Anthony Albanese has defended Kevin Rudd’s role as Australia’s ambassador to the US, highlighting that Vice President JD Vance also made critical comments of Donald Trump in the past.
The Prime Minister was quizzed on Tuesday morning about Rudd’s role in trying to secure a carve out from punishing US tariffs after a prominent Republican pollster said that Trump did not like him.
Rudd has, infamously, branded Trump a ‘village idiot’, a ‘traitor to the West’ and ‘the most destructive president in history’ in past comments.
Sunrise host Natalie Barr asked Albanese whether he was placing his loyalty to Rudd ‘above our alliance with the US’.
But Albanese just laughed, adding: ‘Well, JD Vance had some pretty strong comments, it’s gotta be said, and he’s now the Vice President of the United States of America.’
Before the 2016 US election, Vance called Trump an ‘idiot’, ‘America’s Hitler’ and said he was ‘morally reprehensible’.
In leaked emails he also branded Trump ‘a disaster’ and ‘a bad man’.
But when he was announced as his running mate in July 2024, Vance claimed he had been ‘wrong about Donald Trump’.
Sunrise host Nat Barr ((left) quizzed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (right) on Tuesday morning about Kevin Rudd’s role in trying to secure a carve out from punishing US tariffs after a prominent Republican pollster said that Donald Trump did not like him
Albanese insisted that he had held ‘very warm discussions’ with Trump, despite failing to meet him face-to-face.
‘The relationship with the United States is an important one,’ he told Sunrise.
‘It says something about the importance that we place in it that we have a former prime minister in Kevin Rudd as our Ambassador.’
Sunrise fill-in host David Woiwod then suggested that Rudd could be replaced by someone such as mining magnate Gina Rinehart or golfer Greg Norman – both of whom have personal relationships with the US President.
‘Is it time now the Australian Government starts looking left of centre here and perhaps using those relationships, leveraging things like Greg Norman, Gina Rinehart or whoever it may be, to try and have Australia at the centre of those discussions?’, Woiwod asked.
Albanese insisted his government ‘use(s) all of our relationships’.
‘I’ve met with Greg Norman, for example, and others as well who have relationships in the United States,’ he said.
‘We use all the great assets at our disposal and Australians are quite prepared to talk Australia up.’
He added: ‘The great Australians who make a difference around the world.’
Albanese had dinner with Greg Norman in April.
The Australian golfer has close ties with Trump and was relied upon by the Malcom Turnbull government in 2018 to successfully persuade Trump to exempt Australia from crippling steel and aluminum tariffs – which he did during a golf game.
Australia is facing 10 per cent tariffs on goods exported to the US and – like every US trading partner except the UK – has been hit with 50 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel sent to America.
The deadline for the higher reciprocal tariffs to come into effect is 9 July.