Members of a visiting delegation of US Congress members from both sides of politics have stressed the importance of a face-to-face meeting between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The delegation has been in Adelaide for the Australia America Leadership Dialogue, where the current state of the alliance has been under the microscope.
The Republican and Democrat members have expressed their strong support for the AUKUS deal to go ahead and praised progress being made at the Osborne Shipyard in South Australia, where nuclear-powered submarines will ultimately be built.
The agreement is currently the subject of a Pentagon review, which is due to conclude in the coming months.
Democrat senator Chris Coons, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has suggested President Trump make a trip to Australia to visit the prime minister.
"When you're sitting in the same room as someone you have a better conversation," he told reporters.
Mike Turner, a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee agreed an in-person meeting would be "helpful".
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has dialled up pressure on the prime minister to secure a meeting.
"The relationship between Australia and the US feels as if it is drifting, and that Australia is indeed a bystander in that relationship," Ms Ley told reporters in Adelaide, where she also attended the Dialogue.
On defence spending, members of the Congressional delegation have backed Australia's right to make its own sovereign decision, but have urged all US allies to lift military budgets.
The Albanese government has pushed back on demands from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to lift Australia's defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP.
But Joe Courtney — a Democrat congressman and strong AUKUS backer — says it's a crude measure because different countries calculate defence spending in different ways. For example, America counts all capital expenditure at its military bases towards its overall defence spend, while Australia does not, he said.
"You really need to get an apples-to-apples sort of metric of what is defence spending, before you're going to challenge other countries' efforts," he said.
"If we're going to have a real discussion about this, then we really should have an accurate metric in terms of what each country is doing."
Mr Courtney's comments could give the prime minister cover to argue Australia is pulling its weight when it comes to defence spending.
The Democrat members of the delegation said they disagreed with President Trump's use of tariffs against Australia and other allies.
Senator Coons also suggested differences over whether to recognise a Palestinian state would not create further difficulties in the US-Australia relationship.
