Kevin Rudd calls Julia Gillard a coup plotter and backstabber THE AUSTRALIAN SEPTEMBER 24, 2014 12:00AM Troy Bramston MONTHS after Kevin Rudd was deposed as prime minister, and in the wake of Labor’s disastrous 2010 election campaign, he wrote a blistering assessment of Julia Gillard, arguing that voters saw her as a “backstabber” lacking legitimacy who had led the government to near annihilation. Mr Rudd described his toppling in June 2010 as a “Shakespearean” plot-line riddled with falsehoods about his government’s performance, Labor’s re-election chances and the notion the coup was in the “national interest”. He said those excuses were designed to mask Ms Gillard’s overweening ambition. “This was an entirely fabricated post-facto rationale for a leadership change that was driven in large part by political ambition — an attempt to elevate the reasons for leadership change above crude politics to the highest reasons of state,” Mr Rudd said. Part of Mr Rudd’s secret submission to Labor’s election review panel, which has been obtained by The Australian, steams with bitterness over his treatment. He is defiant about his government’s record and lashes Ms Gillard and the “faceless men” who supported her, including Bill Shorten, for “ripping the party apart”. The disclosure of part of Mr Rudd’s damning submission to Labor’s 2010 national review committee chaired by Labor elders Steve Bracks, Bob Carr and John Faulkner comes as Ms Gillard’s memoir, My Story, is published today. Mr Rudd provided a detailed written rebuttal to “the arguments advanced for a change in the leadership” by Ms Gillard and her supporters who plotted to bring him down. He had given an oral submission to the review team in December 2010. He said there was “no formal or informal warning” by any minister or MP “of changes that needed to be made if a leadership challenge was to be avoided”. Mr Rudd characterised his removal as “a total surprise to me — as I expected (it was) intended”. “The extraordinary step of deposing a first-term sitting prime minister can only be explained if we assume those planning for a leadership change concluded that due process might damage their chances of success,” he wrote. “Reasons offered for the leadership challenge were, in the main, post-facto rationalisations to mask the real political ambitions that were at play.” When Ms Gillard replaced Mr Rudd as prime minister on June 24, 2010, she argued as justification that the government had “lost its way”. Mr Rudd mocks this rationale and argues the words were market-tested before the coup. Mr Rudd wrote that one of the strongest supporters of the coup was former minister Tony Burke, who was motivated to turn on him by the prospect of becoming deputy prime minister. He wrote that Mr Burke “offered himself unsuccessfully” as a running mate to Ms Gillard two months before the coup. Mr Rudd argued his government was not “chaotic”, its “policy challenges” were not insurmountable and it had a “clear political narrative”. But he acknowledged “heavy political weather on four policy fronts” — asylum-seekers, climate change, the mining tax and stimulus program waste — and accepted “ultimate responsibility” for those polices. Others, he said, were not blame-free. He wrote that Ms Gillard ran an “internal campaign” to abolish the carbon pollution reduction scheme and suggested she or her supporters were behind a damaging leak to a newspaper that it had been shelved by a cabinet committee before it was considered by the full cabinet, in order to ensure cabinet compliance. “(Gillard) sent me a written communication saying that under no circumstances could she, or would she, support an emissions trading scheme going to the next election,” Mr Rudd wrote. Nor did Ms Gillard support an early election or double-dissolution election on climate change. While recognising the “postponement” of the CPRS was “wrong”, Mr Rudd said it was necessary to “prevent a total split in the government in an election year led by (Gillard’s) implacable hostility to the ETS”. On asylum-seeker policy, Mr Rudd accepted responsibility for the increase in refugees travelling to Australia. He noted that Ms Gillard was a persistent internal critic of the government’s policies but never had any “credible” alternative ideas. “(Gillard) in particular argued that it was inconceivable to risk the re-election of a Labor government on the basis of prevailing asylum-seeker policy settings,” Mr Rudd wrote. “(Gillard) consistently argued for new policy options but failed to offer any until the week prior to the 23rd of June.” Ms Gillard advocated “what has become known as the East Timor Solution”. But Mr Rudd “did not believe it to be credible” as it would undermine Australia-East Timor relations and was likely to fail. Ms Gillard subsequently championed this idea but it was not supported by East Timor and never implemented. Mr Rudd also lashed Wayne Swan for his botched handling of the mining tax. He accused Mr Swan of “a fatal error of communication” with the mining industry and fellow ministers, including Ms Gillard, over the negotiation of the tax. As “public debate became intense”, Mr Swan “went abroad at crucial junctures” for “non-essential meetings”, he wrote. Although Mr Rudd accepted “responsibility” for the resource super-profits tax, he said “it cannot be sustained that the treasurer discharged (his) responsibility competently”. Mr Rudd added that the industry’s campaign against the tax “assisted those in the government seeking a change in the prime ministership”. “(Gillard) supported by (Swan) acted to remove the prime minister at the point when a negotiated outcome with the bulk of the mining industry … was within days of being reached,” he concluded. Mr Rudd also wrote that Ms Gillard must accept responsibility for the failures of the Building the Education Revolution program and former minister Mark Arbib must be held accountable for the Home Insulation Program, which led to four deaths. While accepting that Ms Gillard took responsibility for the BER “seriously” and implemented it “effectively”, Mr Rudd said Mr Arbib never raised any concerns about the insulation program with him and “has, by and large, escaped any form of serious public scrutiny”.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 21:05:00 +0000
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