Rudd scrubs Trump social media posts as Albanese calls with congratulations for president-elect

Australia will advocate for free trade and climate action – despite Donald Trump’s agenda against both – and persist with the Aukus alliance including nuclear submarine acquisition, the Albanese government has indicated.

Under fire from conservative media about his comments in 2017 that Trump “scares the shit” out of him, the prime minster, Anthony Albanese, was asked if he owed an apology to the president-elect.

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“No, I look forward to working with president Trump,” he told reporters.

Asked if it was a mistake to appoint Kevin Rudd as ambassador to the US after Rudd labelled Trump – in a now-deleted tweet – the most destructive president in US history, Albanese backed Rudd.

He said Rudd was “doing a terrific job as Australia’s ambassador to the [US] and it says a lot about how important we regard the relationship with the [US] that we appointed a former prime minister”.

Albanese later confirmed in a post on X that he spoke with the president-elect on Thursday morning.

“Good to speak this morning with president Trump to personally congratulate him on his election victory,” he wrote. “We talked about the importance of the alliance and the strength of the Australia-US relationship in security, trade and investment.”

In Senate estimates on Thursday, a foreign affairs department official read a statement from Rudd’s private office account confirming the “past commentaries” had been removed from his personal website and social media channels “out of respect” for the office of president of the United States and following the election of Trump.

“This has been done to eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as ambassador, and by extension, the views of the Australian government,” it said.

“Ambassador Rudd looks forward to working with President Trump and his team to continue strengthening the US-Australia alliance.”

Earlier on Thursday Albanese, and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said the government is prepared to engaged with Trump as president, although Wong acknowledged he had campaigned on “change” and may therefore do things “differently”.

Wong told ABC Radio early on Thursday that there is a “longstanding, strong bipartisan support for the alliance in both Australia and the United States” and the Labor government had been “preparing for the likelihood, or the possibility of a president Trump being re‑elected”.

On Trump’s campaign pledge to impose a universal tariff of between 10 and 20% on imports, Wong acknowledged that Trump had “run a campaign based on change” including the tariff hike, “so we shouldn’t be surprised if things change”.

Albanese said Australia had “given consideration to the potential outcomes” of the election and have been “prepared” for Trump’s policies with briefings on “security, economic and other issues”.

“But Australia is a supporter of trade. We’re a trading nation and we will continue to be advocates for free and fair trade, including through the Apec meeting that I’ll be attending … next week.”

Albanese said the G20 and other international forums “will overwhelmingly be focused on climate action, because the whole world is moving in this direction” because of environmental reasons and “because it makes good economic sense”.

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The Albanese government has come under pressure from the Greens, former Labor senator Fatima Payman and Labor Against War to exit the Aukus alliance as a result of Trump’s election.

Wong said that Australia wishes “to acquire submarines because we want a deterrent to enable peace … and it is an important part of making sure we maintain a peaceful, stable and prosperous region”.

“The second point I’d make is there’s been strong bipartisan support for Aukus, particularly through the Congress, which you would have seen both with the passage of legislation and also in public comments,” she told ABC Radio.

“Finally, I again make the point, these submarines are a sovereign capability for Australia.”

In Trump’s first term as president, the Turnbull government successfully negotiated an exemption for Australia to his tariffs on aluminium and steel and managed to salvage a refugee swap deal negotiated by President Barack Obama, despite Trump labelling it a “dumb deal”.

On Thursday Turnbull told ABC Radio he had “a very successful relationship with Trump because I stood up to him, stood my ground, incurred his wrath, won his respect, and then got very good outcomes for Australia”.

Turnbull warned he doesn’t think Australia will “ever” get any Virginia-class submarines from the US because the US is not producing enough even for themselves.

“The [Aukus] deal that Morrison instigated and Albanese signed up to is a very, very asymmetrical deal, [and] all of the risk was on Australia.

“We have no agency and no leverage over this, and that’s why I think the most likely outcome is we’ll end up with no submarines, and that will be entirely our own fault because we signed up to a dud deal.”

Trump’s election has been welcomed in Australia particularly by conservatives, such as s senator Matt Canavan and former Liberal prime minister, Tony Abbott.