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Joe Biden has told a reporter to “shush up” after being hit with a barrage of questions including about America’s debt ceiling crisis while meeting Anthony Albanese.
The United States President and Australian Prime Minister appeared before the cameras on Saturday in Hiroshima, Japan on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
The pair each made brief statements about the Australia-United States relationship and shook hands before journalists moved to ask Mr Biden a series of questions.
The President was first quizzed on how concerned he was about the debt talks back in America to which he replied “not at all”.
Reporters continued to pepper Mr Biden with questions, such as whether Republicans were negotiating in good faith to avoid America defaulting on its US$31.4tn debt.
“It goes in stages, I’ve been in these negotiations before. It started off…,” the President said before a reporter tried to ask another question.
Mr Biden fired back: “Shush up, okay? Thank you”.
“It goes in stages,” he then reiterated. “And what happens is the first meetings weren’t all that progressive, the second ones were, the third one was,” he continued.
“I still believe we’ll be able to avoid a default and we’ll get something decent done.”
Further questions put to the President were ignored, with Mr Albanese later joking to Mr Biden about how “they’re very disruptive”.
Mr Biden and Mr Albanese were due to hold talks in Sydney next week as part of a meeting of the Quad leaders, which also includes India and Japan.
However, the meeting was called off after Mr Biden cancelled his trip to Australia to deal with the debt ceiling ahead of a June 1 deadline.
Discussions in Japan were then scheduled to align with Mr Biden and Mr Albanese being in Hiroshima for the G7 summit.
Australia is not part of the G7 but Mr Albanese was invited by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as an outreach partner.
Mr Albanese and Mr Biden have also signed a statement of intent relating to climate, critical minerals and the clean energy transformation as a “testament” to the close bilateral relationship.
“We’re going to establish climate and clean energy as a third pillar of the Australia-US alliance,” Mr Biden said.
“This contract can enable the expansion and diversification of clean energy supply chains, especially as it relates to critical materials.”
Mr Albanese described “action on climate change” as “the entry fee to credibility in the Indo-Pacific”.
“Many of our neighbours understand that climate change is an existential threat and what we understand is that it’s an important component of our national security,” he said.
“And that’s why it is an important component, an essential part, of our alliance.”
