First Among Equals (12 page)

KEVIN MICHAEL RUDD

NERD EXTRAORDINAIRE

TERMS

3 December 2007-24 June 2010
27 June 2013-7 September 2013

If
his predecessor John Howard was a domestically focused politican with a strong interest in international affairs, Kevin Rudd was the opposite. Mandarin-speaking with a foremost interest in global aspects of politics, he was also keenly sensitive to the early life that shaped his later political thinking.

Born on 27 September 1957 in Nambour, Queensland, to Albert (‘Bert') and Margaret (née Devere) Rudd, Kevin Rudd was the youngest of four children and his first years were spent on a dairy farm in nearby Eumundi. Life was hard early on. At the age of five he contracted rheumatic fever, damaging his heart and undergoing two aortic valve replacements. When he was only eleven, his father died and, amidst financial difficulty, the family had to leave the farm. Rudd recalls camping in the family car as they had nowhere to live.

Despite a Country Party background in the family, Rudd joined the Labor Party at the age of fifteen in 1972. He boarded at Marist College Ashgrove in Brisbane where he was regarded as a ‘charity case', owing to the death of his father and family poverty. Rudd has recalled those school years as unhappy, describing the school as ‘tough, harsh, unforgiving institutional Catholicism of the old school'. He later became an Anglican. When his mother had managed to train and qualify as a nurse, the family moved to Nambour and

Kevin Rudd attended the local state high school, where he was dux in 1974.

Rudd recalls that it was the Whitlam victory that enabled someone from his country background, with no particular means, to go to university. He studied at the Australian National University in Canberra and graduated with first-class honours, having majored in Chinese language and history. He met his wife, Thérèse Rein, who was also studying at ANU, and they married in 1981 and have three children. Thérèse Rein became the first prime minister's wife to continue working while her husband was in office. She was the founder of a worldwide employment and business services company.

Rudd had joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1981, spending much of the decade ahead overseas, including in Beijing. He quit the department in 1988 to return to Queensland where he became chief-of-staff to the then State opposition leader, and later Labor premier, Wayne Goss. The Goss government lost office in 1996 and Rudd went to work for accounting giant KPMG as a senior China consultant. In the same year he stood for Labor in the federal election and lost, but won the seat of Griffith in the election John Howard called in 1998 and held it until he resigned after his defeat in 2013.

In parliament, Rudd came to attention early and within three years was appointed shadow minister for
foreign affairs. Labor in opposition saw several leaders come and go and pressure was growing on Rudd to step forward as polling showed Labor's vote would double with him as leader. In December 2006, leader Kim Beazley called a leadership election and Rudd was elected with 49 votes to Beazley's 39. Julia Gillard was elected unopposed as deputy leader. Rudd set about building his already-high public profile. He had used appearances on morning TV breakfast shows as part of a strategy to make himself popular, informal and even folksy. He tapped into dissatisfaction with the Howard government's stand on industrial relations and proved popular with his announcments on climate change, education, manufacturing and other key policies.

By the time John Howard called an election for 24 November 2007, Rudd managed a ‘Ruddslide', with an enormous 7.52 per cent swing in his home state of Queensland and a swing overall of 5.44 per cent nationally. Rudd became the first prime minister to make no mention of the monarch when being sworn in by the governor-general. He broke over a century of tradition by announcing ministerial portfolios instead of receiving them from the party's caucus. He moved quickly to sign the Kyoto Protocol on emmissions reductions, and led the Parliamentary Apology to the Stolen Generations.

Behind the scenes his enemies talked of his zealous control mentality and his obsessive attention to detail and procedure. Rudd, in opposition and in government, had made the environment and in particular emissions trading a cornestone of his tenure. His watering down of the policy came as an enormous backdown and colleagues attacked him for not consulting. His policies on handling the Global Financial Crisis, in particular the ‘pink batts' scheme, a revised policy on asylum seekers and an inability to get the upper hand in taxing the profits of the mining industry, were in trouble. Kevin Rudd was to become the first prime minister to be dumped by his own party in his first term.

On 23 June 2010, Rudd's chief-of-staff sought to measure support for Rudd across the party. This was enough to spur his deputy, Julia Gillard, late that evening, to ask him to hold a leadership election as soon as possible, but he stood down before the vote and Gillard was elected unopposed as Australia's first woman prime minister the next morning. Two years and seven months after his election success, Rudd was tearful in public as he conceded a sudden and brutal night-time removal from office.

The sudden and ruthless nature of his removal soon appeared unpopular with the voting public. Gillard appointed him as foreign minister and, in public at least, they worked together for the federal election later that year, where Gillard's victory saw her leading
a minority government reliant on the support of independents. Rudd resumed as foreign minister in the new Gillard ministry but policy differences with Gillard continued and so too his continuing resentment at his loss of leadership. All this came to a head in February 2012 when he resigned as foreign minister, declaring Gillard was not giving him support against attacks from Labor's ‘faceless men'.

The party was unravelling, with some Labor MPs describing Rudd as a ‘psychopath with a giant ego', and even the treasurer, Wayne Swan, calling Rudd ‘dysfunctional'. But Gillard was slipping so badly in the polls that party heavyweights thought Rudd, despite his temperament, would do better than the increasingly toxic Gillard. On 26 June 2013 she called a leadership ballot which Rudd won 57-45. On 27 June he was sworn in as prime minister for a second time – he had his revenge on his former political executioners. However, less than eleven weeks later he lost a federal election, although he received grudging praise for his campaign role, which Labor leaders were convinced saved the party from electoral disaster. Rudd resigned from parliament later that year and a by-election was held in his seat in February 2014.

He took up a number of appointments that year including the chair of the International Peace Institute's Independent Commission on Multilateralism. Later in
2014 he headed a project at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, on US-China relations. In January 2015 he was appointed the first president of the Policy Institute of the Asia Society, a newly created US-based global think tank focusing on Asia. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in welcoming the appointment, praised Rudd as ‘a rare global thinker and a sophisticated practitioner of global policymaking'.

JULIA EILEEN GILLARD

DEALMAKER

TERM

24 June 2010-27 June 2013

J
ulia Gillard achieved a number of firsts: the first female deputy leader of her party, the first female leader of the party and first female Australian prime minister. She was the first unmarried prime minister (although in a de facto relationship) and one of the few who openly professed no religion. She was credited with political toughness and resilience and away from the public stage was known for a personal warmth and high intelligence.

However, she was seen as failing in the key ability to communicate, once elected prime minister, and her judgement was questioned often within the government as well as outside it. Introducing a carbon tax was a broken promise that resonated badly. She came under sustained personal attack because of her gender; she said after leaving office that such attacks had filled her with rage but she had chosen not to focus on them. Above all she was seen as a successful dealmaker, holding together a minority government and winning some key reforms such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and schools funding following the Gonski Review on education.

Gillard was born on 29 September 1961 in Barry, Wales, and with her family emigrated to South Australia in 1966 where she attended Unley High School. Her father, John, who died while she was in office, was a psychiatric nurse and her mother Moira
(née Mackenzie) worked at a Salvation Army nursing home. It was at Adelaide University that Gillard joined the Labor Club.

At the age of 21, Gillard moved to Melbourne where she became only the second woman to lead the Australian Union of Students. She graduated from Melbourne University in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. A year later she joined Slater and Gordon, a law firm that specialised in industrial relations. Already Gillard was active in Labor politics and in May 1996 resigned from the law firm to work as chief-of-staff to the Victorian opposition leader, John Brumby. It was at this time she drafted Labor Party rules aimed at having 35 per cent of winnable seats contested by women.

Rising quickly, Gillard won the safe federal Labor seat of Lalor in Melbourne in 1998. Just three years later she was appointed to Labor's shadow cabinet. During the next three years her roles expanded as Labor leaders Crean, Beazley and Latham tumbled in opposition against the seemingly unassailable John Howard. It was when the party elected Rudd as oppositon leader in 2006 that Gillard stood unopposed to became deputy leader.

When Labor won office in 2007, with Gillard now deputy prime minister, she was given an additional ‘super ministry' of education, employment and workplace relations.
Gillard achieved another first when she became the first female acting prime minister during an overseas absence of Rudd, steering the nation for 69 days. She had built a profile as a hardworking, capable minister and a good parliamentary performer. She was popular in the polls and Kevin Rudd was on the nose inside the party and falling in the polls. Debate continues as to how much Gillard knew in advance of the growing plot to remove Kevin Rudd. On taking office in 2010 she said publicly that Rudd's work patterns had become difficult and chaotic, putting the government into a period of paralysis.

Gillard called the federal election for 21 August 2010 and the result was 72 seats each in the 150-seat House of Representatives, four short of a majority and the first hung parliament since 1940. Of the six independents, four gave support to Labor to form government. While her often-wooden style as prime minister was a factor in her falling popularity, it was her back-and-forth on asylum seekers that did much damage. Having opposed offshore processing, Gillard announced in 2012 that her government would nominate Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea to be re-opened. An effort to get Malaysia involved had been over-ruled in the High Court.

But of all the policy changes, it was her breaking of a promise not to introduce a carbon tax that
undermined her trustworthiness most. Further, she appointed a former Queensland opposition member, Peter Slipper, as speaker of the House and he was soon forced to stand aside while investigations of criminal wrongdoing ensued. In addition, Gillard's government had to endure corruption allegations linked to a Labor MP, Craig Thompson. And behind the scenes there was Kevin Rudd, ready for revenge.

Rudd did challenge and lose in February 2012 but by June the next year the government's fortunes were so low that Labor was ready to take back Rudd, the able campaigner, as leader.

Before that vote in June 2013, Gillard had already done herself further damage by announcing in January 2013 the precise date for the next federal election, some seven months away. As things kept getting worse, the party began moving against her and one previously staunch supporter, Bill Shorten, joined those who felt she had to go. When the vote came, Rudd defeated Gillard 57-45. She honoured a promise that whoever lost that vote would leave politics and not contest the next federal election.

There is little debate over Julia Gillard's negotiating abilities, and her dealmaking during the difficulties of minority government produced considerable legislation. Debate still rages though over how much sexism she endured while in office and the extent to
which her poor political judgement contributed to her downfall.

After leaving office Gillard had a huge publishing success with her memoirs,
My Life.
She sold the home she and partner Tim Mathieson had lived in at Altona in Melbourne and returned to Adelaide after 27 years away. Gillard took a number of appointments including a leading role in the national organisation dealing with depression, beyondblue.