Australian PM Albanese talks to Trump as ambassador deletes comments after election win

Kirsty Needham and Lewis Jackson

SYDNEY (Reuters). Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he spoke to Donald Trump on Thursday after the Republican victory in the US election, as Australia’s ambassador to the US deleted comments he had previously made about Trump, saying they did not reflect the views of the Australian government .

Albanese said he spoke with Trump on Thursday morning about security ties, including the AUKUS deal, which would see Australia buy US nuclear submarines over the next decade and develop a new class of nuclear submarines with the US and Britain.

“We talked about the importance of the Alliance and the strength of the Australian-US relationship in security, AUKUS, trade and investment,” Albanese wrote.

During Trump’s first term as president, Australia’s conservative Liberal government became more aggressive toward China and worked to get the United States involved in the Indo-Pacific region as a counter to China, including through the India-Japan-US-Australia Quartet.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday that the centre-left Labor government is confident in its alliance with the United States, its biggest security partner.

Wong said she met with Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in the previous Trump administration, during the campaign, and there was bipartisan support for AUKUS.

“The United States is our main strategic partner. We have very, very clear strategic goals,” she told the Today program. “We both want the region to be stable, a region where there is peace, and AUKUS has bipartisan support, which is a key part of that.”

One potential problem is the relationship between the new administration and Australia’s ambassador to Washington, former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Rudd has previously made disparaging comments about Trump as head of a US think tank, according to a statement on his personal website.

“Out of respect for the office of the President of the United States and following the election of President Trump, Ambassador Rudd has now removed these earlier comments from his personal website and social media channels,” the statement said.

Rudd wanted to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misinterpreted as reflecting his position as ambassador and, by extension, the views of the Australian Government”, it added.

Among the deleted comments, Rudd in 2020 described Trump as “the most destructive president in history.”

Asked about Rudd’s comments in a British television interview in March, Trump said Rudd was “not the brightest bulb” and “disgusting.”

“If that’s the case, he’s not there for long,” Trump said.

Wong said she supports Rudd’s ability to work with a Republican administration.

Rudd was executive director of the Asia Society think tank in New York until 2023, when he was appointed ambassador.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Lewis Jackson in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Fist.)