“When you change the government, you change the country,” former Australian PM Paul Keating famously said. And when you change the president of the USA, you change the world. Like it or not, the US president is the most powerful office in the world. A change of president has global consequences – just ask Ukraine.
Or Anthony Albanese, for that matter.
Anthony Albanese will not hold formal meetings with US President Joe Biden at the APEC and G20 summits, and the Prime Minister pushed back against Coalition attacks by revealing Donald Trump told him they would have a “perfect friendship”.
It sounds more like Albo has not a lot of mates in Rio. After meeting Biden 11 times in the past two years, Albanese is getting by-passed by the lame duck at Rio. His grovelling to Xi Jinping done, the Chinese leader appears to have lost interest in the former ‘handsome boy’.
Mr Albanese’s final overseas trip before next year’s federal election, which coincides with the government falling behind in the polls on the back of a persistent cost-of-living crisis, will be dominated by the US election aftermath and discussions around China’s flat economy, global inflation and new measures to drive economic growth.
Then there’s the minor matter of Australia’s representative in Washington.
Paying Rudd to shut up and stop meddling in local politics, by awarding him the highly coveted US ambassadorship, might have seemed like smart politics. But this is Kevin Rudd we’re talking about: hardly Mr ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’.
Kevin Rudd looks set to stay on as ambassador to the United States – at least for now – with the government standing firmly by the former prime minister and the opposition declaring it “hopes” he can succeed with Donald Trump in the White House […]
Mr Rudd’s position came under fresh scrutiny on Thursday after he deleted several years-old social media posts fiercely criticising Trump, including calling him a “traitor to the West” and the “most destructive president in history.”
His office said he made the comments “in his previous role as the head of an independent US-based think tank” and they were deleted “to eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as ambassador and, by extension, the views of the Australian government.”
Still, both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have declared full confidence in Mr Rudd and say they have no plans to move him on.
Well, good luck with that.
In March, Donald Trump called Mr Rudd “a little bit nasty” and “not the brightest bulb” after British politician Nigel Farage recited some of the former prime minister’s criticisms during a TV interview.
But it’s not clear whether Trump knew who Mr Rudd was during the exchange, with the president-elect also saying “I don’t know much about him.”
Forget the insults: those are almost the Donald’s way of saying ‘hello’. Instead, the most devastating put-down in the Trump lexicon is ‘I don’t know much about him’. The thrust is that anyone who’s worth knowing, Trump knows. If the Donald doesn’t know them, they’re nobody.
Meanwhile, the Trump camp is sending other clear signals.
A key Donald Trump aide appears to have sent the clearest message yet about what the incoming White House administration may think of Australia’s Ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd.
In an ominous post to his two million followers on X, Dan Scavino uploaded a GIF of sand trickling through an hourglass next to Mr Rudd’s official statement on Trump’s election victory.
As the sands through the hourglass, indeed…
