In defence of Rudd

January 23, 2026

Nowhere in the press has it been made explicit: Kevin Rudd was sent to Washington, precisely because he is the leading expert on the US-China relationship. 40 years’ experience on China, including as a professional diplomat, with a doctorate from Oxford on Xi Jingping’s worldview, isn’t coincidental. It points directly to why he was chosen to represent Australia to the United States at a time where they still claimed to respect the rules-based international order. His status as a ‘Labor mate’ was a nice bonus for his posting, not the rationale.

Yes, Trump’s new worldview makes that all irrelevant – but why deny Dr Rudd’s experience, simply painting him as another ‘Labor mate’? If anything, pointing out Rudd’s inability to do the job he was sent to do, given his experience, emphasises how far Trump has taken the US in the direction he has – the central point of the article. Yet, the assumption we’re left to draw is that Rudd was there as “a Les Patterson-type figure” on “one last trot of the diplomatic circuit”, and that we must only “now send a professional diplomat.”

The political pile-on is tired, lazy and, one would have thought, below Professor Curran.