Paul Begley looks at how the Australian prime minister might “manage” his scheduled meeting with Donald Trump this week.

In 1987, a then little-known Australian barrister named Malcolm Turnbull took on the British Government, then led by the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, when he defended the MI5 author of Spycatcher, Peter Wright. The case was fought in Tasmania, where Wright lived as a British expat. Turnbull won the case and sent the visitors home with their Tory tails between their legs.

Thirty years on, in 2017, Australia’s then prime minister Turnbull engaged in a phone call on a refugee deal with the newly installed US President Donald Trump. The call was headlined in the media as “heated” and “explosive”, and Trump described it as “the worst call, by far, with world leaders that day”. Trump only lauds his successes and the call with Turnbull, from that perspective, had been a comprehensive failure because the Australian prime minister left the call a winner. Turnbull had forced him, against his vehement wishes, to honour a deal with Australia made by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Speaking about it later, Turnbull said, “It’s very important for me to be disciplined, to be calm and to pursue in a very focused way Australia’s national interest.”

Curiously, Turnbull was able to triumph against the English lion in 1987, stand firm against an untethered American eagle in 2017, but was brought to heel in 2018 by the incessant snapping at his ankles from the hyenas within his own party, urged on by a Murdoch media machine that was concerned his win in the coming 2019 election, which was likely, would give some oxygen to the few moderates and small........

© Pearls and Irritations