The prime minister is in Kuala Lumpur where he is speaking from the ASEAN summit. It is summit season, which means that Anthony Albanese will be travelling a bit over the next week or so, but the time difference isn’t so extreme that he can’t still pick his moment to break in on the domestic cycle.

As a general rule, Albanese has made it a point not to talk about domestic politics while he is overseas. Let’s see if that holds, given the Coalition mess and Barnaby Joyce’s freelancing.

(Fun fact – free lance comes from Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 book Ivanhoe, where he used it to describe medieval knights who served no lord – so basically, their lance was footloose and fancy free)

Albanese:

Last night I had the opportunity to meet Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, for the very first time.

We had a very warm first engagement.

And it was terrific to be one of the first international leaders to meet the new Prime Minister, the first woman to be Prime Minister of Japan.

And Japan is such an important relationship for us. We engage in defence and issues but importantly as an economic partsner, we’re a reliable supplier of energy for Japan.

Japan of course has recently with the Magami frigates as well which is where we will source them and manufacture in Western Australia as that relationship goes forward. This morning I met with China’s Premier Li.

Not our first meeting n deed, our seventh meeting. That says something about the engagement which is there. It was a positive meeting. Dialogue is about advancing our interests, matching our differences but dealing with each other in a frank and clear way.

China is our largest trading partner. One in four of Australian jobs depends upon trade. And China represents almost arn about 30% of the destination of our exports. So this is a relationship that has improved.

That is stabilising. It’s a relationship that’s important for Australian jobs. It’s as simple as that. I’ve said repeatedly we must cooperate where we can. Disagree where we must. But engage in our national interests. And that’s the spirit in which we entered the discussion today. Later today, I will attend event shortly, the next event I attend will be to welcome Timor-Leste’s ascension in to full ASEAN membership.

We welcome this. Timor-Leste is an important relationship for Australia. I very much congratulate them on their joining the ASEAN group of nations as well. So the next period is going to be very busy. We have a dinner tonight that is hosted by the Malaysian Prime Minister who welcomed me here this morning. I have other bilaterals with a range of nations but last night as well I was able to engage informally with the leaders of Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and other nations as well, just to reinforce the work that we’re doing on engaging in our region