US President Joe Biden
US President Joe Biden (Image: AP/Patrick Semansky)

Australian media has been accused of “hyperventilating” over US President Joe Biden’s cancelled Sydney trip, but the other Quad partners appear significantly less bothered by the snub.

Japan will still host the leaders of India, the US and Australia for a G7 summit this week.

Foreign policy experts say the Quad agenda will not be affected by the change of plans — and for India, it may even be a boon.

“It’s almost a sigh of relief for Modi,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Teesta Prakash told Crikey. 

She said Biden’s change of plans will mean Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get to visit Papua New Guinea by himself, and will still go ahead with his own trip to Australia. 

“Strategically, it’s advantageous [for Modi], the PNG leg of his trip was more important than the Australian and Quad stuff.”

Prakash said India was looking to expand its diplomatic footprint in the Pacific, including a desire to have greater influence in Papua New Guinea. 

“It creates a lot more breathing room for Indian and PNG officials to really focus on their own growing relations.” 

While Biden decided to cancel plans to visit Australia and PNG, he will still go to Japan for a summit of G7 nations, according to the White House. 

The reason for the curtailed trip is a looming domestic crisis in the US: a political stalemate over the country’s borrowing limit that has the potential to cause an economic meltdown.

“The US can’t have its president a world away while the country faces economic catastrophe and default,” Bruce Wolpe of the United States Studies Centre told Crikey.

Wolpe said the strategic goals of the Quad would not be hurt by the cancellation, especially since Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Biden, Modi and Anthony Albanese will meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima.

But the situation may be a bad look for the US in the eyes of China, Wolpe said. 

“Biden likes to say in all earnestness to world leaders ‘America’s back’. How long is that going to last? When something like this happens, when a president has to curtail an important mission to deal with a domestic political issue of major import to the world, from a distance it looks absolutely ridiculous,” he said. 

“I think that’s something that concerns his foreign policy team.” 

In Australia, media analysts have interpreted the change of plans as a “snub to a friend and a gift to a rival”, in the words of The Age’s editorial on Thursday.

“It is quite extraordinary that Biden let slip the chance to draw a further line in the Pacific against an expansionary Beijing,” it read. 

Ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull urged Australians to “get a grip” in a tweet overnight.

“Biden’s cancellation of the visit to Australia is not a ‘snub’ or a ‘gift to China’ — this is hyperventilation on steroids. His first duty is to do and be seen to do everything he can to ensure the US Govt can pay its bills,” Turnbull tweeted.