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This was published 14 years ago

Day 14

By Michelle Grattan

KEVIN Rudd has Labor's campaign in turmoil, and nobody has a clue how his rogue behaviour will play over the crucial third week. As they're saying in the party, Kev's in a bit of a strange place.

Yesterday's shenanigans started with a front-page story in The Sydney Morning Herald saying Labor had requested Rudd to campaign for the party outside his own seat, but he had asked for time to consider the request.

Well, if anybody of authority in the ALP campaign had asked him, they've forgotten. Certainly he had not been asked by the official national campaign, or the Queensland one. Julia Gillard, who had another bad Rudd day, seemed reluctant to be drawn when she was asked multiple times, but her message was clear enough: ''I am and Campaign HQ is respecting Kevin Rudd's wishes to campaign for re-election as the member for Griffith. No other request has been made of him.'' She painted him as having an almost obsessional attachment to every vote in his electorate.

Oops. Soon after, Rudd issued his statement, saying that next week he will be out campaigning not only in his seat but around Queensland, and the rest of the country ''as appropriate''.

This again seemed to surprise the national Labor team - that's if anything surprises them about Rudd any more. Not that they could be absolutely sure that someone else in the team didn't have a fix in with Rudd. That's what it's like in Labor at the moment. But no fix could be found. If a mystery person from the Gillard side had set up a rapprochement, they had neglected to spread the word; if Rudd was trying to get one, he was going about it in an eccentric way.

Among the more extraordinary of yesterday's happenings was that Rudd issued his promise, or threat, to spread his campaigning just as he was admitted to hospital for a sudden gall bladder operation. The surgery followed acute pain on Thursday. Even for Rudd, his attention to detail seemed bizarre.

The most logical explanation (which doesn't automatically mean it is right) seemed to be that Rudd sent himself an invitation to the election party and then announced he was attending.

Whether this is a positive development is problematic. Anything that has Rudd around the country confronted with questions about whether he's the BIG LEAK could make the third week of the campaign even worse for Labor than the second. Rudd up to now has insisted he would only talk about issues in the local context of his Griffith electorate. But he couldn't get away with that while campaigning more broadly. And, by the way, which MPs are going to invite him in and what are they going to say when he comes? Imagine the shopping centre walks: ''Here's Kevin, he was PM until we knifed him, I'm delighted to have him here to meet you.'' Fraught.

This week, former powerbroker Graham Richardson has accused Rudd of being the leaker, probably through his staff, as has former leader Mark Latham, who described Rudd's behaviour as ''the snake's way''.

Rudd was yesterday's main game; Cheryl Kernot was the day's cameo. You would think she had been battered and bruised enough by politics. Queen of the Democrats, then wooed to Labor, only to never properly find her feet there. A victim of innocence and ambition. But no, Kernot is back having a go. Part of a two-person group of independents running for the Senate in NSW on the slogan ''Change Politics!'', she's fighting against the ''worm'' taking us over. Attacking the superficial focus of the campaign, she declared: ''We are more than a nation defined by a worm's judgment.'' In a rather quaint footnote to the press release we are assured ''Ms Kernot has not held membership of any other political party for some time''. The decision was all very last-minute - the group only decided on Tuesday to field candidates.

That spectacularly successful independent Nick Xenophon gives a taste of what she will be up against. ''Because she is not a party, she won't have her name above the line [where voters just pick a single box].'' She'll just have a box above the line with a letter, randomly selected. To deal with this anonymity, Xenophon had a big S (his letter) painted on his forehead on his campaign poster.

Would Xenophon consider campaigning for her? ''No. I don't know the woman … To paraphrase Tony Abbott, endorsement is something you don't give away lightly.''

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Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/day-14-20100730-10zwt.html