Andrew Bolt: Rudd, Turnbull crusade lays bare their hypocrisy

It suits Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull to believe they were actually brilliant leaders, cut down by evil “Murdoch bullies” instead of the reality that they were sacked by their own MPs for ineptitude, writes Andrew Bolt.

Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are two crusaders with monstrous vanity.

Oh, that hypocrite Kevin Rudd. Hey, Kevin, remember that strip club? Remember whispering sweet poisons in my ear?

Rudd must think we in this Murdoch empire have forgotten.

There he is now, buddying up with another ex-prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull — a man he once called a “little f--king rat” and a “piece of shit” — to demand a royal commission into Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

How enraged they are by the “Murdoch bullies” they blame for their fall.

How it suits them to believe they were actually brilliant leaders, cut down by the evil Murdoch and not sacked by their own MPs for ineptitude.

And how it now suits Rudd to forget the skin-crawling lengths he once went to ingratiate himself with the same News Corp he now demands be brought to heel.

It now suits Kevin Rudd to forget the skin-crawling lengths he once went to ingratiate himself with the same News Corp he now demands be brought to heel. Picture: AAP

In 2007, just before becoming prime minister, Rudd was so eager to please he even followed a
Murdoch editor into a New York strip club.

Back then, I’d also get a summons from Rudd, to meet over dinner or lunch. How I suffered for my readers. Ever been locked in a room with a megalomaniac?

I won’t say whether Murdoch enjoyed it any better when Rudd flew to New York to court him.

With some Murdoch editors, Rudd’s wooing worked. Most foolishly backed Rudd in the 2007 election.

But was I too hard on Rudd? After all, Chris Mitchell, a man I respect, was editor-in-chief of Murdoch’s The Australian, and liked Rudd so well he made him godfather of his son.

Mind you, Mitchell, like many voters, had the scales fall from his eyes. He’s since written entertainingly of Rudd trading information to The Australian, becoming “an important source, contact, contributor and subject”.

Mitchell claims Rudd even asked The Australian’s opinion columnists to approve Labor’s industrial relations policy.

No complaints from Rudd then about News Corp having too much power. Not when it was power he thought he could use.

Back then, my own phone no longer rang. Rudd as Prime Minister craved flatterers, not sceptics.

That no-talkies changed after Labor replaced him with Julia Gillard. Rudd became frantic as a ferret to undermine Gillard and I was again invited to a hotel.

I don’t reveal private conversations, not even those of a backstabber like Rudd, damned as “disloyal” by former mate and treasurer Wayne Swan.

But I can also say I wouldn’t retail the cheap and nasty gossip of someone with more malice than judgment.

Still, what does it really matter what I or any other journalist says? We’re each but one voice in a vast crowd.

Malcolm Turnbull, like Kevin Rudd, obsesses exclusively over News Corp.

That’s what Rudd and Turnbull just can’t see, as they obsess exclusively over News Corp.

In fact, News Corp is less dominant now than in decades. Look at the explosion of competition from online media outlets, including The Guardian Australia, Junkee, the Daily Mail and countless blogs. Add Twitter and Facebook.

But the final hypocrisy of Rudd and Turnbull is their claim — their real beef — that News Corp is biased.

“Totally one-eyed” and running “a protection racket for the Liberal National Party”, raged Rudd on Tuesday, apparently forgetting he last week accused News Corp editors of bringing down Turnbull, a Liberal prime minister.

In fact, News Corp has more balance than any media outlet now giving Rudd and Turnbull an eager platform.

News Corp hires many commentators and columnists of the left — Phillip Adams, Troy Bramston, Susie O’Brien, David Penberthy, Graham Richardson and Steve Conroy, among others. Its news.com.au reads like a Guardian news feed.

Even within News Corp papers, conservatives are outnumbered. Outside News Corp, they’re an endangered species.

Name one conservative host on the ABC’s main current affairs shows.

Or name one conservative commentator on the staff of The Guardian Australia, The Age, or just about any other Murdoch critic.

It seems News Corp’s real sin is to hire any conservatives at all — a handful of columnists and presenters like me, who dare still question the global warming scare beloved of Rudd and Turnbull.

That’s what makes Rudd such a hypocrite when he declares “the value at stake” in his crusade against News Corp is that “contesting and contestable ideas (should) have a platform”.

I doubt Rudd or Turnbull want any such platform. Not with Turnbull shouting on the ABC last week that News Corp was causing “enormous damage” by publishing “climate denial”.

Yes, I see through these two crusaders — right to the bleeding wound in their monstrous, throbbing vanity.

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