Piers Akerman: Oh yes, Kevin Rudd is still the great pretender
LABOR’S most damaging prime minister Kevin Rudd still clings to the delusion that ousting John Howard’s government and defeating him in the seat of Bennelong was his greatest triumph, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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LABOR’S most damaging prime minister Kevin Rudd still clings to the delusion that ousting John Howard’s government and defeating him in the seat of Bennelong was his greatest triumph.
In a typically boastful article in The Australian on Friday marking the 10th anniversary of his election, Rudd listed what he terms the top 10 things he got right when in office.
It’s an exercise in pure vanity with empty symbolism replacing any positive outcomes worthy of mention by a rational human — but then delusional is a medical expression describing a mental disorder in which beliefs that are totally unrealistic are irrationally held.
The empty Kevin ’07 slogan, which saw the True Believers and the social media enthusiasts rush to the banner of the Great Mediocrity, ushered in the current era of political instability. Certainly nothing to boast about.
Campaigning as John Howard-lite, Rudd broke campaign promises without regard.
He was going to be tough. He was in fact as weak as you-know-what.
Toppled by our first female PM Julia Gillard, he showed an astonishing degree of venality as he relentlessly leaked against her and persistently stalked her.
As Opposition leader, Tony Abbott shredded Labor’s vote in the 2010 election, forcing her to rely on two turncoats, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, even as she attempted to fend off Rudd’s undermining.
When Rudd rolled her, he was thrashed by Abbott.
Tellingly, Rudd has now effectively abandoned Australia, choosing to try and recreate himself in the US, mingling with the unelected global bureaucrats, and in the UK, where he is enrolled at Oxford boring for Australia. In neither milieu is there any real interest in our politics and he is free to make claims about his non-existent legacy that will lie largely unchallenged.
His real bequest to the nation is chaos.
Because Rudd unwound the Howard government’s border protection legislation more than 1200 people are known to have died at sea having committed their lives to the hands of ruthless people smugglers.
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The cost of his surrender to the bleeding hearts on border security is not only one of human bodies though, we have paid more than $11 billion to house those who attempted to illegally come to Australia.
Because he embraced the insanity of unstable renewable energy (ushering in a policy which Malcolm Turnbull stupidly embraced and remains faithful to though it cost him his party leadership), we have been paying ridiculously high prices for power and will continue to do so because solar and wind and pumped hydro cannot provide dispatchable base load.
It is interesting to see how the pundits greeted the Great Calamity a decade ago and there is a lesson to be learned.
The dean of the Canberra Press Gallery Paul Kelly wrote in The Australian on Monday, November 26, following Rudd’s ascendancy: “The Kevin Rudd era has begun. It is expected to last a long time. Rudd offers a new brand of leadership for Australia that breaks not just from John Howard but from Labor’s past.
“Rudd will govern Australia in a new fashion. He is a practical modernist pledged to move the agenda beyond the old ideological battles of the Howard period, Rudd is a centrist who will pitch to the mainstream and an aspiring agent of consensus seeking a more united nation.”
His colleague Dennis Shanahan was as effusive writing: “Kevin Rudd is now in a position to be one of Australia’s great prime ministers and establish a decade of unprecedented Labor power.”
More recently, when asked to name the worst prime minister he had covered during his 46 years covering Canberra, Kelly quipped: “The last four”.
Presumably, he meant Abbott, Rudd, Gillard and Rudd.
I would name Turnbull, Rudd, Gillard and Rudd because Turnbull is worse than Abbott though marginally (perhaps arguably) not quite as bad as the prime ministerships of Rudd, Gillard and Rudd.
The one word which is constantly used to describe Turnbull is “disappointing” though while walking early Friday morning I did meet the only person I have ever met in his electorate of Wentworth who said she supported him, indeed, she said she felt sorry for him because “he was unable to put into place the Green policies he really believes in”.
Turnbull is on borrowed time. The December 16 Bennelong by-election may be the wake-up moment MPs need to finally address the problem.
He is in so many ways in the Rudd mould. Detached from his own party’s base to the extent that the Liberal Party is now divided. Isolated from a party room he doesn’t consult.
At the mercy of members of his own Cabinet who are now leaking against him.
If John Alexander hangs on in Bennelong, a difficult task when faced with a celebrity candidate in Kristina Keneally, Turnbull needs to show strengths hitherto unseen.
He could begin by dumping the deadwood from his Cabinet, Marise Payne should go, as should Christopher Pyne, and the ineffective Kelly O’Dwyer.
Abbott should be brought into the tent and given Payne’s job, and the size of the Cabinet should be reduced.
He needs to push for the much-needed reform to the NSW Liberal Party and get rid of the insidious and corrupting influence of Michael Photios and his clique.
And he needs to get some professionals onto his staff, people who understand the pain of the electorate, who would counsel him to stop saying he’s having the time of his life when others with less money are scraping to pay for their electricity, health, and housing.
The alternative is Bill Shorten and if anyone thinks Rudd was a lousy Labor prime minister, they should be trembling at the prospect of Shorten and his union cronies living it up large in the Lodge.