliance”, Trump replied, “We will be discussing that”, and reinforced the US’s “good relationship with Australia”.
Labor’s Murray Watt later said he “wasn’t too fazed”. Anthony Albanese excused the misstep, telling reporters: “There are a lot of acronyms in this business”. Peter Dutton agreed: “Not everyone gets the acronyms”.
The only political party to raise an alarm was the Greens: spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young contended that Trump had “admit[ted] that he doesn’t even know what Aukus is” and thought the president “doesn’t care about it, he can’t be bothered”.
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In pictures
Guardian Australia’s best photos of the month features floods, Marilyn lookalikes and regular swimmers (pictured above) preparing for their daily dive into the Mona Vale rockpool in Sydney.
What they said …
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“I don’t see there’s any reason why the Chinese side should feel sorry about that, or even to think about to apologise for that.”
Xiao Qian, Chinese ambassador to Australia, has defended the way China notified Australia about live-fire naval drills off the Australian coast.
“There should be no over-reading into this,” the ambassador said, stating that the drills had posed “no threat”.
In numbers
Prominent academic and Palestinian advocate Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah had her $870,000 grant – for a project commissioned to research Arab and Muslim-Australian social movements – suspended after the education minister requested the board of the ARC investigate her fellowship.
Before bed read
Watching Antony Green solidified Leo Puglisi’s interest in the news and ultimately shaped the young anchor’s “understanding of Australian elections”. Here, Puglisi commemorates the ABC election guru, who announced his upcoming retirement earlier this week.
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: NED. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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