WAS Kevin Rudd at the beginning of 2010 a nut case who had to be removed from office? Was the then prime minister so devastated by the failure of climate change at the Copenhagen conference that he went bonkers and was spiralling out of control? These propositions are the basis for the new narrative, the extra step in the justification for Labor’s biggest mistake, on June 23, 2010, of removing a popular first-term prime minister — a mistake that destroyed two Labor prime ministers and crippled three Labor governments: Rudd’s, Julia Gillard’s and Rudd’s again. The post-facto justification for this panicked and disastrous action was initially that Rudd was removed because “a good government had lost its way”; then it was because the so-called good government was dysfunctional and chaotic; then it was that the prime minister was a dysfunctional, foul-mouthed bully who was paralysed as a decision-maker; and now it is because the prime minister of Australia was deemed to be mentally incapable of running another election campaign, or the country. Four years after the event, Gillard and Wayne Swan have taken the argument, and the justification for their actions, this extra devastating step beyond Rudd’s difficult personality and chaotic management skills to the accusation of mental instability — a mental instability supposedly so grave it required the removal of a prime minister and is aimed at destroying him in a life after politics. This “Rudd was nuts” argument is a new justification for Labor’s own panic-stricken behaviour that was not raised at the time, not even within the tightest councils of government, and that challenges the logic of the subsequent actions of those who replaced him. The argument also contradicts what many said at the time and what many believe now. There is no doubting that Rudd suffered a huge emotional and psychological blow when he was dumped, and was personally shaken to the core. But if resort is to be had to the Caine Mutiny argument for the officers to remove the captain of the ship on the grounds of mental instability, then the real test is whether he was any worse or different to what he was in January 2010, when Gillard says she concluded he was unfit for the tasks he faced. Was Rudd any more unstable at the point of his removal than he was in January 2006, when he teamed with Gillard in the Labor leadership after removing Kim Beazley, or in January 2007, before he defeated John Howard and brought Labor to government after 11 years in opposition? Was the centralist controller, a brash and brutal loner, worse in 2010 than he was during the running of the counter-measures to the global financial crisis? Or was Rudd just as difficult a personality as he always had been, albeit under great pressure on climate change policy, tax reform and asylum-seekers, as well as sensing a decline in his vital popular support? As one Labor intimate of the entire rise and demise of Rudd tells Inquirer: “It was always the same old Kevin from as far back as the days he worked for the Goss government (1989-95).” Another senior Labor MP says: “You have to look at Kevin’s baseline behaviour. Was he any more bonkers in January 2010 than he was in 2009? Do I think Kevin Rudd was any more mentally unstable in January 2010 than before? No, I don’t.” Nor was the issue of mental instability raised during the famous conversation between Gillard and Rudd on the evening of June 23, 2010, when Rudd asked why his deputy “as a good person” was calling for a leadership ballot after offering him a six-month reprieve. Yet, in the outpouring of views on Rudd in recent weeks, including in Gillard’s own book, My Story, a new narrative has emerged of a leader who was spiralling out of control, mentally unstable, psychologically damaged, unfit and incapable of governing — all before his emotionally crushing removal from office. Gillard says her assessment of how Rudd would perform as leader proved to be “dreadfully wrong’’. “Upon deep reflection, I concluded that Kevin’s flaws stemmed from a yearning for approval,’’ she wrote. “That the difficulties of his childhood had produced a man who craved attention and the applause of the crowd. It appeared that here was a hole in him that had to be filled by success and the poor substitute for real love that is political homage.” In Paul Kelly’s book Triumph and Demise: The Broken Promise of a Labor Generation, Gillard said she decided by January 2010 — at a meeting on the veranda at Kirribilli House — that Rudd “was not in the zone to fight an election campaign”, concluding he was “miserable” and “depressed”. But Gillard said she felt unable to tell Rudd what she felt. “Call me perhaps lily-livered,” she said. “But do you sit there and say to the prime minister: ‘You’re not in the right state to run this election campaign’? Or do you just concentrate on seeing if we can start to plan this election year? “I think he had been in pretty bad shape for a long time. Copenhagen really knocked him around,” she said. “I actually think it was emotionally scarring for him. “The government wasn’t functioning,” Gillard said when explaining why she challenged Rudd. “I had been surrounded by chaos for a long period of time. Kevin was not going to be able to come out of the spiral.” Gillard not only did not tell Rudd of this grave conclusion, there is no evidence she told anyone else until she told Kelly in an interview for his book. In his book The Good Fight: Six Years, Two Prime Ministers and Staring Down the Great Recession, Wayne Swan, who initially did not support the removal of Rudd in June 2010 but became Gillard’s deputy, said there were incidents in Rudd’s leadership that were “bizarre, the result of an unstable personality, or both”. In Triumph and Demise, Swan offered a scathing view of Rudd’s condition on his return from Copenhagen: “I honestly think he felt it was going to be his moment on the world stage. He came back as best can be described as completely devastated.” In an interview on the Nine Network to promote her book, Gillard agreed that she had suggested Rudd had “an emotional breakdown” as a result of the loss of the prime ministership. This all raises the question of why Rudd was allowed to continue as prime minister for six months — from the January 2010 Kirribilli meeting to his removal — if he was incapable of leading and mentally unstable; and why, after an even greater “emotional breakdown”, he was appointed as foreign minister in the Gillard government, and later re-elected as prime minister. The new narrative is gaining currency in the absence of any extended response from Rudd, apart from his statement that Gillard’s writings are “fiction”, and a strategically leaked copy of his submission on Labor reform, which sheets home blame for Labor’s 2010 loss of a majority on his removal and Gillard’s campaigning. Rudd’s supporters deny he leaked the submission, a claim confirmed by Labor figures familiar with the review. But in the submission, he argued that the rationale used to remove him “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”. The current step towards Rudd being removed for being “nuts” lacks contemporary evidence to support it, offers no explanation for previous poor behaviour and defies logic, especially in light of the fact Rudd was later appointed foreign minister with a place on the national security committee of cabinet. What’s more, Rudd, who was deemed to have been even more damaged by his removal in June 2010, then was re-elected by a majority of his colleagues as prime minister. Rudd did have a difficult personality; he was under stress, was a poor manager, a bully, bad-tempered and foul-mouthed, but the evidence suggests he was no more “bonkers” in January 2010 than he was in January 2006 or June last year, when Labor was prepared to put up with all his flaws to try to win or retain government. Like the successful courtroom campaign of the first officer of the USS Caine at the court martial for mutiny, this campaign brings more discredit on the officers than the captain. Nor does it prove Rudd was any more “nuts” than he always was.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 10:25:05 +0000
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