Rita Panahi: Rudd and Turnbull have endless reserves of bile, a desperate need for attention and a desire to rewrite history

Paul Keating isn’t alone in being a huge disappointment as a former PM — we have multiple former leaders behaving in a manner that is affront to the dignity of the office they once held.

Ladies, look for a man who is as loyal and hopelessly smitten with you as Paul Keating is with Xi Jinping. For that’s pure, unconditional love. The sort of unbridled admiration that will see a grown man happily beclown himself on the national stage.

But Keating is hardly alone in being an enormous disappointment as a former prime minister; right now we have multiple former leaders behaving in a manner that is affront to the dignity of the office they once held.

There are seven living former PMs. It’s a little too soon to judge Scott Morrison, who remains in parliament as an MP, but of the remaining six, half have behaved admirably since leaving politics, and half regularly embarrass themselves with attention seeking antics that show just how bitter and twisted these “miserable ghosts” have become.

Whatever one’s political persuasion, only the most jaded among us would be critical of the manner in which John Howard, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have tackled their post-prime ministerships. All three have conducted themselves with class and decorum since leaving Canberra, showing a willingness to speak on issues of consequence but refusing to involve themselves in petty reprisals or self-interested delusions of grandeur.

Paul Keating Keating is hardly alone in being an enormous disappointment as a former prime minister. Picture: Nikki Short

Sadly, the same can’t be said of the remaining three, led by the rancorous duo of Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd. Keating will need quite a few more CCP-loving rants at the National Press Club to match it with Kevin07 and Mr Harbourside Mansion, both of whom appear hellbent on ensuring their legacy is forever tainted with an unhappy combination of endless reserves of bile, desperate need for attention and a desire to rewrite history.

While Turnbull has turned to podcasting, Rudd has scored the coveted ambassadorship to our most important ally, the US – a decision Anthony Albanese will come to rue, sooner or later.

But this week it was Keating stealing the limelight from the miserable malcontents with a pro-China rant that shocked some of his biggest fangirls and boys in the Australian media.

Anthony Albanese will come to rue the decision to appoint Kevin Rudd US ambassador. Picture: AFP

For more than a decade Keating sat on the board of the China Development Bank, a government entity that raises funds for major infrastructure projects. But it would be a mistake to characterise his support of Beijing as motivated by money. It is understood he received a small stipend for his services but hardly enough to buy a new Zegna suit each year.

Among his most shocking comments on Wednesday was his dismissive response to China’s gross human rights abuses. Keating could not bring himself to admit to the CCP’s brutal persecution of political dissidents, the Uighurs and other religious minorities.

China’s treatment of the Uighurs has been accurately described as “ethnic genocide” and yet the best Keating could do were these weasel words: “I’m not going to defend China about the Uighurs, there’s disputes about what the nature of the Chinese affront to the Uighurs are …. What if the Chinese said, what about deaths in custody of Aboriginal people in your prison system? Wouldn’t that be a valid point for them? Wouldn’t it be a valid point?”

No, it would not be a valid point, you recalcitrant fool. For one the rate of Indigenous deaths in custody is lower than the rate of deaths for non-Indigenous people. And last I checked Australia was not putting Indigenous men, women and children in slave labour camps nor forcibly sterilising women.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull has turned to podcasting.

Keating’s crazy stance may have shocked Labor but most senior members of the Albanese government were too gutless to put him in his place. Indeed Defence Minister Richard Marles said this on the ABC: “Whatever Paul Keating says about myself, the foreign minister, the prime minister, you won’t hear a bad word from us about him.”

Thankfully former senior Labor minister and chief headkicker Stephen Conroy had the guts to call out Keating. “Have some courage and come out and address all of the following issues, Paul Keating, the militarisation of the South China Sea ruled illegal by the international courts, they broke their word on the Hong Kong treaty and they subjugate the people of Hong Kong, they’re sending its navy regularly to intimidate Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, they broke all the rules of the WTO,” Conroy said on Sky News. “They’ve been persecuting their own citizens, the Uighurs, the gay and lesbian community, they’ve attacked countries for supporting Tibet, they’ve bribed other Pacific Island nations to support building infrastructure there, they’re supporting Russia in Ukraine.

“Paul, what have you got to say? They kidnap people off the streets of other countries … they’ve attacked India on its own border.”

Conroy also mocked Keating’s claims that Australia as an island nation had nothing to fear from China: “Paul, they’ve invented the internet since you were in government … they (China) attack Australian companies, government and infrastructure.”

Keating’s simping for the murderous Chinese regime has certainly been unedifying but he still has some way to go to catch Rudd and Turnbull when it comes to being considered the worst ex-prime minister in the country.