Crisafulli’s bid to bring Trump – and the Quad – to Queensland

5 hours ago 2

Premier David Crisafulli has made an audacious bid to get US President Donald Trump to Queensland as he pushes the state’s claims to host the Quad leaders’ summit.

The Quad – Australia, the United States, Japan and India – has a stated goal of defending a free and open Indo-Pacific, but is widely seen as an attempt to contain China’s influence in the region.

With India hosting this year’s leaders’ summit, the earliest Australia could host would be 2026.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli is making a pitch to host US President Donald Trump and the Quad in Queensland.

The premier used an American Independence Day event in Brisbane to announce Queensland’s candidature if, as he expected, Australia was confirmed host.

Crisafulli told the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham) lunch he had been persistent in his lobbying of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, citing Brisbane’s experience of hosting the G20 leaders’ summit in 2014.

“It was amazing to see the world leaders here, but I’m not certain that Queensland quite got the buzz and the recognition, because it was so big,” he said.

Premier David Crisafulli speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia in Brisbane on Friday.

“It was Obama and Putin and was just awe-inspiring, the amount of horsepower and personnel and the security detail, but sort of it blended a little bit into where it was.”

Crisafulli said that would not be the case with the Quad – even with Trump, it would be of a much smaller scale.

“Based on where things are at the moment geopolitically, who those partners are, where it will be, the fact that we’re about to become an Olympic city, the journey point where we are as a state, I think we can own it,” he said.

“The defence lens and the defence opportunities that come with that, and the investment opportunities, it would be a really big win for us and it’s something I’m really pinning our hopes on.

“I’m going to keep fighting pretty hard for it.”

Crisafulli said he would lead his first overseas delegation as premier within the next month to both India and Japan, during which Quad hosting rights would be “top of the agenda”.

Comment was sought from both Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

While the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) celebrated July 4 inside the Brisbane Sofitel ballroom, a small band of protesters outside demonstrated against Australia’s military cooperation with Trump’s United States, including through AUKUS, and the ongoing war in Gaza.

Annette Brownlie, the chair of Independent and Peaceful Australia, said.

Independent and Peaceful Australia Network chair Annette Brownlie was among the protests outside the American Chamber of Commerce lunch.

“We’re very concerned about what sort of deals our premier might be doing with the American Chamber of Commerce,” she said.

“We don’t know what sort of contracts, etc, they will sign. We are deeply enmeshed in the American military industry – the F35 fighter jets, parts of those fighter jets are made here in Brisbane.

“It implicates us and makes us complicit for the genocide that’s happening in Gaza and in Palestine.”

Ferra Engineering, based at Tingalpa in Brisbane’s east, manufactures components for the US’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and Crisafulli appeared to single it out while on stage.

“That’s one company employing 100 people doing one small element in the backblocks of Queensland,” he said.

“Now that’s a massive opportunity, and what we can do is make sure that we allow the private sector to do their job and invest in those partnerships that get people to look here [for investment].”

Along with Trump, Albanese would host his counterparts from India (Narendra Modi) and Japan (Shigeru Ishiba) at the security summit.

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