Heritage Foundation officials were due to outline their conservative blueprint at Australian embassy, correspondence shows
The rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025 – cast as a playbook for Donald Trump’s second presidential term – was scheduled to brief Australian ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, on the manifesto months before last year’s election, documents reveal.
The Heritage Foundation was due to be hosted at the Australian embassy in Washington early last year to present its 2025 presidential transition project, which features a detailed conservative blueprint to overhaul US democracy.
A run-sheet for the 8 February event was included in correspondence released under freedom of information laws, which also revealed Australian officials discussed arranging meetings for a top Heritage Foundation adviser during his visit to Australia in June.
The high-level interactions with the Heritage Foundation suggest Project 2025 was being treated seriously in Canberra and show the effort Rudd was making to build ties with conservative figures who could play a role in a second Trump administration.
The 920-page policy playbook at the heart of Project 2025 – titled Mandate for Leadership – became a major US election issue after Democrats began describing it as Trump’s secret agenda for a second term in the Oval Office.
The document includes proposals to dramatically expand presidential power and make it easier to replace civil servants with political appointees, restrict access to abortion pills, reverse Biden-era climate policies, ban pornography and enforce mass deportations.
Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 and claimed he never read the document despite personal links to many of its key contributors.
The president-elect has since tapped several Project 2025 contributors to serve in his incoming administration, including Russell Vought, who wrote the chapter on the office of the president.
The newly released FoI documents from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) show a delegation of six Heritage Foundation representatives, led by James Jay Carafino, a senior counsellor to the president, were scheduled to brief Rudd and embassy staff on Project 2025 during an 70-minute reception at the Washington embassy.
The Heritage Foundation, established in 1973, is one of the United States’ most influential conservative think tanks, with more than half a million members.
A biography of Project 2025, attached to the run sheet, laid out the crux of the organisation’s rightwing mission.
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry out this agenda on day one of the next conservative administration,” it read.
In a statement, a Dfat spokesperson said officers and embassy personnel engaged with the Heritage Foundation, as they did with policy organisations with “influence in their countries”.
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about the scheduled briefing, including if it went ahead as planned, who initiated it and why.
Emails sent almost four months after the scheduled event show Dfat officials discussing potential meetings and roundtables with the Heritage Foundation adviser Wilson Beaver during a research trip to Australia in June.
In a 12 June email, one Dfat official said they would be “very keen to do something with Mr Beaver” while he was in Canberra.
Guardian Australia understands Dfat officials did meet Beaver to discuss the Indo-Pacific.
Beaver requested briefings from Australian defence officials ahead of the visit, the emails show.
Beaver was also scheduled to tour the Osborne naval shipyard in Adelaide during the four-day trip, after which he published a research paper on the importance of Aukus for strengthening the US-Australia alliance and security in the Indo-Pacific.
The federal government has faced repeated questions about Rudd’s capacity to work with a Trump administration after previously describing Trump as a “village idiot” and “most destructive president in history” in now-deleted posts which had been made before his appointment as Australia’s ambassador to Washington.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and senior ministers have brushed off criticisms of their former Labor colleague, insisting Rudd’s wide network of contacts in Washington and expertise on China made him the best person to fill the key diplomatic post.
Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre, said the diplomatic engagement with Project 25 was a crucial part of preparing for a potential Trump presidency.
“Because he [Trump] is so mercurial and because he is so transactional and because he has so many ploys that he can unleash across the board, it’s just really important to understand it,” Wolpe said. “And [Project 2025] has been seen as something that is core to Trump’s thinking.”
The Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.