Marles defends US trip after Pentagon backtracks on claim Hegseth meeting was ‘happenstance encounter’

Richard Marles has launched a fiery defence of his access to key figures in the Trump administration after the Pentagon retracted claims the Defence Minister did not have a meeting with his US counterpart during a hastily arranged trip to Washington.

Marles branded the opposition disgraceful for questioning whether he only had a “photo op” with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth during his trip, intended to help lay the groundwork for the first meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump and lock in US support for AUKUS.

An already messy trip dominated by questions about whether Marles would secure a meeting with Hegseth became more chaotic on Thursday when the Pentagon dismissed their engagement as “a happenstance encounter” before reversing course to describe it as an arranged meeting.

Sources familiar with the encounter said it lasted for around 10 minutes, substantially less than Marles’ other meetings with US Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.

“Secretary Hegseth welcomed the opportunity to meet in person with Deputy Prime Minister Marles for the third time this year,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, in comments originally reported by The Guardian.

“Their meeting at the White House on Tuesday was co-ordinated in advance.”

A US defence official had said only hours earlier: “We can confirm there was not a meeting.”

Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor said Marles had set off on a “magical mystery tour”, describing the turn of events as “pretty embarrassing”.

“We’re all confused about what happened, what the objective was, what meetings occurred and what the outcomes were,” he said, speaking before the Pentagon’s second statement.

Asked by Taylor during parliamentary question time whether he had been granted a “meeting with the secretary or just a photo opportunity”, Marles shot back: “The relationship between Australia and the United States should be above partisan politics ... Right now those opposite are desperately hoping the nation fails in its relationship with the United States and that is a disgrace.”

Marles labelled the opposition a “joke” and asked whether they thought the photos of him and Hegseth together had been generated by artificial intelligence.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused the opposition of undermining the US-Australia alliance by describing the bilateral relationship as “deteriorating” while Republican congressman Jason Smith, the chair of a key congressional committee on tariffs and taxation, was attending question time.

Opposition finance spokesman James Paterson had earlier notably declined to criticise Marles, saying he had received access to “very senior” officials during the trip and did not want to “over dramatise this issue”.

“What I’m far more concerned about is that we’re now 290 odd days on from president Trump being elected, and the prime minister still hasn’t had that meeting with him,” Paterson said.

There is also growing speculation among defence and foreign affairs community about whether Hegseth and Rubio will travel to Australia for this year’s high-level AUSMIN talks.

Marles travelled to the US as the Trump administration continues to conduct a high-stakes review of the multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine deal under AUKUS and urges allies to rapidly increase their spending on defence.

On Wednesday morning, the defence minister’s office uploaded three photos of Marles with Vance and Hegseth captioned: “I was pleased to have the opportunity to reaffirm Australia’s commitment to building on this partnership with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth in Washington, DC, today.”

A press conference Marles was set to hold in Washington on Wednesday morning (AEST) was cancelled, and he did not take questions from the media before returning to Australia.

Marles’ office on Sunday announced he was travelling to Washington to “meet with Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, and other senior administration officials”.

Marles first met Hegseth in February, soon after the controversial US defence secretary was sworn in, to deliver a down payment of $800 million towards the AUKUS submarine deal.

The two defence secretaries also met in Singapore at the end of May, shortly after the Albanese government was re-elected, when Hegseth pushed Marles to ramp up defence spending to counter China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

In July, this masthead revealed Australia quietly paid the US a further $800 million to boost the US submarine building industry, even as the US government reviews plans to provide Australia with three Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

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