A Christmas Gift of Silence

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave Australians an early Christmas present by appointing ex-PM Kevin Rudd as our ambassador to the US. Few Australians realise just how generous this gift truly is.

Kevni and his two friends

Rudd’s new role largely requires him to shut the hell up. Ambassadors are bound by all manner of protocols and conventions that limit their public commentary.

That’s why we never heard much of anything from Arthur Sinodinos, Joe Hockey or Kim Beazley during their US ambassadorial terms.

Judicious silence, at least outside of private confidences, is a condition of the job. 

This is also a practical matter. Nobody in the US government would be inclined to deal at senior diplomatic levels with anyone viewed as a loose cannon – for example, by leaking discussions to the media, publicly obsessing over perceived slights or routinely alienating political and business allies.

So that’s the end of ranty, whiny, look-at-me post-parliamentary Kevin Rudd, then. At a stroke, Albanese has satisfied Rudd’s ego by bestowing upon him a fancy title and also subtracted him from Australia’s political conversation.

It could be a genius move, if it works. But we’re talking about Rudd here, a fellow whose ego simply won’t allow him to let anything slide. Kevin must have the final say.

Several of his former Labor colleagues commented on this at length following Rudd’s removal as prime minister. The broader public caught a telling glimpse of this character flaw when footage emerged from the G20 summit of 2009.

That brief clip, still kicking around on YouTube, shows Rudd, US president Barack Obama, US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner and a bunch of other G20 types chatting amiably at some kind of social function.

The mood becomes friendlier still when Obama greets the Brazilian president Lula da Silva.

“This is my man, right here,” says Obama. “Love this guy.”

Rudd happily joins in at first, placing an arm around the Brazilian leader. Then Obama adds further praise, describing da Silva as “the most popular politician on earth”.

Our Kevin, at the time barely a year into his term and riding high in Australia on 74 per cent approval, is instantly crestfallen. His smile vanishes. He removes his arm from da Silva and steps back a foot or two. 

Rudd’s mouth opens and closes soundlessly as he struggles to compose a rejoinder to this brutal indignity. Aiming to correct the US president and restore himself as the world’s most beloved leader, Rudd eventually decides on a strategy of durational specificity.

Da Silva is, Rudd announces, merely “the most popular long-term politician on earth”.

He couldn’t let it slide. If even a trace of that Rudd remains, Washington is in for a style of international diplomacy with which it is ​hitherto unfamiliar.

Rudd may encounter other difficulties in the US capital.

Like many politicians, Rudd is occasionally prone to biographical embellishment. In 2007, for example, he attempted to ingratiate himself to​ cricket fans by claiming to have witnessed England veteran Colin Cowdrey batting against Australian fast bowlers Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee at the Gabba in 1974.

But Cowdrey didn’t play in that Test. He wasn’t even in Australia, only being called to the England team for subsequent games.

Brace for hilarity if Rudd tries any kind of inventiveness in the presence of President Joe Biden. Rudd may fancy up his history a little, but Biden's entire life is basically a lie. If matters come to a storytelling showdown, Rudd is toast.

Rudd limits his sporting tales to observation. Biden, by comparison, puts himself in the action. In 2012, he claimed to have played in a winning game back in 1963 for the University of Delaware against Ohio University.

But he wasn’t on the team. 

In July 2021, Biden told Los Angeles Dodgers players visiting the White House that he’d hit a 368-foot home run during a congressional baseball game during the 1970s.

There are no records of this.

Biden also claimed to have worked as a truck driver – “I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man” – when visiting a Mack truck factory and said he was “a hard coalminer” when meeting members of the United Mine Workers.

His fictions are always crafted to suit his audience. Imagine what Biden will come up with if Rudd starts talking about how he saved the Australian economy by putting us in deficit during the global financial crisis of 2008.

We may suddenly discover that Biden ran a Bunnings hardware store on the Central Coast, and that the business was saved only by Rudd’s timely economic intervention.

What a test of Rudd’s diplomatic resolve it will be if the Biden administration starts loading up our man in DC with falsehoods. Or, even worse, if the administration rejects any of Rudd’s overtures or declines to follow his advice.

We all know what happened when Chinese delegates at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit behaved a little sneakily during their negotiations with the Australian prime minister. 

“Those Chinese f--kers are trying to rat-f--k us,” Rudd is famously said to have remarked to journalists and aides, in exactly the measured manner you’d expect from a career diplomat.

Still, at least Rudd will be out of our hair for a while. Thanks, Albo.