‘That was just nuts’: Kevin Rudd rants against former PM Malcolm Turnbull over China

Kevin Rudd has lashed out at a former Australian leader, who he accused of sending us “down the gurgler” in an abrupt rant.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has lashed out at Malcolm Turnbull during a public Q&A on Australia’s relationship with China.

Mr Rudd, who is now the director of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, appeared at the Lowy Institute in Sydney last night for a discussion on Xi Jinping’s China and its growing trade war with the United States.

Asked about the Asian powerhouse’s difficult relationship with Australia, Mr Rudd said the relationship had always been tricky. “Certainly in our period in office … there were rolling tensions with the Chinese government on a range of different things. But we still managed to prosecute a balanced relationship.”

He then suddenly launched an attack on Mr Turnbull, saying the former Liberal prime minister’s approach to China was “nuts” and that he should have thought carefully before “opening his big mouth”.

“Be very judicious about when you open your big mouth, by which I mean Turnbull’s egregious statement that the Australian people have stood up,” Mr Rudd told the room. “That stuff that he did in 2017 … that was just nuts. It was domestically and politically self-indulgent nuttiness.

“I was in Beijing at the time. You know, the whole debate in Australia about foreign interference — they don’t by large numbers pay much attention up there … and then suddenly in thunders Malcolm, and he picks the phrase which Mao Zedong used on October 1 1999 — ‘The Chinese people have finally stood up after years of being screwed by the international community’ — and said we’re here.

“And so what does Malcolm do? He picks that phrase, blabs it out in his own appalling rendition of Chinese, and then suddenly he was in every Chinese headline.”

Kevin Rudd slammed Malcolm Turnbull during a Q&A at the Lowy Institute last night.

He hit out at the former Liberal leader over his handling of the Australia-China relationship during his prime ministership.

In late 2017, Mr Turnbull hit out over Chinese meddling in Australian politics in Beijing.

“Modern China was founded in 1949 with these words: ‘Zhongguo renmin zhanqilai’ — the Chinese people have stood up’,” he told reporters in Sydney.

“It was an assertion of sovereignty, it was an assertion of pride. And so we say: ‘Aodaliya renmin zhanqilai — the Australian people stand up.’”

“You want to pick the day when the relationship went — in my judgment unnecessarily — down the gurgler? It was that day,” Mr Rudd said.

“Be judicious about when you embark upon public language. Be public when you actually need to, to the extent that you can actually manage any difficulties.

“That’s one of the reasons God invented diplomacy,” he jokingly added. “It’s in the Old Testament.”

Mr Rudd also had a few scathing words for US leader Donald Trump, who he repeatedly referred to as “the Trumpster” and “the Donald”.

Addressing the ongoing trade feud between China and the US, he said: “The Trumpster knows two things, one is, ‘I read opinion polls’, and two is, ‘I read the Dow’. That’s all the Trumpster’s interested in … political success and economic success are his barometers for success.

“He knows how skittish Dow sentiment is on the question of can there be a deal done on trade, so he at that level wants it done.”

Asked whether the two sides can dial it down, he said: “I think we’re really into 50-50 territory about the likelihood of producing an agreement.”

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