A big beautiful day for US diplomacy in Canberra? Under Trump, the doors are closed

3 months ago 21

There was a time when Canberra’s diplomats, politicians, senior foreign affairs types and, naturally, freeloading journalists, looked forward to their invitation to a July 4 knees-up at the United States Embassy.

American ambassadors of past years knew the value of soft diplomacy, and July 4 – America’s Independence Day – was prime time for exercising it.

Donald Trump held a big, beautiful parade in Iowa ... the celebrations didn’t extend to US soil in Canberra though, where the US embassy was closed for July 4.

The vast red-brick pile that is the US Embassy, perched atop a hill in Canberra’s dress-circle suburb of Yarralumla, was thrown open for singularly down-home American-style celebrations on or around Independence Day.

Hot dogs with bright yellow American mustard were served along with burgers, fried chicken, popcorn and jugs of Coke. Red, white and blue balloons floated above. The ambassador gave a stirring speech celebrating the bonds of friendship between his or her nation and Australia.

Everyone in attendance was made to feel a bit special.

Not this July 4, however.

Former ambassador Caroline Kennedy has not been replaced since leaving the post at the end of last year.

Six months into the second Trump administration, and there is still no ambassador to Australia.

Perhaps it has slipped Donald Trump’s mind that down in the South Pacific somewhere exists a place that is a paying member of AUKUS.

Maybe he’s still fuming that Joe Biden, who has taken up restive residence in Trump’s disordered mind, appointed Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late, forever legendary Democrat president John F. Kennedy, as Australia’s last ambassador.

Worse, she proved to be much admired by Australians. Possibly unforgivably, she described her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as “a predator” and his views on vaccination as dangerous.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, of course, is Trump’s prized appointee as US Secretary of Health, which some might think amounts to a good reason why Trump shouldn’t appoint anyone else to anything.

Who might he choose as the next ambassador to Australia? The spear-carrying QAnon Shaman guy who wore the buffalo horns and face paint during the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (who Trump later pardoned)?

Meanwhile, lacking an ambassador, the great red-brick fortress this year peered sightless down upon all the lesser embassies shivering in Canberra’s coldest winter on record, any hint of soft power in abeyance and not a hot dog to offer.

US Consulates in Perth and Melbourne recently tried their best to fill the gap with Western and New Orleans-themed Independence Day parties, and the Australian-American Association organised a July 4 evening shindig at a Canberra club.

But up at Canberra’s embassy, the doors were closed.

What might a hard-pressed ambassador, even if there were one in the house, have had to boast about in a warming speech this Independence Day, anyway?

The celebrations in Trump’s White House this year are less about the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, than about the triumph of the Republicans’ “one great big beautiful bill”.

That’d be the July 4, 2025 legislation that among other things, seals a great transfer of wealth from the poor to the impossibly rich, the provision of $US59 billion to detain and deport the desperate (how about that Alligator Alcatraz, huh?), the end of healthcare for millions, and a drastic reduction in assistance for the poor to afford groceries. Oh, and an end to many of Biden’s incentives to encourage clean-energy technology.

It’s a mercy, really, that Canberra’s embassy remained closed for what was once a big, beautiful day of easy-going diplomacy.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.