Opinion | Why Australia should rethink being part of Trump’s expanded G7

By taking part in the US president’s proposed gathering, the Australian prime minister risks unnecessarily offending Beijing

Sino-Australian relations are already tenuous, given the latter’s push for an independent inquiry into the origins and spread of Covid-19

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on June 5 Photo: EPA

Published: 2:42pm, 10 Jun 2020Updated: 3:27pm, 10 Jun 2020

When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison received a phone call from US President Donald Trump on June 2, inviting him to join an expanded G7 gathering at Camp David in September, there was one question he should have asked himself: “What’s in it for us?”

This was a week after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In that week, American misgivings about the direction in which their country was heading crystallised in Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the United States. They continue still.

Not since the civil rights movement and the death of Martin Luther King in the 1960s has the US witnessed such widespread civil unrest. This is a country divided against itself, with a president who seems unwilling or unable to find the words or actions to address his country’s divisions.

This forms the background to Morrison’s invitation for an event that, on the face of it, is not designed to rally Western democracies dealing with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Could Trump’s proposed gathering be nothing more than a photo opportunity for an embattled president? Photo: Shealah Craighead/White House/dpa

Rather, a “G7+” gathering would be aimed at providing an embattled president with a photo opportunity in the middle of what promises to be one of the most bitter presidential election contests in American history.

In other words, Morrison would be a prop in a wider political game.

Opinion | Why Australia should rethink being part of Trump’s expanded G7

By taking part in the US president’s proposed gathering, the Australian prime minister risks unnecessarily offending Beijing Sino-Australian relations are already tenuous, given the latter’s push for an independent inquiry into the origins and spread of Covid-19

By taking part in the US president’s proposed gathering, the Australian prime minister risks unnecessarily offending Beijing

Sino-Australian relations are already tenuous, given the latter’s push for an independent inquiry into the origins and spread of Covid-19