It’s a strange old world for Australians to have woken up in. But it would appear that Donald Trump either suspects Alexander Downer is part of a leftist-inspired deep state conspiracy to bring down his presidency or, more likely, believes that it is useful to him politically to create that impression as he embarks on the 2020 campaign trail.

Just to be clear, we have arrived in this unexpected place because Downer did the correct thing. After George Papadopoulos, then a foreign policy adviser to Trump, told him Moscow had damaging information about Hillary Clinton “during a night of heavy drinking” at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London in May 2016, Downer, then Australian high commissioner to the UK, told the authorities.

Australian government agreed to help Donald Trump investigate Mueller inquiry origins Read more

From the moment that happened, Australia was stapled to cartwheeling madness in Washington, which has only intensified as Trump thrashes ever more wildly against his potential impeachment.

In late May, Trump made it clear he wanted Australia’s role in setting off the FBI inquiry into links between Russia and his election campaign examined by the US attorney general, William Barr.

Shortly after, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said publicly the government would consider any request to participate.

A day later, on 25 May, the Australian ambassador in Washington, Joe Hockey, sent a more forward letter to Barr, copied to Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, confirming Australia would use “its best endeavours to support your efforts in this matter”.

Hockey noted while Downer was no longer employed by the government, “we stand ready to provide you with all relevant information to support your inquiries”.

Then we arrive at Trump asking Morrison directly.

The New York Times reported this call, leader to leader, happened just before Morrison departed for his American visit last week. Presumably at this point Trump had the story about what he did or did not say to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine – the story which has triggered last week’s impeachment calls – breathing down his neck.

Morrison’s press office said in response to the New York Times story, which broke on Tuesday morning, Australian time, the prime minister told Trump that Australia was ready to help, which could mean something, or nothing.

It would be hard, given the sum of the parts, for Australia to do anything other than offer a broad statement of cooperation. Saying nick off Donald might look like we had something to hide, and it would certainly trigger more unhinging from the leader of the free world, and there’s already a surfeit of that.

But how is Australia helping, exactly?

Are we investigating Downer ourselves?

Are we handing over relevant intelligence to this inquiry?

What undertakings, specifically and precisely, has the prime minister given? Until Morrison stands up and takes questions himself, this remains a mystery.

While I suspect, in lieu of evidence to the contrary, that Morrison is trying to dead bat Trump, to humour him if you like, rather than race to send Downer – the foreign affairs minister who took Australia into the Iraq war – off for a bout of extraordinary rendition, we need to be very clear that Australia is being sucked into a wretchedly partisan process, which draws us into the insanity of Trump trying to dig himself out of an impeachment hole as he campaigns for 2020.

If the world hadn’t gone nuts, what Morrison should have said to Trump in that call is Downer – an experienced Australian diplomat and former foreign affairs minister and long-time supporter of the alliance – did the correct and patriotic thing, presented as he was with evidence of foreign interference in an American presidential election.

Again in a world that wasn’t arse-about, we could have said that if the circumstances were reversed, if a foreign actor was looking to interfere in Australian democratic processes, and an American diplomat had knowledge of this, we would expect the appropriate authorities to be informed.

End of story. Good talk Donald. See you next week.

But given Trump prevailed in the 2016 contest with or without Russia’s help, and is now trying to get a grip on this crisis so he can turn it to his political advantage, Australia is ringside, alert and alarmed, as this is spun into a persecution narrative, where poor innocent Donald is under siege from the deep state, or a crafty Aussie double agent.

Meanwhile, the Australian government is tiptoeing gingerly around the madman in the White House, hoping he doesn’t detonate.

There’s one more thing to be clear about. Morrison did have an opportunity in Washington to be transparent about Trump’s appeals to him on this very question.

While the Australian press were all standing in Joe Hockey’s backyard in Washington, Morrison was asked by Jacob Greber, the Washington correspondent for the Australian Financial Review, whether there was “any discussion around documents being declassified relating to Alexander Downer and a certain meeting in London? Did that come up at all?”

It was a high lob. But the prime minister declined Greber’s kind invitation to bring the voters into his confidence. “Well I’m not going to go into private conversations but what we were discussing yesterday were issues about our strategic relationship from trade. The frontier technologies, our defence relationships, these were not issues that were there for discussion.”

Frankly, it would have been far better if Morrison had been upfront about all this when he had the opportunity, rather than have the New York Times deliver Australians the news.