00:02I'm not sure if they'll entirely dominate talks, but there's no doubt that they will
00:06feature heavily. Both Australia and Canada are, of course, grappling with the full implications
00:12of the chaos that we're seeing in the Middle East right now with the US strikes on Iran.
00:17In many ways, there is a lot of common ground. Both countries have got large numbers of their
00:22nationals effectively stranded in the Middle East and are trying to work out how they can
00:27best get many of those people home. Similarly, neither Canada or Australia are major players
00:33or really players at all in this conflict, but they have both, interestingly, given backing
00:38to the Trump administration's decision to strike Iran, notwithstanding big question marks over
00:44the legality of that decision. So I'd say, yes, there will be plenty of other things to discuss,
00:49but there's no doubt that the ever-evolving and rapidly escalating situation in the Middle
00:54East will also very firmly be on the agenda for the two leaders.
00:58And Stephen, what are going to be then the key priorities for Canada beyond discussions
01:03on the immediate crisis in the Middle East?
01:05Look, Canada has pitched this trip as part of a broader attempt by Mark Carney to build
01:11ties with other middle powers. So it's not just Australia. He's also going to India.
01:16He's coming from, he's come from India and he's going to Japan as well. So this is all part
01:21of Mark Carney's attempts to build these new formal and informal coalitions of middle powers
01:28in the face of increasingly aggressive and unpredictable behaviour by great powers, including most obviously
01:34the Trump administration. In Sydney, we expect him to have a pretty big focus on building investment
01:39links. Australia, like Canada, has got some big super funds. They've got a lot of capital
01:44sloshing around. Mark Carney has made it very clear he'd like to see super funds from other
01:49countries and investment funds across the world invest more heavily in Canada, particularly
01:54as it tries to build up its own economic resilience.
01:57In Canberra, it will be more politically focused and it will be really interesting to see exactly
02:02what Mark Carney has to say when he addresses both the Lowy Institute in Sydney, but also when
02:07he addresses federal parliament in what will probably be a fairly high profile event. We can talk
02:13about this a little bit more, but he's been talking a lot about the need to build a new order
02:17in the
02:18wake of these enormous strategic disruptions. So it'll be interesting to see exactly what he has to say.
02:23Well, he created headlines earlier this year, didn't he, when he declared that rules-based order was
02:28over. So we are going to hear more about that during this visit.
02:32Yeah, and it will be interesting to see how hard Mark Carney leans into this theme when he speaks to
02:37parliament.
02:38Of course, Canada, more so than Australia, has felt the sharp edge of the new approach that the US
02:45administration is taking. We've seen some very, very overt threats from Donald Trump towards Canada.
02:50We've seen tariffs whacked on Canada. We've seen, in many ways, that relationship go into a nosedive.
02:56In the wake of that, we saw this pretty famous speech from Carney at Davos, where he basically said,
03:01the world order is as we knew it is over. It was a bit of a fiction in the first
03:05place, perhaps,
03:06but now it's done. And it's up for countries like Canada to build new formal and informal alliances
03:12in order to push ahead with key priorities and to try and stabilise the world in the face of this
03:19rupture. Now, of course, Australia agrees with much of this, but it's taken a much less sharply
03:25critical approach towards the United States for many very large and obvious reasons. So it'll be
03:31interesting to see whether Mark Carney leans into direct criticism of the US while he's here,
03:35or speaks a little bit more gently, which gives Australia, of course, a little bit more room for
03:40manoeuvre. Stephen, thank you.
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