Tweet deal: How ex-PM Kevin Rudd kept up his public profile

Kevin Rudd’s Twitter feed reads like an application for his new job as ambassador to the US.

Kevin Rudd with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in October. Picture: Twitter

Shaking hands with foreign ministers, addressing international ­forums, and writing for audiences from Paris to Hong Kong – Kevin Rudd’s Twitter feed reads like an application for his new job as ambassador to the US.

From promoting his book, the Unavoidable War, to T-shirt signings, and discussing his doctoral research on Chinese president Xi Jinping, Dr Rudd has been burnishing his public profile in recent months.

“Good to see Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi in Tokyo this week,” he wrote in a tweet this month, accompanied with a photo capturing his handshake with the minister. “Japan is hosting the G7 in Hiroshima in May of next year. There is no shortage of global challenges on the horizon. Including Russia, US-China and climate.”

Another high-powered handshake was captured in October between Dr Rudd, the president of the Asia Society, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

“Germany is in the midst of writing its national China strategy. Responding effectively to Xi Jinping‘s global agenda is a challenge faced by the democratic world at large,” he wrote.

The former prime minister also met with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in the same month, and with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin in June at a briefing on China for Nordic prime ministers.

The future ambassador kept up his commentary on Labor’s foreign policy moves, spruiking speeches by government ministers he’ll soon be working with again.

“Despite deep problems in the relationship on security, foreign policy and trade, it’s better to have open lines of ministerial ­communication. Australia and China haven’t had that in three years,” he wrote in a tweet, in which he shared a Guardian ­article on Richard Marles’ meeting with his Chinese counterpart. “Solid achievement for Marles: not budging an inch, but prepared to talk.”

In another tweet he thanked his “friend”, the former UK foreign secretary David Miliband, for his review of the Unavoidable War.

However, Dr Rudd made no secret of his concerns that the US was unnecessarily antagonising China, particularly in regards to former speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s visiting Taiwan.

His public positioning on foreign policy issues is now a matter of heightened interest, with opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham urging Dr Rudd to be clear in his “unqualified support” for the AUKUS deal, which he had been critical of.