Former senator Margaret Reynolds has a good take on the lame-duck Rudd appointment.
Despite Kevin Rudd’s assurances last week that his team is “ready” to work with Donald Trump’s incoming administration, his precarious ambassador position in Washington demonstrates the risks of political appointments.
Rudd was undoubtedly well qualified for the ambassadorship under the previous Biden administration: he has foreign affairs experience and extensive political experience, including as an Australian prime minister; is a fluent Mandarin speaker; and has specialized in a range of international studies. However, this has not prepared him for an unpredictable Trump administration.
Most politicians have fixed opinions about policy options, and their capacity to accept opposing views is often limited. Australian political debates occur most commonly in a rigid environment where negotiation and compromise are regarded as signs of weakness. Consequently, it is harder for senior politicians to consider alternative policy agendas and adapt a nuanced diplomatic position in international discussions.
I am a great admirer of Kevin Rudd’s strident position on “village idiot” Donald Trump. Such honesty is rare in international relations.
Yet it is hardly consistent or diplomatic to backtrack for an appointment to Washington.
It clearly risks throwing sand into the gears of the alliance for no reason other than wanton career ambition.
Or, is there another reason? Does PM Albanese intend for Rudd to bring Beijing’s as much as Canberra’s message to Washington?
Foreign minister Penny Wong has been deploying Beijing’s 14 conditions to end democracy at home.
Former Japanese ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, has revealed he was “called in” to Penny Wong’s office to be cautioned over public criticism of China even before Labor was elected in 2022 and she became the foreign minister.
Describing the summons to an ambassador to be cautioned by “a heavyweight MP of the Labor left” who was not even in government as “extraordinary and unacceptable”, Mr Yamagami said it was not clear whether Senator Wong was speaking on behalf of the ALP or just expressing her own views.
The then ambassador said he was told in 2021 to come to the parliamentary office “promptly”, where it was revealed he had to be cautioned because his “remarks were being used politically”.
“In a plain language, it was meant to be that since my remarks are so controversial that I must shut up my mouth,” Mr Yamagami has written in a book in Japan.
10 of the 14 conditions to end democracy demanded by Beijing are simple demands to shut up about China.
As we know, when this document was first published, a treasonous Labor blamed the LNP instead of rallying for free speech and the national interest.
Since then, Albo has deployed many of Beijing’s requests.
- Instead of diversifying exports like everybody else, Albo has concentrated it in China.
- Instead of repatriating supply chains, Albo has concentrated them in China.
- Instead of continuing the cleansing of clandestine Chinese influence in our parliaments, he has gone soft.
- Instead of bringing sanitising sunshine to all transactions, such as universities, he has buried them in yesteryear’s corrupt darkness.
- Instead of spending time at the G7 coordinating the China pushback a’la ScoMo, he goes to Beijing on his knees.
- Instead of saying “China” when we mean “China,” now refers to the country that will not be named.
- Instead of banning Chinese WeChat or TikTok, he bans American media.
- Instead of defending the “anti-China think tank” (ASPI) he is moving to defund it.
For doing so, Albo was recently feted by the emperor as running the model puppet government.
Beijing has touted Anthony Albanese as the leader other US allies should follow as they juggle security ties with Washington and trade relations with China under the “hawkish” incoming Trump administration.
An editorial published on Friday in China’s strictly controlled state media praised Mr Albanese’s support of Beijing as a trading partner amid “unprecedented geopolitical complexity and uncertainty” after the election of Donald Trump.
The editorial in the China Daily, one of the country’s most influential mastheads, set the tone for an expected meeting between Mr Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of APEC and G20 leader meetings in Peru and Brazil over the coming days.
What is Kevin Rudd’s brief in Washington then?
Is it to prosecute the Australian national interest, or is it to bring the 14 conditions to America?
Labor appears to see no gap between the two when they are, in fact, poles apart. Via Chinese Australian dissident Badiucao.
Like almost 600,000 other Australians, I was born in China. Despite having lived here for 15 years, as a dissident, I am still tracked and harassed by the Chinese government. I want to offer a warning to our government and my fellow citizens about our relationship with the Asian superpower.
China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told Australia’s National Press Club on Tuesday that Australia and China are “friends, not foes”. But friends are people who share common values. The truth is there is a fundamental ideological divide between our two nations, and what we value. China’s ambitions are not merely defensive, but rather aggressively expansionist. Currently, in the face of this fundamental difference, Australia still clings stubbornly to its engagement policy with China, in political, economic and social spheres.
…If Australia is to truly recognise and respond to the threat posed by China, it must reassess the utility of its policy, swiftly. This will require adjusting the weight placed on it, or even discarding it altogether. A new diplomatic strategy is urgently needed – before it’s too late.
Not with Albo’s cowards at the helm.
