KEVIN Rudd has been accused of incompetence in managing foreign policy, indulging in international grandstanding and having an overriding obsession with big ideas and grand schemes.
Liberal senator Russell Trood yesterday accused the Prime Minister of talking big about international statesmanship but presiding over a marked deterioration in Australia's relations with key nations such as Japan, China and India since his election in 2007.
While Mr Rudd engaged "constant adventure" and "global activism", Senator Trood said, the nation's international relations were in turmoil and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was stretched, under-funded and under strain.
Senator Trood chairs the Senate committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade references and came to politics after a career as an academic in the field of industrial relations.
His critique, made in an interview with The Weekend Australian, expanded on a speech he gave in the Senate on Wednesday, in which he attacked Mr Rudd as more interested in process than results.
It came as Mr Rudd prepared to leave today for the US to attend a summit meeting of G20 leaders.
Mr Rudd came to The Lodge with a background as a diplomat, and has outlined an ambitious reform agenda aimed at lifting Australia's influence in international affairs.
The Prime Minister has proposed the creation of an EU-style Asia-Pacific community, established a commission for nuclear non-proliferation and pressed for the use of the G20 as the key international group for multilateral engagement, rather than the G7 group of the richest nations.
But according to Senator Trood, while Mr Rudd has plenty of ideas, he has not produced practical results.
"His fundamental approach to international relations is what some people call legal internationalist," he said. "People who have that view are preoccupied with processes, forms and structures and they spend almost no time thinking about the outcomes. The thing that surprises me is how incompetent he has been in many of these things, particularly around Asia."
Senator Trood said the Prime Minister's stream of new policy initiatives was overtaxing the bureaucracy, and many of his initiatives made no sense.
"How could anyone think seriously, for instance, that it is in Australia's national interest to spend over $11 million on a resident Australian ambassador to the Holy See when Australia's diplomatic resources are stretched so thinly elsewhere?"
Senator Trood dismissed Mr Rudd's campaign for Australia to gain a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013-14 as mystifying, and said the idea of an Asia-Pacific community was not thought out. The proposal had no serious support among other nations, he said.