The prime minister was prepared to bite back at Donald Trump if their first face-to-face went south.

Ahead of the leaders' much-anticipated October meeting, the US president showed he was unafraid to throw verbal jabs in highly publicised meetings with his Ukrainian and South African counterparts.

Should things sour in his own meeting, Anthony Albanese was armed with advice from a former prime minister famed for his own incisive tongue.

"I did give our prime minister a heap of fighting points in the event that Trump turned nasty on him," Australia's 24th prime minister Paul Keating told an audience at the State Library of NSW on Monday night.

"Turned out he didn't have to use them."

"The meeting went really well, but I think the prime minister was up for throwing a punching back if he

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