Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is a fan of US President Donald Trump's habit of taking to Twitter in the middle of the night, describing the practice as "pretty refreshing".
After delivering a wide-ranging speech in which he reminisced about how he forged a love for Stubbies shorts, Kylie Minogue and 80s band Men At Work during a year-long stay in Australia as a 19-year-old, Mr Johnson opened up about Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He told the crowd of political and business leaders at the Lowy Lecture in Sydney that Mr Trump's often controversial pronouncements on Twitter - which this week included a tirade against his attorney-general and his plan to ban transgender people from the US military - weren't necessarily bad.
"Actually, I think, sometimes firing off things, tweeting in the middle of the night exactly what you think can be pretty refreshing," he said.
"It is not a universally held view, but sometimes it can be."
Mr Johnson said what countries like Australia and Britain needed to remember - amid the controversy surrounding Mr Trump - is that their relationship with the US is of "cardinal importance".
"The US has been the guarantor - the primary guarantor of peace and stability in our continent, in the West, and, indeed, in the Pacific, for 70 years," he said.
"That is a huge fact, and that transcends personalities, and that's what we have to focus on."
Mr Johnson said while he had been a critic of Mr Trump before he was elected president, he found him "extremely gracious" when they met in New York in January.
"He said, rather mystifyingly, how often he was mistaken for me! Which I thought was a low blow," he said.
Asked about what he made of Mr Trump's affinity for Mr Putin, Johnson believed the US president had handled his Russian counterpart well.
The Trump administration had maintained sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine, and had taken a more hardline approach than the Obama administration in reaction to chemical attacks by the Russia-backed Assad regime in Syria.
Mr Johnson said it was just as important to engage with Russia as it was to deter them from certain actions.
"You need a policy of, 'beware but engage', or ... 'engage but beware', I can't remember which way around it is, but that's the way we should approach it," he said.
