John Howard claims Chinese ambassador tried to bar Greens leader Bob Brown from Hu Jintao speech in Parliament

Mr Howard welcomed then-Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President George W Bush to Canberra in 2003, both leaders delivering addresses to the House of Representatives on consecutive days.

Mr Howard described the trip "a testament ... [to] the success of Australian diplomacy", but said things took a difficult turn when the Chinese ambassador demanded Greens leader Bob Brown be excluded from President Hu's speech.

Senator Brown, an opponent of the Iraq War, was removed from the chamber a day prior for interjecting during President Bush's address.

"Bush handled the interjection very well," Mr Howard told the Asia Rising podcast.

"The [Chinese] ambassador came around to see me and said: look, this is terrible. I want an undertaking that he can't [interject].

"I said: well, I can't give you that, and I won't give you that. He's got a right to be there. He was elected, [and] it's a democracy."

Mr Howard said he told the ambassador Mr Brown would be ejected if he "breaks the rules".

The former prime minister said hosting a Chinese leader at that time led no-one to think "we were in any way compromising our commitment to democracy".

"The point is that we had the two addresses," he said.

"It was seen as a high watermark of that successful relationship we established with large countries in our region, but in a way that was utterly consistent with our close democratic links with countries such as the United States."

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week said he was open to meeting with President Hu's successor, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

Australia's relationship with China has deteriorated since 2019, when Beijing launched a trade war after the former Coalition government pushed for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton also confirmed this week he had held a "constructive" meeting with Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian.

Senator Brown was one of two Greens representatives, alongside Senator Kerry Nettle, ordered to leave the chamber for disrupting Mr Bush's speech. The pair were forcibly removed after remaining in their seats.

At the time, Mr Howard dismissed the outburst as a "politically contrived stunt".

"It's something of an embarrassment to the country when an invited guest is treated like that," he said.

"But on the other hand, we are a democracy. Bob Brown did it quite deliberately."