1397829600# When he jetted into Russia last month, Kevin Rudd laughed off suggestions he was posing as a freelance peacemaker, trying single-handedly to solve the Ukrainian crisis. Former backers in the Labor Party found themselves awkwardly talking up his skills while also denying he was some sort of special envoy. “He’s not acting as a Labor secret agent to try to fix it,” Bill Shorten said, “although Kevin is a man of remarkable talents.” However, the former prime minister has now hinted at a behind-the-scenes role in resolving one of the most diabolical security dilemmas in the world, the territorial dispute between Japan and China in the East China Sea. It was April 10 and Rudd had just regaled a crowded auditorium at the German Historical Museum in Berlin with the parallels between Europe in 1914 and the current security situation in east Asia.
Many in the rarefied world of international diplomacy believe that as he can no longer lead Australia, he now wants to lead the world. Watch out world. ALP's savaging of Kevin Rudd is a suicide attack. By trashing Kevin Rudd's reputation, Julia Gillard's supporters are destroying Labor's brand Source: The Sunday Telegraph Anyone who has spent a bit of time riding the political roller-coaster will tell you the same thing - in politics things are never quite as good, or as bad as they seem. In moments of crisis, that advice is shoved at you like a buoyancy device being thrust into the hands of a drowning man.
In moments of elation, it's whispered into your ear by someone who's been around the block before, and seen it all coming crashing down. I've heard that advice, I've given that advice, and I believe it is almost always true. I say "almost always" because a clear-eyed assessment of Labor's present predicament suggests that for Labor, things may actually be worse than they seem. Before we start, it may be worth clearing one thing up. Leadership spills are always messy. Labor voters who are Rudd supporters are outraged. It won't stop with Rudd's legacy, or Gillard's. The gender agenda: Gillard and the politics of sexism. Gillard support strong within Labor Labor MPs pledge their support for Julia Gillard as she delivered a speech in the Hunter Valley. P 26, 2012 IN JUNE 2009, 23-year-old Giorgia Boscolo became Venice's first certified female gondolier, breaking into an occupation that traditionally had been passed from father to son with the result it had been all-male for 900 years.
To qualify, Boscolo had to demonstrate she could manoeuvre the narrow gondola, which is 10.66 metres long and weighs 227 kilograms, through Venice's winding waterways using a single oar, all the while speaking English and telling stories to her tourist passengers. She also had to be able to predict the treacherous Venetian tides and currents. Other women had tried and failed to pass the rigorous 400-hour course, so Boscolo clearly has what it takes. Julia Gillard would undoubtedly feel some sympathy for Giorgia Boscolo. Advertisement.
Divided they stand. Illustration: Matt Davidson AT TOMORROW's caucus meeting, Julia Gillard will be presenting herself to her colleagues as the tough leader ''who gets things done''. See www.theage.com.au for live coverage of the Labor leadership spill from 10am tomorrow. She has a credible set of arguments to back the claim and can point to legislative wins in a challenging parliamentary environment. That is not in question. Over the past excoriating week for Labor, I imagine that many caucus members have been looking back to the events of 2010. Advertisement Gillard was painting herself as the saviour, when in fact she had been a prime architect of the decision that caused a reversal in the fortunes of the Rudd government. What was ''lost'' was Gillard's faith in the government's ability to prosecute the case for an emissions trading scheme. Even before Parliament resumed for the year, Gillard was telling senior ministers that the ETS should be dropped because it was electoral poison.
We need to talk about Kevin. 'The truth is, Rudd was impossible to work with. He regularly treated his staff, public servants and backbenchers with rudeness and contempt.' Kevin Rudd was ultimately responsible for his own downfall, writes his former speechwriter. I WORKED for the Rudd government for just over a year in 2009 and early 2010, including seven months as one of Kevin Rudd's speechwriters. I only met him four times in that period so I don't know him well. I know Julia Gillard even less well. Rudd did some good things as prime minister. He could be funny and charming, when he chose to be.
Advertisement But Rudd's prime ministership failed, and the failure was, above all, his own. The truth is, Rudd was impossible to work with. He made crushing demands on his staff, and when they laboured through the night to meet those demands, they received no thanks, and often the work was not used. He governed by - seemed almost to thrive on - crisis. People saw it coming. Each was a massive operation. It's time to let the facts get in the way of the story - The Drum Opinion - There is now a great divide between 'insiders' and the rest of us know-nothings, who sense that we are being fed lies but have no way of proving it. (Australian Broadcasting Corpo. Find More Stories It's time to let the facts get in the way of the story Michael Gawenda When I was editor of The Age, there was a political figure who was a great leaker.
He had a couple of journalists on the paper he leaked to regularly. Why supporters you might ask? But here's the thing: not only did he leak only when guaranteed anonymity, but he would then insist that the reporter quote him on the record saying he knew nothing, about any of this leaked information and at times, for instance, he would go as far as saying the rumours - his anonymous rumours - were ridiculous and untrue. Call me naïve, but it seemed to me that journalists, if they agreed to play this game, were agreeing to lie to our readers. My memory is that we agreed to continue to protect his anonymity, but that we would not publish on the record stuff we knew not to be true.
Did he viciously disparage Gillard? Rudd and his supporters deny that they have run any campaign of destabilisation. Email Share x del.icio.us Digg. Time we heard truth about the real Kevin. Rudd and Gillard lay out their credentials Former Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister Julia Gillard lay out their case for leadership. Tim Lester reports. 24, 2012 I worked for the Rudd government for just more than a year in 2009 and early 2010, including seven months as one of Kevin Rudd's speechwriters. I met him only four times in that period, so I don't know him well. I know Julia Gillard even less, but I know many people who have worked closely with, and for, both of them, and I base the comments that follow on their experience, as well as my own.
Rudd did some good things as prime minister. Elected ... Although he was humiliated, and in a sense defeated, by his backdown on the emissions trading scheme, he worked intensely hard to get a good result at COP15 in Copenhagen. Advertisement He could be funny and charming, when he chose to be. Kevin Rudd visits a hospital in March 2010. Why they hate Kevin Rudd so much. Fire, fury and the ALP fight for 'frankness' - The Drum Opinion - Finally, Swan is engaging in Keatingesque attacks and Gillard is speaking with fire. One teensy-weensy problem. It is directed at Rudd not Abbott.
Find More Stories Fire, fury and the ALP fight for 'frankness' Greg Jericho And so it finally happened. After all the months of waiting, all the media articles, all the press conferences with questions that were met with dull, straight-bat answers that felt like they were written in advance by a computer program soaked in sludge, finally Wayne Swan found a way to cut through. The man who has presided over an economy with low unemployment, low inflation, low debt, AAA rating across the board, finally discovered a way to be heard. Unfortunately it wasn't about the low unemployment, inflation, debt or AAA ratings; it was about Kevin Rudd.
On Wednesday Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard all made statements that revealed the issues at play, and also a bit about the psyche of the players involved. Since November 2007 many of his critics have been wanting Wayne Swan to be Paul Keating (or even a bit of a Peter Costello) - the Treasurer who brings the razzle-dazzle to the floor. Whoomp. Email x. Labor In Freefall As Rudd Challenges.
Poor old Labor. The grand old party of the Australian political system — one of the oldest working class political parties in the world, in fact — is facing one of its bleakest moments in perhaps half a century. At this stage of the electoral cycle, Labor should be moving along calmly, passing key elements of its legislative agenda and preparing marginal seats for in-depth defence. Instead, it is tearing itself apart. We have open warfare in the Labor Party.
We have the former prime minister battling the current Prime Minister. We have duelling press conferences, non-stop news coverage, Twitter in meltdown, and Labor figures trashing each other's reputations at every chance. And what are they fighting over? The message that Julia Gillard and her supporters are sending is that the government under Rudd was "chaotic" — that at a certain operational level, Rudd was imperious, high-handed, perhaps simply incompetent. The message Kevin Rudd is sending is just as stark. Rudded: the knack of being all things to all people. Kevin Rudd sheds a tear at a press conference after being deposed as PM by Julia Gillard, as his son Marcus looks on. Picture: AFP Source: AFP ONE icy Canberra winter's morning some 18 months ago, in the sepulchral quiet of one of Parliament House's lonely stone courtyards, a bewildered-looking Kevin Rudd conducted one of the strangest press conferences ever seen.
As his demeanour flickered between the stoic, the aggressive, the lyrical and the maudlin, he took his viewers through the fabled seven stages of grief, illustrated by pain-etched snapshots of his personal policy triumphs. A public personality lovingly crafted and assembled over years, partly through the agency of the breakfast television cameras, seemed to unravel completely in front of those same cameras. Public opinion pollsters rarely query voters about such psychic fissures in our public life. Yet, in the emotionally charged atmosphere of Rudd's departure, this made her the best and the worst of successors.