‘Never was so much done for so little apparent result,’ aptly describes Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles’ recent lightning visit to Washington. It was a visit shrouded in mystery.

Was there a meeting or merely a photo opportunity with Vice-President J D Vance and with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth? Certainly, pictures were taken. Hegseth and Vance looked utterly bewildered as to why Marles was there.

Surely Marles’ visit was about more than an obsequious photo shoot?

The very mixed signals from the Pentagon and silence from the White House itself suggest confusion, at best, as to the purpose and result of the visit. Australian taxpayers – who paid for it – are left to guess what it was all about. Since then, another of Albanese’s Ministers – this time Tony Burke – paid a visit to Nauru to commit more of our money to the country.

The abject failure of Australia to yet secure a direct meeting with the US President powerfully underscores our undeniable irrelevance to global affairs currently. Among a long line of world leaders heading to the White House, Trump has had a face-to-face with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador – but has no plans to meet with Anthony Albanese.

We may be a useful port for the United States from time to time (especially if China moves against Taiwan) but otherwise Australia sits somewhere towards the bottom of the President’s in-tray.

These are the facts: Albanese has been Prime Minister for 1,196 days in total and 120 since the May, 2025 election. Trump has been President (for the second time) for over 220 days. The two have, apparently, exchanged ‘hellos’ on the phone – but have not met face to face since the President’s re-election. Trump detests our indiscreet Ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd and is fully apprised of the inclination of the Labor Caucus and Cabinet to repudiate all that Trump stands for.

Albanese’s people say they are keen for a meeting – but desperate to avoid a Zelenskyy-style humiliation in the Oval Office. A ‘fire-side’ sit-down in The White House appears highly unlikely. There’s hope in Canberra that a meeting might happen in New York later this month when Trump and Albanese attend the United Nations General Assembly. Nothing is fixed.

Sitting behind all this is the truth that our Prime Minister is just not up to a serious exchange with the people who run Washington or Europe’s leaders. Nothing in Albanese’s make-up or performance as Prime Minister provides the slightest confidence that he can mix it with the US or European leaders at anything like the level required these days.

Labor, federally, has one big advantage in domestic political terms. A compliant – even sycophantic press gallery – which depends on the government for its self-important existence. Astonishingly, more than 250 media representatives are registered to operate within the walls of Parliament House, Canberra. Considering next to nothing ever actually happens there this is all the more surprising.

November 2025 will mark 50 years since the dismissal of the then Whitlam government. November 11, 1975, to be precise. It was a day I remember vividly – not least because I was swatting for my final high school exams – but because something actually dramatic and impactful happened in Canberra.

Those extraordinary images of Whitlam bagging the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, along with the by then ‘caretaker’ Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser will remain with me forever.

Since then, Australian news consumers have been subjected to a diet of frequently below-average politicians serving up pre-prepared talking points with news reporters desperately trying to make them (and themselves) appear significant. High-paid government Ministers spend hours of each working day figuring out how to grab a headline on this or that issue. One government Minister last week felt compelled to hit social media to comment on the engagement of Taylor Swift and someone called Travis.

Memo to Ministers and others: the formula is becoming decidedly stale and no amount of verbiage can convince voters of the need to pay the slightest attention. Even a casual read of the serious US media tells us more than we discover from our own ‘so-called’ leaders here in Australia.

It is a sad truth that as America pursues a growing isolationist trajectory and Europe grapples with tricky problems of its own – Australia is adrift in the Indo-Pacific, largely inconsequential and irrelevant to the nations making decisions that will ultimately impact global wellbeing.

Well done to the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, Trade Minister and all the other luminaries of Mr Albanese’s Cabinet. Your performance, and our irrelevance, speaks for itself.