Julie Bishop says Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull don’t have to become best friends, but she expects they will find a lot in common.

The pair are due to sit down in New York on the sidelines of an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea – their first meeting since the infamous heated phone call over the US-Australia refugee deal earlier in the year.

“They don’t have to be best friends but of course they will be gracious towards each other,” Australia’s foreign minister told ABC radio before Turnbull’s arrival on Thursday.

“I have no doubt that the prime minister and President Trump will find a lot in common, I’m sure they’ll get along well.”

Bishop said the call, which Trump described as the worst leader’s call of the day, should not be overstated.

“It was a new administration, briefings were coming from across the administration and there was a moment when the president expressed less than admiration for an agreement that the previous administration has entered into.”

The important thing was the Trump administration honouring the agreement to take refugees from Manus Island and Nauru.



Bishop said she was looking forward to welcoming the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and the defence secretary, Jim Mattis, for the two nations’ annual catch-up.

Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull will meet on the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned second world war aircraft-carrier now berthed on the Hudson River in New York. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

She said she was also sure the president understood the US-Australian relationship was more important than who occupies the White House. And there was no better illustration of the relationship than the Battle of the Coral Sea.

The two leaders are meeting on the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Intrepid on the Hudson River. The ship is a decommissioned aircraft carrier which is now a floating museum, as part of of the 75th anniversary commemorations for the Battle of the Coral Sea, in which US and Australian naval and air forces took on the imperial Japanese navy.

“The historic setting of the prime minister’s meeting with President Trump is also very important,” Bishop said.

Turnbull will be bearing a jarrah timber box handmade in Bungendore outside Canberra to hold a dozen golf balls for the president.

The Battle of the Coral Sea was fought south-west of the Solomon Islands and east of New Guinea on 4-8 May 1942.



It was the first decisive halt to the Japanese push south towards Australia during the second world war, shattered the myth Japan was invincible and paved the way for the allies’ eventual victory.

It was also the first aircraft-carrier battle and stopped a planned Japanese sea invasion of Port Moresby.