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Attempts to undermine Kevin Rudd’s ambassadorship – from the opposition and in the Murdoch press – have been described as ‘revenge’ for his criticism of the media mogul. By Karen Barlow.
News Corp’s campaign against Rudd: ‘It’s a vendetta’
Malcolm Turnbull sees it as payback. The former prime minister believes Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, is being punished for criticising News Corp.
In print and on television, the Murdoch-owned media empire is pushing for Rudd to be recalled as ambassador over his previous criticism of Donald Trump.
“It’s a campaign. It’s a vendetta against Rudd by his critics and detractors,” Turnbull tells The Saturday Paper.
“Kevin has campaigned against News Corp’s malign political influence and spoken out against it – as, indeed, I have. They’re campaigning against him.”
Turnbull and Rudd combined forces in post-parliamentary life to demand a royal commission into News Corp over what Turnbull describes as its “mafia gang” influence on politics.
Both point to this influence in the downfall of their respective prime ministerships.
Rudd, who stepped back from the campaign when he was appointed ambassador, squarely blames News Corp for Labor’s 2013 election loss to Tony Abbott and in 2020 described Rupert Murdoch as an “arrogant cancer on our democracy”.
In pre-ambassadorial life, while working as president of the Asia Society, Rudd described Trump as a “traitor to the West” and the “most destructive president in history”.
Those judgements have been amplified on various media platforms and keep returning in press conferences.
“My simple point is, I think he’s doing a good job,” Turnbull says. “I mean, Kevin and I have had our ups and downs, let’s face it, but I think he’s doing a good job as ambassador in Washington. I think it’d be a massive mistake to pull him out.
“The idea that the best way to deal with Trump is by sucking up to him, which is what a lot of the right-wing media suggest, is completely and utterly wrong.”
As Australia’s key representative in Washington, Rudd is at the centre of a delicate, all-stations effort to secure an exemption to sweeping 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, imposed by Trump in an executive order on Tuesday. The president is upending diplomatic norms as he seeks a “new level of prosperity” for the US.
In a departure from an initial “no exemptions, no exceptions” declaration, Trump has offered Australia hope in stating he is giving “great consideration” to a special carve-out after a call with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Steel and aluminium exports to the US were worth $377 million to Australia in 2023 , while Australian companies have significant investments in the US steel industry.
Australia’s abundant supply of critical minerals was raised in Tuesday morning’s 40-minute call between Albanese and the US president. Critical minerals are also something Ukraine has raised with Trump as the war-ravaged nation seeks a continuation of US support.
With negotiations under way, and a trade surplus with Australia touted as the main argument in Australia’s exemption campaign, there’s an effort to make Rudd, a former Labor prime minister, the story.
“Does anyone think that he is in a strong position to negotiate this given past comments, given the reputation he has over there?” shadow trade minister Kevin Hogan asked on Sky News.
He was not alone.
“If there is a decision to be made, and that Kevin Rudd is not the right person to have these discussions, then we should be mature enough as a country to send someone who can have those discussions,” Nationals leader David Littleproud said on Monday.
“Of course, we want Kevin Rudd to succeed, and this is an opportunity for Kevin.”
In the eyes of the Coalition and the Murdoch press, Rudd and tariffs have become a leadership test for Albanese.
The Coalition points to past Trump relationship-building by former prime minister Scott Morrison and former ambassador and Liberal treasurer Joe Hockey. Littleproud offers that it would be a “trying time for no matter who would be the ambassador in Washington at the moment”.
“This is a test for Anthony Albanese and Kevin Rudd to see and to make sure that we get a carve-out,” he added.
Turnbull sees the effort being amplified ahead of the imminent federal election.
“There’s a sort of a right-wing political ecosystem, sort of an angertainment ecosystem, in which … the Coalition political parties operate in, and News Corp and other right-wing media are part of it,” the former prime minister says.
“[Rudd’s] not going to be negotiating with Donald Trump. As I’ve said, Albanese has just demonstrated this: Trump will talk to the prime minister, CEO to CEO.”
It is uncertain whether Trump knew about Rudd before an interview with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage last March.
A question to Trump revisiting Rudd’s traitor assessment, prompted by Farage’s “friends” at Sky News, started a frenzy when Trump cast Rudd as “a little bit nasty”, “not the brightest bulb” and not long for his post.
The issue has returned with Trump back in the White House and wielding tariffs as a blunt force foreign policy instrument.
Online, Rudd is among a group of prominent individuals, including Chelsea Clinton and Ben Stiller, who Trump supporters have claimed received substantial funding from the US foreign aid agency USAID.
“These are lies coming from Russian media,” Stiller posted to Elon Musk’s platform, X.
“I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false.”
Rudd also rejected unverified screenshots, turbocharged on X, pointing to the Asia Society and himself receiving US$984,222 in USAID funding in 2022.
“USAID doesn’t fund Kevin Rudd or Asia Society,” a Rudd spokesperson said in a statement. “Nor did Asia Society receive any USAID funding during Dr Rudd’s period as president.
“It’s a lie. Pure and simple.”
The Saturday Paper sought further comment from the Asia Society and was told by a spokeswoman that “Asia Society does not receive funding from USAID, thus no USAID funds have been put toward compensation or anything else”.
The Washington posting has been increasingly filled by former politicians, including former Labor leader Kim Beazley and former Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos.
The focus on Rudd’s capacity is significant, however, according to the Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young.
“This is an attack on and revenge on Kevin Rudd from News Corp and it is a convenient attack to bolster the morale of the Liberal–National Party as we head into the election,” she tells The Saturday Paper.
“It’s quite clear that News Corp and the Murdoch press have decided they want Peter Dutton. They’re in cahoots with Peter Dutton’s Liberal–National parties. It’s Murdoch, Gina Rinehart and Peter Dutton versus the national interest, the global interest and everyday Australians.”
Dutton insists there is a bipartisan position against US tariffs affecting Australia and has stated that the Coalition supports Rudd as ambassador.
“I want to make sure that the ambassador is given every assistance to work with the administration to make the case, to argue the point that the tariffs should be removed, and I’m sure that’s the work that he’s undertaking,” he said.
Trump is infamously mercurial and transactional. He referred to Albanese as a “very fine man” when addressing reporters in the Oval Office after the Tuesday phone call, before praising the trade imbalance with Australia.
“We actually have a surplus. It’s one of the only countries which we do. And I told him that that’s something that we’ll give great consideration to,” the US president said before quickly shutting down a question about the United Kingdom based on the “huge” US deficit with that nation.
“Big difference,” Trump explained.
Albanese has been sidestepping questions on Rudd’s posting, pointing to a “tremendous start to the relationship”, with Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles getting early access to new US counterparts Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth.
Others in the government acknowledge the attack on Rudd but focus on the Coalition’s part in the campaign.
“It is absolutely coordinated. It is absolutely disappointing. It is undermining the Australian team in Washington,” the assistant minister for trade, Tim Ayres, tells The Saturday Paper.
“Now, we as a government, we’ve just got to ignore that noise and focus on pursuing the national interest. It is in Australia’s interest to pull together, to act in a disciplined way, to not make this about megaphone diplomacy but a systematic disciplined approach in Australia’s interest.”
Former ambassador Arthur Sinodinos says there is high regard for Australia in Washington and the main relationship to focus on should be the leader-to-leader rapport.
He urged patience as the government worked out how best to deploy ministers and sort out critical calendar items such as the first Albanese meeting with Trump.
“Last time around, there was a lot of work that went into this. It took about a year to nail it finally. So, it wasn’t instantaneous, but it’s obvious that the president has regard for Australia,” Sinodinos told reporters in Canberra.
“He will have in mind that Richard Marles has just been over there with US$500 million on the table on AUKUS. Shows we’re serious.”
While the Coalition members ask “Where is Kevin?” Sinodinos says Rudd has his head down working to get an Australian carve-out on the tariffs.
“Kevin is Kevin. I mean, he’ll be relishing the fact that he’s in the middle of the fight and he’s working very hard,” he said.
“He’s doing a lot of work with different parts of the administration. And he also did preparatory work, because people could see this was going to happen, right?”
The campaign against Rudd comes as the rest of the world also responds to Trump’s tariffs. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said they would “not go unanswered”. Canada similarly vowed to fight back.
Separately, China has retaliated with targeted tariffs against US imports after Trump last week slapped a 10 per cent tariff on its goods and services.
Earlier, amid demands to stop fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration, Trump paused his 25 per cent tariffs on all goods from America’s closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico, after both countries moved to shore up the border with the US.
Trump is clearly holding out for something else from Australia, according to John Quiggin, a professor of economics at the University of Queensland.
“Now the crucial point here, which I think no one has noticed in the press, is among the other things Trump did last week was to announce sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” he tells The Saturday Paper.
“That nobody from the International Criminal Court could enter the US and that their assets will be seized. And in response to that, 79 countries, including almost all the democracies, signed a statement saying, ‘We defend the ICC, and it is a good thing.’ Australia didn’t.
“Very shortly after that we got the AUKUS announcement and so a reasonable read on what’s happening is Trump has something further that he wants from us and that, if we give him that, we’ll be let off the tariffs.”
Asked if Trump could be looking for something diplomatic from Australia, perhaps in relation to Gaza, Sinodinos said: “You can never rule anything out, but I think we should look at this in the context of economics and trade. His focus is on tariffs.”
A diplomatic source has told The Saturday Paper that Australia has to use every channel available to lobby the US.
“It’s not a vote of no confidence in Rudd to get Joe Hockey to weigh in, or Scott Morrison or Greg Norman, for instance, or Rupert Murdoch, or whoever you might want to use,” the source said.
“It’s Kevin Rudd’s job to deliver this, basically, and we’ve all known this is coming, right? It hasn’t been a surprise, really. We saw this movie eight years ago, too. The exact same script, right?”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on February 15, 2025 as "News Corp’s campaign against Rudd: ‘It’s a vendetta’".
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