US officials ‘re-evaluating’ Biden Australia visit plan

Dominic Giannini | May 17, 2023

US President Joe Biden’s planned visit to Australia for the Quad meeting next week may not go ahead.

The leaders of Australia, the US, Japan and India are scheduled to meet in Sydney on May 24 and Mr Biden was expected to address the federal parliament in Canberra the day before.

While White House national security spokesman John Kirby confirmed Mr Biden will head to Japan for the G7 summit at the end of the week he would not confirm the president’s subsequent trips to Australia and Papua New Guinea.

“We’re re-evaluating the rest of the trip right now,” Mr Kirby said, nothing negotiations with Congress to raise the country’s debt ceiling were continuing.

Mr Kirby said if Mr Biden’s trip “gets truncated or changed or modified in any way”, it should be seen as the president putting his priorities in the proper order. 

He added Mr Biden would meet two of the Quad leaders – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – at the three-day G7 summit in Hiroshima.

The wrangling in Washington between the White House and Congress Republicans revolves around a deal to raise the US government’s $US31.4 trillion ($A46.9 trillion) debt ceiling and avert an economically catastrophic default.

The White House advice on Wednesday comes after just hours Mr Albanese said Mr Biden was going to the G7 and the Quad meeting and that he looked forward to welcoming him along with Prime Minister Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to Sydney.

It would have been the first visit by a US president to Australia in almost a decade and the fifth time a US president had addressed MPs and senators. 

Australia’s former ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos said the Quad talks wouldn’t be the same if the Mr Biden wasn’t there. 

“Joe Biden did a great thing in elevating the Quad to the leaders level. It’s really turbocharged the process and there’s lots of good stuff coming out of the process so it would be great to maintain the momentum in Sydney,” he told ABC radio this week.

But he noted the stakes were getting high in the US debt ceiling negotiations.

“And obviously there are major economic implications both for the US and globally,” he added.

The Quad is not a military alliance and was set up to counter Chinese influence in the region.