This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Gregory Copley about Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, is embassy to Beijing, and then on top of that is haste, says Gregory, to get from Canberra to Washington to sit with President Trump.

What does this mean about the future of the Albanese government?

Beijing or Washington?

Beijing or Washington?

Gregory answers it very bluntly,

although there are caveats about the Chinese influence operations in Australia.

Here's Gregory to describe the balancing act

and that tipping the American way, perhaps, more tonight.

Intrinsically, I think Prime Minister Albanese has accepted this because although he was

fated earlier this year by the Communist Party of China when he spent his holidays and

his birthday in Beijing and the countryside.

When he got an invitation to speak to President Trump in the White House, he literally

flew there with almost shocking haste abandoning his Chinese commitments and was anxious for a

commitment of relationships with the United States and between Albanese and Trump.

So I think intrinsically he knows that the winning side right now is not Beijing, it's Washington.

So that's very significant.

His policies, however, and those of many of his colleagues is that they are still dependent on under-the-counter support from Beijing.

There's no question that the Communist Party of China has done an outstanding job

of penetrating the Australian political psyche, particularly in the Labour Party and the Green movement.

And this is, if you like, causing some caution on the part of Albanese and his friends.