Imagine it is 2025 and that Donald Trump is President. He summons to the White House Ambassador Kevin Rudd, who once labelled him a “traitor to the West” and “the most destructive president in history”.
Trump gets straight to the point. He tells Rudd he will review AUKUS, saying he is not convinced the pact is in America’s best interest. Already on edge following the presidential election, the Albanese government is now in turmoil. Clearly the biggest impediment to our acquiring nuclear submarines is Rudd’s continued presence in Washington. Right?
Wrong. As part of the review, Trump tells his Secretary of State he wants a briefing on who’s who in Australia’s federal cabinet. Start with the bit players, he says.
Sure thing says SecState. First, there is the Minister for Agriculture, Senator Murray Watt. A month prior to your election in 2016, he called for you to withdraw from the contest and lamented the Republicans were so “scary” that you would probably be replaced by “another right-wing extremist”.
Next there is Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil. In 2020, she attacked the Morrison government for its treatment of the education sector, claiming it was “anti-intellectual, short-sighted and virtually Trumpian”.
The Minister for Industry is Ed Husic, continues SecState. In 2015, he claimed former prime minister Tony Abbott’s call for Islam to modernise was part of “a broader effort to ‘Trumpify’ Australian politics”. Likewise the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, claimed in 2023 during a controversial referendum debate that Australians “are better than Trump politics”.
Brendan O’Connor is the Minister for Skills and Training. He better hope for his sake that he has the skills and training to build a nuclear submarine from scratch, says SecState. In 2020, he tweeted that you, Mr President, were a “pathological liar”.
The Minister for Education, Jason Clare, is your typical tough talker from afar. Accusing then prime minister Scott Morrison in 2021 of using tactics from “the Trump handbook”, he said that was a case of “Lie, deny, blame other people, never take responsibility for anything, [and] pander to the extreme right.” For good measure, Mr President, he added that Morrison was “Trump without the toupée”.
Australia’s ability to keep the lights on depends on the Minister for Energy, Chris Bowen. His passion fingers have steered many a portfolio and always with the same result. Ironically, says SecState, he wrote a book, ‘On Charlatans’, in honour of you, Mr President. Given he is a renewables purist with a fanatical opposition to nuclear energy, surely you would not want to upset him by contaminating Australia’s fair seas with American submarines?
Next is the Minister for Trade, Senator Don Farrell. Speaking in 2021 regarding the previous government’s attempt to legislate for voter identification, he said it was “straight out of the playbook of the ‘Try-Hard Trump’, Scott Morrison”. Incidentally, in March 2024 he went out of his way in parliament to diss us by smugly saying “I’m not sure that the United States is our most trusted ally”. Instead he proclaimed that New Zealand is Australia’s best buddy. That’s right, Mr President, he reckons the Aussies are better off throwing their lot in with the country that banned our naval vessels from its ports and whose air force could not so much as shoot down a Sopwith Camel.
This next one is a doozy, Mr President. Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten was the country’s opposition leader during your campaign in 2016. He said your views were “barking mad”. About a month before the election he told a conference you were “entirely unsuitable to be leader of the free world”. So confident was he that you would lose he observed “Thankfully, with every passing day, with every ridiculous and disgusting remark that is uncovered, the possibility of a Trump administration fades”.
Then there is Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek. When she was deputy opposition leader in 2016, she said you were “cosying up to Russia”. Echoing Shorten, she said you were “unsuitable to lead a country like the US” and that your presidency would be “dangerous”.
Penny Wong is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, says SecState with a grin. She spat the dummy in 2016 when then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull congratulated you on your election win, despite the leaders of Britain, Germany, and Canada having also commended you for your victory. Turnbull’s goodwill gesture, she said, was “reminiscent of the chest-beating approach to global events championed by former prime minister Abbott”. As newspapers reported at the time, she implied the election outcome meant Australia should pull back from its alliance with America and put more emphasis on Asia. You may want to consider helping her government do exactly that, Mr President.
I saved the best for last, says SecState. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was opposition leader when you disputed the results of the 2020 election. Seeing an opportunity to politicise your close relationship with Morrison, he publicly said that the prime minster “should be contacting President Trump and conveying Australia’s strong view that democratic processes must be respected”.
Even fellow Labor MPs ridiculed Albanese for this statement, adds SecState. Realising he had overreached and desperately trying to avoid further humiliation, Albanese ludicrously insisted he had never demanded Morrison call you. “I didn’t suggest that, ever,” he said later. This is the same Albanese who had the chutzpah to say in parliament in 2022 that his political opponents were guilty of “Trumpian rhetoric, where truth doesn’t matter, and facts don’t matter”.
Let me tell you something else about this jackass, says SecState. On the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Albanese gave a speech to the Perth USAsia Centre, once again trying to smear you and Morrison. The prime minister, he claimed, “went too far” in his relationship with you, “partly out of his affinity with Donald Trump, [and] partly because of the political constituency they share”. And trying to ingratiate himself with Biden, Albanese said America’s allies should be “utterly unambiguous” in condemning you, given you supposedly “sought to undermine the democratic process”.
Trump, stony-faced, says nothing.
Is there any further information you require to decide whether AUKUS should continue, asks SecState.
“No” says Trump. “I have heard enough.”
Labor’s collective antipathy towards Trump makes Rudd’s outbursts look innocuous, wouldn’t you say? And far be it for me to defend Rudd, but I strongly disagree with Trump’s assessment that the former prime minister is “not the brightest bulb”.
On the contrary, Rudd is the brightest bulb. If anything, he is the supernova of bulbs. In fact that little bulb fires up so quickly he overheats, which frequently results in him exploding, showering everyone in the room with glass fragments.
Nonetheless Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was right when he said Rudd must repair the relationship with Trump. Admittedly this will be challenging. Trump is an egomaniac. He is vindictive. He never forgets a grudge. He is prepared to destroy his own party and paralyse his country to further his ambitions.
But look on the positive side, Kevin Rudd. You and he have much in common.
More Coverage
Loss of faith in democracy endangers us all
Politicians who seek to divide and rule are to blame for disenchantment with the status quo.
Why customer-owned banks give a real edge to competition
The great neobank experiment, with the exception of a couple, is all but dead and it’s the mutual banks which offer the ‘big four’ real competition, writes Brendan Wright.