Paul Keating has accused Australia of lacking a foreign policy capable of negotiating the rise of China and the diminishing influence of the United States.

"Australia needs a foreign policy, and it needs it urgently. Australia does not have a foreign policy," the former prime minister told an audience in Sydney on Tuesday night.

In comments that will not escape the attention of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and aimed at the Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull-led Coalition governments, Mr Keating said humanitarian rescues in Ukraine, like the one co-ordinated after the MH17 disaster, were "worthy" but did not amount to a calculated foreign policy.

"We both need and deserve a nuanced foreign policy which does take account of these big seismic shifts in the world. And we can't ever be caught up in some containment policy of China ... to assist the Americans in trying to preserve strategic hegemony in Asia and the Pacific.