The White House has confirmed PM Anthony Albanese will get the fine china treatment of a State Dinner when he travels to Washington for an official visit in October. Not every visiting foreign leader gets this grand display of hospitality, and Albanese says he’s “honoured” to accept the invite. This will be the fourth state dinner Biden’s hosted – he previously gone all out for India’s Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron (he got butter-poached lobster…) and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. When Donald Trump was in office, he hosted Scott Morrison, and the event was attended by hybrid Aussie/US celebs like astronaut Andy Thomas and golfer Greg Norman. Albanese is likely to have back-to-back trips to the US later this year – the APEC summit is in San Francisco in November, and it’s a meeting Aussie leaders usually never miss.