View from The Hill: Liberals are now squabbling among themselves over Kevin Rudd

The Liberals’ ability to find things to fight about among themselves has no bounds. Now they are squabbling over Kevin Rudd.

On Tuesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said Rudd shouldn’t continue as Australia’s ambassador to Washington after Donald Trump’s put down of him at the White House during the president’s meeting with Anthony Albanese.

“I don’t believe he should stay in that role. And to see the prime minister actually laughing at his own ambassador in the room when the president made a joke, I think it’s untenable,” she told Sky News.

Various opposition members, inevitably asked to comment, backed Ley, with or without conviction.

But on Wednesday, Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume flatly disagreed with her leader. “There is no doubt that the president made a bit of a goose of Kevin Rudd, and perhaps so he should, for those ill-advised, ill-considered tweets that he made,” Hume said on Sky.

“I think, though, that the call for Kevin Rudd to resign or stand down, the call for his position to be untenable now, is probably a little bit churlish.”

Since being relegated by Ley to the backbench Hume, who spends a lot of time on Sky, feels free to be “off message”.

Occasionally it’s more a matter of being off key.

Recently an attempt at humour went badly awry. Asked, after Nationals Leader David Littleproud said he’d welcome any Liberal defectors, whether she might jump parties, Hume joked, “I’d have to speak a lot slower and talk about the regions more often down in cocky’s corner”.

“To be honest, I am too fond of good coffee and free markets to join the National Party.”

Oops. Talk about reinforcing stereotypes about (now endangered) latte-drinking city Liberals!

In the Rudd instance, Hume is right – but unhelpful to Ley.

In the last term, Ley was criticised for going over the top from time to time. Towards the end of the term she reined herself in (or was reined in). As leader, she has been mainly measured.

But she tries to keep herself perpetually in the news cycle, and that can be a trap. Rushing out with her call for Rudd to go showed bad judgement, a desire for a quick headline.

It was a moment just to be gracious over what had been a good result for the government from the Albanese-Trump meeting, and to dismiss the Rudd moment with a well-turned quip.

Questioned at a Wednesday news conference about Hume’s remarks, Ley said she welcomed “comments from my talented backbench”, but avoided repeating her Tuesday call for Rudd to be moved on.

The Rudd incident has brought out many of the former prime minister’s critics in force, in what is a total over-reaction.

Yes, it was an embarrassment, but mainly for Rudd. There is no convincing evidence Rudd is a negative for Australia, despite his litany of past derogatory comments about Trump. As the president said, he’ll never be a fan of the ambassador – but he probably won’t give Rudd much of a thought in the future.

Rudd worked tremendously hard in the run up to the Albanese-Trump meeting and contributed to its success. (He drove many people mad, in Canberra and no doubt in the US, along the way with his hyperactivity, but that’s Rudd.)

There is no case for Rudd to be replaced. He just needs to make sure he keeps his (undoubted) fury at his Tuesday humiliation strictly to himself. In the past he has been his own worst enemy, leaving an expletive-laden trail of public and private outbursts. Remember, Kevin, even the embassy walls have ears.