John Howard sends letter to Anthony Albanese and warns against ‘grovelling’ to China
John Howard has revealed what he wrote in a personal letter to Anthony Albanese as he also issued a stark warning on China. Listen to the podcast.
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John Howard warned against “grovelling” to China chairman Xi Jinping and eviscerated a “pathetic” Donald Trump in an explosive attack against two of the world’s most influential figures.
Speaking out on the current state of global politics, the former prime minister gave a rare insight into what he really thinks of the leadership of Australia’s top ally and most fearsome competitor.
“I thought his behaviour after he lost that election was appalling, and you can’t treat seriously somebody who isn’t prepared to accept the umpire’s decision,” Mr Howard said of Mr Trump told the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage.
To promote his new book A Sense of Balance, Mr Howard broke his longstanding rule for ex-PMs being better “seen but not heard” to warn against a Trump 2024 comeback in the US and the rising aggression of an “irredeemably” Communist China.
“I hope the Republican Party has the good sense and the intestinal fortitude to resist [Trump], I think it would be a terrible thing for them to go back,” Mr Howard said.
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“I am completely and utterly unconvinced with his argument. He just lost. Now, he didn’t like it. I didn’t like losing in 2007,” he added.
“I said to Anthony Albanese, ‘you won the last election’, I wrote him a letter out of courtesy from a former prime minister wishing him well for the sake of the country and said: ‘Isn’t it good and we have a seamless transfer of power’.”
“I was the happy beneficiary of a seamless transfer of power in 1996. And I was the victim of a seamless transfer of power in 2007,” Mr Howard continued said. “The idea of [Trump] running around saying there were fake votes, it was just pathetic.”
Mr Howard also warned against “grovelling” to China as Xi Jinping ramps up its aggression towards Taiwan, adding it’s Australia has to get the relationship right with its biggest export market.
“But China is irredeemably a communist dictatorship and under the leadership of Xi Jinping it is far less tolerant of other countries than it used to be,” he said.
“The two presidents I dealt with in China, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were very different men. They were both doctrinaire communists and believed in putting people in jail if they disagreed with them … I didn’t go soft-headed about either of them, but it was a different atmosphere.
“I don’t think we should engage in any schoolboy point scoring when it comes to China,” he continued. “Don’t grovel to China, but equally you don’t have unnecessary fights.”
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Originally published as John Howard sends letter to Anthony Albanese and warns against ‘grovelling’ to China
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