It is, to use a Canberra cliché, the “optics” of Kevin Rudd’s world discovery tour that are the problem, rather than the substance. About the only part of the trip that looks genuinely surplus to requirements is the stopover in London to see Gordon Brown and the Queen. Then again, we haven’t heard too many conservatives proposing that Rudd skip his meeting with Australia’s head of state to shorten the tour.

But the notion that the PM should be in Canberra rather than overseas, hunkered down with the red pen going through departmental budgets with Lindsay Tanner and Wayne Swan, suggests an amusingly quaint understanding of the Budget process.

Nevertheless, the omission of Japan from the itinerary was unfortunate from the point of view of Rudd’s well-known Sinophilia. The Japanese press were already questioning its significance for Australian-Japanese relations in the wake of the election in November. The weekend revelation, prompted by a Japanese journalist, that Rudd had yet to speak with his Japanese counterpart, makes it look much worse.

Yes, Rudd is going to Japan twice later in the year, probably including the G8 Summit outreach meeting in July at the invitation of the Japanese Government. And the Japanese themselves have been careful to indicate everything is fine, stressing our “comprehensive strategic partnership”, and visits by both Stephen Smith and Simon Crean in January.

But you’d have thought Rudd would have found the time to pick up the phone to Yasuo Fukuda to at least introduce himself, particularly when we were dispatching boats to hunt the Japanese whaling fleet.

China was one of the few success stories of John Howard’s foreign policy, which was mostly outsourced to the US State Department. He managed to get the balance between China and Australia’s traditional allies right, understanding that relationships with China, Japan and the US were not mutually exclusive.

Labor’s history on China is more problematic, with a tendency to talk nonsense about “special relationships” or run off at the mouth whenever particularly egregious examples of Beijing’s contempt to human rights are displayed. This may be offset if Kevin Rudd is willing to be belie his diplomatic background in Beijing and tell his hosts that we’re delighted with our burgeoning economic relationship but their human rights record continues to be appalling, that we won’t pretend that companies controlled by foreign governments are just like any other commercial entities and that if they don’t want to buy our minerals at market prices then they can find somewhere else to get them.

The Beijing leg of his tour will then look much less like a happy homecoming for Rudd and more like the “creative middle power diplomacy” Rudd claims is the basis for his foreign policy. And the trips to Japan later in the year will look more like the visits to a long-term ally and strategic partner that they should be.