From today’s Crikey email:
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night gave an interview to Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.
This morning, Brisbane’s sole metropolitan newspaper characterised his successor Julia Gillard’s response as an apology to Queenslanders for hurting their feelings.
It’s a funny way to characterise the reception of the Labor leadership change.
Rudd’s interview was dignified, self-deprecating and displayed a lot of character and humanity. The initial media response that his remarks would prove a “distraction” for the Labor campaign is surely a mischaracterisation, proving only that the bizarre script that has dominated much of this election continues to write itself in the face of changed facts.
Contrary to what the Niki Savvas and Janet Albrechtsens of this world might have us believe, Rudd’s not the sort of bloke to let himself be consumed by bitterness and regret. He’s no Mark Latham.
I said last night on ABC News 24′s The Drum that I didn’t think Rudd’s deposition was the sole source of Queensland Labor’s undoubted woes.
Labor has lots of problems here — the toxicity of an ALP brand contaminated by perceptions of Anna Bligh’s reversal on privatisation combining with a feeling that federal Labor had gone the same way as the state mob, obsessed with “announcables” and machinations. Queenslanders are also preparing to reverse our record of being one of the Greens’ worst states.
However, the ALP has been able to contain the swing against it in some of its marginals, if what I’m hearing is right. Particularly in regional Queensland and on Brisbane’s northern outskirts, a formidable marginal seat campaign is under way, aided by the quality of many of the members elected in the Kevin07 surge. My best guess is that, at the moment, Labor is looking at losing more like 4-5 seats rather than 8-10 seats.
Kevin Rudd’s words won’t hurt Labor’s chances. Far from it. But it’s about more than hurt feelings.
The ALP still has to demonstrate to Queenslanders that it’s capable of transcending the sound bite politics of a state administration. It’s doing a good job of addressing parish pump issues, in a campaign that feels very much like Fred Daly’s picture of concurrent local by-elections.
As I wrote in 2007, one of Rudd’s big virtues was that he was able to appeal to cosmopolitan Queenslanders sick of being dismissed as country cousins and to the still very real state parochialism that suffuses the place.
If he can now revive some of that spirit, and infuse Julia Gillard’s campaign with it, there will be an electoral dividend in Queensland.
I fear Mark that any benefit from Rudd’s intervention in Queensland will be offset by lost support elsewhere. Today the MSM is portraying this as Rudd trying to save the ALP. He has now placed himself in the middle of the campaign, further ensuring that the media talk about Labor, rather than the policy differences between the two parties. It also diminishes Julia. I mean, if she needs to be saved by Rudd, then what sort of a leader is she? If Kevin had really had the best interests of the party at heart, he would either have not contested his seat and then left the country during the campaign, or just had a brief press conference at the beginning of the campaign saying that he fully supported Julia and that he would be holding no press conferences during the campaign. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Rudd’s deposition, you simply cannot have a disgruntled (or perceived to be) ex-PM running around the country giving the impression that the party can’t win without him.
So, contrary to most here, I see today’s press conference as selfish, not selfless.
“So, contrary to most here, I see today’s press conference as selfish, not selfless.”
That’s hardly surprising. Did he give you the sack or something?
The fact that you handily overlook is that Rudd was asked to campaign for the ALP in Queensland. Imagine if he had said no. As others have said, sections of the media will intepret his actions as a negative whatever he does.
But what you want is for the bastard to give up his political career. For the good of the party of course. The hide of him, forcing the party to get rid of him and wanting to recontest his seat, it’s definitely the height of selfishness.
I’m starting to wonder what it is about Rudd that brings out such irrational vindictiveness in some people.
Yep – Kevin has been wedged on this, by the lack of a better campaign story-wise from Labor as much as by the media.
Expecting him to give up his career for the sake of the party is expecting the man to be a saint, which is unreasonable. Considering the circumstances, he’s being a fairly decent human being, which ought to be good enough.
I totally agree LO. Last night we heard the cruelly hurt but, you know, ruefully jocular Kev telling Phillip Adams that he was too big to nurse grievance and (given his successor’s woeful inadequacy in every respect) would therefore step up to single-handedly defeat Tony Abbott – as long as that didn’t take the spotlight off PM Gillard, of course.
This afternoon he called a media conference (presumably, in order to ensure that there was no media spotlight on him) to announce that he was going to save the nation. Or something. If we need Kevin to save us from Abbott, why is Julia Gillard the PM?
Why? By any standard the Party’s been pretty good to Rudd—it gave him the career in the first place.
For what it’s worth, Nathan Rees who has rather more to be bitter about than KR is quietly recontesting Toongabbie in NSW.
Well Geoff Honor, some people are simply incapable of seeing the good in others. If you actually listened to that interview, I find your reaction hard to fathom.
And Rudd isn’t going to ‘save the nation. Or something’. He’s going to campaign for the ALP to prevent the election of a Tony Abbott.
Well perhaps he IS going to help save the nation.
tigtog@3, let’s see how it plays out. I think it will end up being a net positive.
This has been the political drama that just keeps on giving….who knows what will happen next?
Great work by all involved.
‘For what it’s worth, Nathan Rees who has rather more to be bitter about than KR is quietly recontesting Toongabbie in NSW.’
Still has a political career then.
Presumably if he was asked to assist the ALP campaign he would either agree or not agree.
So it’s not worth very much.
He was not asked to campaign in this way at all, that is a fabrication. He doesn’t need to give press conferences and then answer questions that clearly imply that he is all that is standing between Labor and defeat. He should just have refused to do all media apart from issuing a single press release giving his unequivocal support for the leader and the party. I just can’t believe that you all can’t see that 2 weeks of Kevin campaigning around Queensland will make it nearly impossible for Labor to shift the campaign focus away from themselves to the opposition. And what is he going to do? Campaign on what Julia is going to do in the future, or his own record? It just isn’t sustainable.
And Adrian, I’m getting sick and tired of you personalising these debates. Grow up. I don’t impugn your motives when I disagree with you. Give me the same courtesy.
Speaking as someone who had no great fondness for Rudd — quite the opposite really (he made it clear he was a Christian and a conservative and I am still disgusted with his action on the CPRS and on asylum seekers) — I think his efforet today will be a net positive for the party.
Once you undertsand that no matter what he does, it will be spun by the media as bad for the ALP campaign, the real question is — what can he do to claw back advantage for the party?
If he’d gone to ground, there would have been no upside at all, but all of the negativity would have persisted. This way they get an image of a man who when he ought to be hurting and feeling sorry for himself, picks himself up, dusts himself off and makes up his mind to serve the country. He looks like a man who really does beleiv in something bigger than himself after all. He can appeal to all those who reckon he was hard done by to vote ALP anyway.
By joining them on the campaign the government gets to claim their legacy in handling the GFC and run as incumbents.
That’s about as positive a result as you can imagine.
And yes, I still don’t like his politics, but he has gone up in my estimation as a human being.
@Liam
If his local party still want him as their candidate, which it appears that they do, why shouldn’t he stand? Would you rather he ran as an independent – it appears that he’d probably still get the necessary votes.
I see Rudd caught tightly in a Catch-22: if he didn’t stand he’d be the broken man cruelly robbed of his career by Gillard and all the media questions become about poor Kev, if he does stand he’s supposedly sucking oxygen from the national campaign and all the media questions become about vindictive Kev.
So he decides to recontest, and now there’s a new Catch-22: if Rudd doesn’t answer the media questions he’s a cesspit of festering resentment and a blight on the national campaign, yet if he does answer the media questions with by-the-playbook denunciations of Abbott and support statements for Gillard then he’s a cesspit of festering resentment and a blight on the national campaign.
It’s a very clever and nasty piece of wedging of both Labor as a whole and Rudd in particular. Blaming Rudd for it is looking entirely in the wrong direction, IMO.
Geoff Honnor:
Because he threatened the power of Labor right factions when, like Natahan Reese in NSW, he appointed his own ministry. Both are now out on their arse. Mark Arbib is the common factor in both removals. That, and the factions represent overwhelmingly male labour interests whose economic and political authority depends on maintaining their jobs in extractive industires. They didn’t like the RSPT or the EST.
Reese had a gutfull of corruption in NSW and Rudd was opposed to Fed Labor’s neolib trajectory. See his Monthly essays for a clear explanation between the lines. Fed Labor now has a happily compliant woman as leader and so does NSW. That’s the right faction’s drive to sustain the unsustainable by appealing to populism through appointing women leaders.
It’s very clear that Kevin Rudd was asked to do the press conference today by the campaign, so it would lead news bulletins. He mentioned that he’d been approached by the PM this morning, and would be meeting her on Sunday before going out on the campaign trail.
His press conference was followed very quickly on ABC 24 by an interview with Chris Bowen, the official campaign spokesperson, who was very positive about it.
That was reinforced by Julia Gillard saying it was natural for “Labor people with Labor values” to come together at this time.
LO, it may well be that Kevin Rudd might have made a different decision about recontesting the election, but he decided to, and it’s pretty obvious that he’s been integrated into the campaign now, which is about the best result achievable given how it’s developed to date.
TT I thought you meant it was unfair that Labor should insist he continues to run against his wishes and that he should give up a career outside the Parliament ie. in the private sector. We agree, it seems.
Ps – I think the public are mature enough (as opposed to journos) to want JG and KRudd to reach a modus vivendi which allows them to work together in the interests of the nation, without necessarily becoming besties.
Pps – what tigtog said at 12.
Well Labor Outsider, my apologies, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired of your relentless pursuit of Rudd, no matter what he does. But it’s probably best to call a truce.
@ LO
Rudd did not take questions at today’s press conference.
Now those are useful questions. I agree that there will be plenty of difficulties in staying on-message.
I’m just not sure that it wouldn’t be worse if he did nothing.
And what Fran and Kim said.
Also I think sometimes we get a bit too obsessed with how the media interprets these events. Those who are not paying too much attention may gain a completely different impression from we media junkies.
@Liam,
Ah, I see where some confusion lay. Yes, I meant his political career.
Beautiful bit of positioning for after the election Kevin …
Does this mean Krudd will include the ALP logo on his campaign bumf from now on?
@1
That’s certainly one interpretation, albeit bizarrely skewed to conform to a narrative. My guess is that there’s a fair amount of sympathy out there for Rudd that has been enhanced by his recent health problems and his stoic post-operative persona. If the geniuses who run the party want to spin it to themselves the way LO sees it then they are indeed consumed by pride and avarice and deserve the punishment meted to for those sins..
There is plenty that both Rudd and Gillard are for that Abbott is going to destroy – like his deal with the states on hospitals and the NBN, to mention two that he has already mentioned.
Apart from that he’s already been quite eloquent on what they did to save Australia from the GFC.
Plus he’s said that Abbott is unfit to be PM, so I guess he will attack him directly.
I think he’s got his Kevin07 mojo back. Nick Stuart said the Kevin messed with Howard’s head, but after the disappointment of Copenhagen and leaving Abbott free space to launch himself over the holiday period he got to a state where Abbott was messing with his head.
The press will continue to spin it anti-ALP probably, but I think it will be a net benefit.
“I just can’t believe that you all can’t see that 2 weeks of Kevin campaigning around Queensland will make it nearly impossible for Labor to shift the campaign focus away from themselves to the opposition. ”
Well perhaps that’s your problem, you can’t see that a failing campaign needs a gamebreaker, something to lift to a different level. I can’t believe that all you have, in the face of some bad numbers, is more of the same. Rudd was a great campaigner during ’07, why would you leave a such great contributor on the bench? Of course I presume there are some in the ALP who, loving conspiracy, see this is Rudd actually saying he wants to help while actually wanting to see Abbott elected. As I said, atavistic fools.
Why Rudd be such selfish bastard as continue give impression party muzzle him?
Rudd do nothing but hurt government reelection by giving impression he not allowed talk.
Me not surprised by Rudd not doing decent thing and give at least one tame interview to hardcore anti-tory commentator.
Me hear Radio National ‘Early Evening Live’ parlour pink Keith Windschuttle want to throw softball interview questions to member for Griffith. Either that or he go on Barrie Cassidy show, just as long as he not sit on couch next to angry pro-Liberal Right wingnut blogger Mark Bahnisch…
I think in the end it will be a good thing. QLD’ers get to see Rudd’s not bitter and getting on with things for the good of the Labor Party (no i in team and all that) and his “intervention” today was a masterstroke for Labor as it knocked Abbott’s big Billion dollar health policy into the background (we all knew that was coming today so that might’ve been the reason why Rudd called a presser today to make sure Labor dominated the news cycle for the day and would get top billing on the 6pm news).
I guess we will just have to see how it evolves. Even assuming the best intentions from Kevin, I just have concerns that this will increase the distraction from the central campaign messages (which haven’t been that good anyway). If I were the Coalition, I’d certainly be playing up the line that Rudd’s central involvement suggests that the ALP is having buyers remorse. If the ALP don’t think Julia is good enough to win the campaign without Kevin, why should voters have faith in her ability to run the country?
On balance I think Kevin is a better campaigner than Julia (my reservations about him were never on that level). I think that Julia will be diminished by his involvement. But perhaps as you all seem to think, it is a risk worth taking given Labor’s problems in Queensland where Kevin is clearly still popular.
And btw, I don’t have a problem with Kevin and Julia working together. But Kevin is no longer a member of the leadership group. This isn’t a joint ticket. Kevin will have to be very careful with the way he campaigns if this is to work.
Mark
It was Jan 08 for me here; recently you called for his head post election 2010. And why was that, Mark?
‘the still very real state parochialism that suffuses the place.’
Agreed & all politics is local, but the h word you left out is guess what? Hey folks, humble, helpful no. Hubris.
The Dudd’s army @ the red rodent’s launch goes like this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJleJbn9G6Y
But you know something, if I’m not out the back door, or this isn’t the greatest moral blah blah since the last blah blah…the msm are not going to put up with no questions etc.etc. And nor should we.
What’s happened to our alp?
Hey PC, they are touching their toes and I am informed lubricated.
“Kevin will have to be very careful with the way he campaigns if this is to work.”
Yes, well I’m sure he’s quite capable seeing the right path given that he managed to get himself elected Prime Minister. I actually think that the LNP have done quite well not focusing on the ALPs disarray. They have stuck very closely to what was almost certainly a strategy developed pre-election. I reckon they’ll come unstuck when they get over excited about the return of Rudd and internal ALP machinations. Up til now they’ve let the media play that game and it may be that it’s just too exciting for the short pants brigade and before you know it they’re stripped to the waist chanting “Kill the piggie” (not a good look).
Interesting – the Government now has two ‘Prime Ministers’ in its ranks to wage its campaign. Is this a first in Australian politics. Should Tone be complaining to the referee about Labor’s unfair advantage? Can he counterpunch that quickly?
@32 – Maybe he needs John Howard on the campaign trail?
/runs away
Insiders and media types under-estimate the anti-politics optimism that Rudd brought to the national stage in 2007 and which lingers in the collective subconscious.
Regardless of the undoubtedly justified internal party resentment about Rudd’s imperious and non-aligned management style, he still radiates a moral purpose and decency missing from the campaign to date. By raising his profile, he also provides a bridge to Labor’s very credible and sound handling of the economy through the GFC.
The disquiet surrounding Gillard’s campaign is wholly due to the circumstances of her elevation, so Rudd’s reappearance separates the internal Labor politics from the national politics and provides hope that Labor can sell its economic record and put Abbott under more scutiny.
Not only will he quite possibly save us all from Abbott but I reckon that, given this display of loyalty, one day he will be PM again. One day. This’s one tough mutha with a world view to pursue.
@29 – LO, I heard today from someone in a position to know that the Labor party’s pollsters had been testing whether Kevin’s return to the campaign would move votes in Queensland last night. So one more piece of evidence that it’s very much part of an agreed strategy.
“Kevin will have to be very careful with the way he campaigns if this is to work.”
Agree with that LO. He should stick to QLD, and only pop up once every few days to go “still on board, feel that incumbency vibe, see you in a few days”.
That said, he is far and away the best campaigner in the field – way ahead of both Glllard and Abbott.
I for one am relieved to see him on board.
I wish he would do that anyway, just for his own sake. He sounds as though he is still feeling pretty wretched physically, and he would be mad to let himself in for some kind of relapse, quite apart from politix.
@38 – I saw his press conference today, Dr Cat, and I thought he was struggling a bit, though obviously in a chipper mood.
He has said that he’s seeing his specialist on Saturday, Julia Gillard on Sunday, and won’t be off campaigning til next week.
I’m sure Therese will make sure he doesn’t over tax himself.
I can understand LO’s concerns, but from the hysteria about the mining tax, maybe even extending back to The Great Big Tax and on to the coup it has not been easy to think rationally and has led to high risk politics. We are in that area already so that another risk barely matters. The campaign had been hijacked by media obsessions with trivia.
True, Labor had finally got onto their strength this week on economic and employment performance. But I don’t see the Rudd drama as distracting from that. Quite the reverse. In the Adams interview and in the presser Rudd focused precisely on these points and the differences between Labor and Abbott. They are huge and they need to be spelled out.
The view from Queensland, as we’ve seen from Mark and Kim and over at Poll Bludger from Scorpio is that Rudd will be a big help on the campaign trail. How long he can keep up not answering questions I don’t know, but it is an excellent tactic for preventing a further media trivia hijack.
Very likely, Brian. Katherine Murphy has a piece in The Age sending it up as Rudd’s ego: only I can save you. Probably will get a bit of spin either from the media or a Libs negative. But my guess is that fairness and sympathy to Rudd, especially after Dolly’s dopey smear attempt and Rudd’s illness, will not allow it much traction.
Over at PB, Greensborough Growler even suggested it could take on a reality TV show-type sympathy. Kevin gets voted out, to everybody’s dismay, even the Liberals crying in sympathy, and then gets a wildcard re-entry.
You never know. Makes as much sense as an election about the Boat People, anyway.
BULC @27
[bizarro-on]
Me have very clear idea what you say. But I sad anyway.
Please stop posting.
[bizarro-off]
Hilarious!! Can’t wait for the next installment
Meanwhile, Tones has a new ‘great big’.
In his talk to the Australian-Chinese Council Of Whatever he said – ‘The Rudd-Gillard govt. took a great big baseball bat to the mining industry…’
This must be another TA ‘crackdown’. This time on adjectives. Two will do for the enire campaign.
Look, is this is a result of all you gadget freaks getting your news on IPad. Only room for two words on the screen so the nation’s attention span drops to microseconds ??
I think overall the return of Rudd reinforces the return to GFC saviour message – which is odds-on to get this whole show back on track.
All upside.
And why should Rudd retire? He is one of the most talented and capable people in the party and his a great deal of international respect.
I think the people who suggest he stand down do so for their own personal reasons. I mean, how dare a non-fractionally aligned PM be allowed to exist or even stay.
Gillard in having knifed Rudd, because the govt had lost it’s way (lol) immediately got lost, jumped to the right and made a mess of everything, being out of her depth.
Ironic that Gillard now needs Rudd to save Labor from losing which is a genuine possibility.
And why are people so enamoured of a leader that is in the mould of NSW right. She was willing to go the dog whistle immediately, adopt Howard’s Pacific solution and set back CC issues a decade.
People refuse to see the writing on the wall? Because? They fancy the image that Gillard cuts as leader?
Interesting contrast between feelings of respect for Rudd versus the feelings of disgust for the post-modernist, belief free laboral parties. If you heard the rest of Late Night Live with Philip Adams they talked a lot about the lack of any genuine labor sensibilities in the labor party.
There was no way so close to an election Rudd was not going to be a big issue. He is a larger than life figure, especially since Gillard is seemingly a smaller than life figure, being less than the assumption.
This is another reason the knifing was so crazy. Losing so many advantages, gaining problems of all kinds and lacking a real reason or legitimacy. It was too late in the piece, Labor was recovering in the polls.
The net result of this could be giving the Coalition 6 years in power and Labor having wasted 2 PMs and wondering who has what it takes to contest effectively in Opposition.
LO @ 29 – I’m sure Gillard can find yet another football analogy – Kevin no longer the captain, but still an important player….
LeftyE @ 37 – he’s already said he’ll be campaigning in NSW as well as QLD – presumably at the request of the party.
The hatred of the Labor right towards Rudd must be at an all time high, now they know they desperately need him to save them.
I don’t know but I think that would be a positive campaign theme for somebody. I am not like by the Labor right faction in my party.
But honestly, if Abbott won but the Greens controlled the Senate it could be a good thing for Labor. They desperately need to deal with their internal stuff, and stop their surge to the right.
Pretty soon there will be no party to vote for.
Well said Thomas Paine. It is really beyond belief that some people are still, after all that has happened, bagging the man.
I can’t begin to understand their motivation, unless it’s to elect Abbott.
Adrian. Perhaps because some people believe that it was leaking by Rudd and his followers over the past few weeks that helped to sabotage the campaign to the extent that the party needed to reach out to him just to stop the bloodletting?
How does the saying go? Better off in the tent pissing out than out of the tent pissing in?
Anyway, a lot of things will come out in the wash after the election. For now, let’s just hope that Rudd’s involvement is positive and that Labor wins the election.
“it was leaking by Rudd and his followers over the past few weeks”
Er … irony isn’t your long suite is it? Collaboration between elements in the ALP and the media precipitated this mess. Oh, hang on … sorry … mustn’t look backward … must … move … for … ward … Oh fuck that.
I honestly hope the hardheads in the ALP don’t believe all these leaks are down to Rudd. The climate change leak? He’s responsible for that?
That’s magical thinking. It’s not very professional or hardheaded to think that.
And it’s not like I’m one of these people who reckon it must be Tanner or Emerson instead (even if one is leaving, while the other knows he can never advance to treasurer under Gillard, and both just aren’t on particularly good terms with the new PM).
I think it’s unlikely famous caucus figures are responsible for all of this.
In fact, consider this hypothesis—what we’ve experienced since the first Oakes expose is actually a combination of little people (staffers, backbenchers, party & union officials) going feral, and the individual gallery muckrakers deciding they will lower their evidentiary standards in order to repeat the (admittedly accurate) stories of these little people, as if they could have come from the mouths of Gillard’s Cabinet ‘adversaries’.
Interesting that we hold the gallery to be always more honourable than ALP frontbenchers.
Actually, Patrick, by the usual standards of leadership destabilisation, Rudd had suffered relatively little from internal leaking in the months leading up to the challenge. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why there was so much surprise outside the party when he was dumped. Certainly, Rudd put Beazley through far worse in advance of that challenge than Gillard and the plotters put Rudd through.
Anyway, regardless of whether it really was Rudd or not, or those close to him, the perception is enough to create profound mistrust.
This will all be glossed over during the next two weeks. But should Labor lose, the recriminations on both sides will make the last few weeks look very tame.
Nichws, my memory is that politicians and journalists are about the same in public esteem – both below used car salesmen.