![\"Rudd\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Rudd.jpg?resize=752%2C401\")
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By\u00a0Sarah Capper<\/a><\/p>\n 23 November 2013<\/p>\n In announcing his resignation from parliament last week, it seemed quite fitting that former Prime Minister and Member for Griffith Kevin Rudd quoted Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet \u2013 a tragedy about treachery and madness.<\/p>\n Rudd referred to the \u201cslings and arrows\u201d suffered during his political career (and by his family in recent months).<\/p>\n The phrase is part of \u2018Hamlet\u2019s\u2019 \u2018To be or not to be<\/em>\u2019 soliloquy, \u201cthe question\u201d being followed by:<\/p>\n And so it goes.<\/p>\n The quote queries what is the \u201cnoble\u201d course of action \u2013 knowing when to cop things on the chin, when to bow out gracefully, versus pushing back and taking down everything (and everyone) with you. Ironically it\u2019s this latter \u201cless noble\u201d course of action that ultimately Kevin Rudd embarked on after losing the Labor leadership to Julia Gillard in 2010, that many pollies and commentators conveniently omitted in \u2018eulogising\u2019 Kevin Rudd\u2019s political career last week.<\/p>\n Yet Rudd\u2019s use of the phrase is apt as Hamlet is a tragedy \u2013 and, as with all Shakespearean tragedies, the main protagonist is killed off, but not before setting off a series of events that pretty much eliminates \u2013 or kills off \u2013 every other major player.<\/p>\n So as new Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Rudd could leave parliament with his \u201chead held high\u201d, a list of fatally wounded MPs that had their political lives cut short \u2013 directly or indirectly by Kevin Rudd -came to mind \u2013 Greg Combet, Peter Garrett, Nicola Roxon, Craig Emerson and of course Julia Gillard. And others like Stephen Smith and Simon Crean who one imagines possibly exited the political stage because of the exhaustion of having to hold together the ship of the ALP for the last three years. As Labor\u2019s Tanya Plibersek reflected on election night, she scored the ALP \u201cnine out of ten for governing the country, none out of ten for governing ourselves\u201d.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Tony Abbott praised Rudd for beating his \u2018political father\u2019 John Howard at the 2007 election, and also for his apology to the Stolen Generations \u2013 an act, that granted, the Member for Griffith deserves kudos for.<\/p>\n Also from the other side, Malcolm Turnbull heaped it on, arguing\u201cthe idea that the man that had won in this presidential campaign against John Howard was then going to be disposed of, discarded, like another course on a lazy Susan in a Vietnamese restaurant, the cruelty of it was extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n Note, Malcolm Turnbull is not a fan of Yum-Cha. Turnbull, of course, would know about the \u201ccruelty\u201d of politics, having been \u201cdisposed of\u201d and \u201cdiscarded\u201d as Leader of the Opposition by Tony Abbott by one vote in 2009. But unlike Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull did not then embark on a search and destroy mission. Instead, he copped it on the chin, took up the opposition communications portfolio with gusto and didn\u2019t spend every possible opportunity trying to trip up the leader who replaced him. Some would say he acted with \u201cnobility\u201d.<\/p>\n Bill Shorten also said in his Rudd political obit that \u201c\u00a0I do not believe we will see his\u00a0like<\/em>\u00a0again in the parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n One would hope not \u2013 a bloke so bitter about losing the leadership that he\u2019d jeopardize his own party\u2019s chances of winning the 2010 election and retaining government in their own right.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s this act that former Labor leader Mark Latham said Kevin Rudd should be remembered for. Like or loathe Latham, the former Member for Werriwa can occasionally be relied on to inject some truth serum into debates. And last week, amongst the praise heaped on Rudd and the rewriting of history, Latham was one of the few voices stating the bleeding obvious.<\/p>\n In an interview with Sydney radio 2UE, Latham labeled Rudd a \u201conce in a century egomaniac\u201d who had \u201cdestabilised every leader under whom he served. He notoriously sabotaged Labor\u2019s 2010 election campaign with those vengeful leaks.<\/p>\n \u201dIn the long sweep of Labor history, it is hard to find a character who was more destructive inside the caucus, fuelled by his own personal ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Rudd still peddled the line last week that he \u201csaved the furniture\u201d at the 2013 election, once he\u2019d clawed back the Prime Ministership after destabilizing Gillard for three years. Senator Doug Cameron and others also repeated this line (which cartoonist Cathy Wilcox beautifully parodied with an image of Rudd carrying a bust of himself as the \u2018furniture\u2019 he supposedly \u2018saved\u2019).<\/p>\n Writing for the ABC\u2019s Drum website,\u00a0Barrie Cassidy wrote<\/a>\u00a0that Rudd\u2019s claim of \u201csaving\u201d the party from oblivion in 2013 can be countered by \u201cothers [who] ask where Gillard\u2019s standing might have been had it not been for [Rudd\u2019s] constant undermining of her leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n We will never know. But we do know that Rudd\u2019s exit from politics three-years-too-late should put an end to continued speculation about his motives and ambitions and another possible tilt at the leadership, should he have stuck around.<\/p>\n In his interview with Kerry O\u2019Brien this week, former Prime Minister Paul Keating talked about how essential it is for prime ministers to work with their cabinet colleagues \u2013 that successful leadership cannot prevail without bringing other cabinet ministers with you in terms of policy reform.<\/p>\n Rudd\u2019s manic behavior leading up to his 2010 replacement, his insistence on making and formulating policy decisions on his own, as well as other behavioural anomalies (or again, as Cassidy writes, his\u00a0\u00a0tendency of being \u201cautocratic, exclusive, disrespectful and at times flat-out abusive<\/a>\u201d) led to his downfall.<\/p>\n Cassidy\u2019s piece<\/a>\u00a0also quotes journalist and former Rudd speechwriter James Button, who in a Fairfax article, posed these questions to his former boss:<\/p>\n Did he reflect on the rages he would fly into when people gave him advice he didn\u2019t want, how he would put those people into what his staff called \u2018the freezer\u2019, sometimes not speaking to them for months or more?<\/p>\n Did he reflect on the way he governed in a near permanent state of crisis, how his reluctance to make decisions until the very last moment \u2013 coupled with a refusal to take unwelcome advice \u2013 led his government into chaos by the middle of 2010?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the Victorian Women\u2019s Trust publication \u2018A Switch in Time<\/a>\u2019, author Mary Crooks described journalist Laurie Oakes\u2019 account of what happened the night of the 2010 leadership takeover. Quoting a Labor \u201coperative\u201d, Oakes documents how Gillard \u201ctried everything possible to put the show [Kevin Rudd\u2019s leadership of the Government] back together.\u201d<\/p>\n Crooks<\/a>: \u201cOakes account gives lie to the subsequent labeling of Gillard as a devious plotter who had traitorously deposed or \u2018assassinated\u2019 a leader for no reason other than to fuel her ambition.<\/p>\n \u201cHindsight is a great source of vision. Clearly, Gillard\u2019s mistake (and the party at large) was not to level with everyone as to what had gone seriously wrong with Rudd\u2019s leadership; and not to demonstrate to the public that the caucus was overwhelmingly supportive of the need for change.<\/p>\n \u201cLeaving aside this reticence, there are some important questions here.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did media outlets continue running the line that Rudd was a popular prime minister replaced by Gillard when there was sufficient evidence available to them soon after the leadership change that testified to his ineffectual leadership of the government?<\/p>\n \u201cOakes\u2019 testimony suggests a different dimension to Gillard\u2019s ascendency of the leadership. Why do these same media outlets persist to this day with descriptions of her alleged \u2018treachery\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n At the recent Victorian Women\u2019s Trust event \u2018Credit Where Credit is Due<\/a>\u2019, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard herself cited a better explanation of the need to depose Rudd in 2010, as one of her regrets in Office:<\/p>\n \u201cI did not take the Australian people in to my confidence in 2010 about why I became by Prime Minister.\u00a0\u00a0My unwillingness at that stage to canvas issues critical of Kevin Rudd allowed a myth about a conspiracy of faceless men to be publicly substituted for the more complex truth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The fact that a majority of his caucus colleagues then reinstated Rudd after three years of \u201cstalking Julia<\/a>\u201d, rewarding his treachery, only continued to rub salt into an already gaping (and ultimately fatal) wound.<\/p>\n And that, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of all.<\/p>\n Sarah (\u00a0sarah@vwt.org.au<\/a>) is the editor of feminist monthly\u00a0Sheilas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By\u00a0Sarah Capper 23 November 2013 In announcing his resignation from parliament last week, it seemed quite fitting that former Prime Minister and Member for Griffith Kevin Rudd quoted Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet \u2013 a tragedy about treachery and madness. Rudd referred to the \u201cslings and arrows\u201d suffered during his political career (and by his family in recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,585,43],"tags":[678,273,283,287,682,304,905,383,2581,679,470],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Rudd.jpg?fit=940%2C501&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-2VO","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\r\n \r\n Whether \u2019tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\nBut politicians from all sides joined Shorten last week in paying tribute to the outgoing Member for Griffith,\u00a0many lavishing praise<\/a>on his political career.<\/div>\n