Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull: frenemies without benefits
Four years after Kevin Rudd’s failed UN bid, insiders have told the extraordinary story of how close he came — and how savage the betrayal by his new best frenemy.
Imagine it. Rejected by his own party, Rudd had clawed his way back and then been rejected by Australian voters, but instead of skulking away to a New York hideout, he would have reappeared at UN headquarters on First Avenue, ruling the world.
It is a plot twist so delicious, a vengeance so perfect, that you can almost hear Rudd’s laugh, Dr Evil-like, echoing across the East River. Success is always the best revenge, and we could all imagine Secretary-General Kevin17 tweeting selfies with world leaders to his antipodean fans, and keeping the Australian foreign minister waiting in an anteroom for hour after hour, while besmirching his country as a climate laggard.
The cocktail parties, bureaucracy, endless meetings, deference and fawning; Rudd would have thought that he had died and gone to heaven.
Here was a job where process trumped outcomes, moral superiority was a given, virtue-signalling was virtuous and, best of all, using many words to say as little as possible was a gift.
Alas, while Rudd had done some hard yards clearing the path, he had the rug pulled out from under him when Canberra decided not to back his nomination.
The former prime minister was denied his tilt at this historic opportunity and the man who robbed him was none other than his current frenemy, Malcolm Turnbull.
The UN gig and the circumstances around it provide perhaps the most confounding paradox in the contemporary accommodation that has emerged between Rudd and Turnbull.
How can they conspire together now, when they have this high-stakes episode of promise and betrayal at one crossroads of their parallel lives?
They were enemies once — opposition leader and prime minister sparring across the dispatch box — and each, naturally enough, saw the other as prospective roadkill on the way to fulfil their own ambitions.
Still, this was orthodox; the expected antipathy of our combative system — the UN gig was supposed to be above politics, and the denouement was personal.
Rudd’s push for the UN job has not made it into the Sky News Men in the Mirror documentary airing on Sunday night because there was so much else to include. But I discussed it on camera with some key players, and on background with others.
It would be fascinating to hear from Turnbull and Rudd on the intricacies of this deal undone. But, for now, they are going through a grieving process that includes blaming all their woes (and those of the planet) on News Corp; they include me in that conspiracy theory, so will not share their thoughts.
Still, we have the insights of others. Former Howard government minister, senate leader and then consul-general in New York Nick Minchin says Rudd is still “deeply bitter” about how it all went down. “I had a rather remarkable evening with Kevin in New York,” recounts Minchin, “where he expressed to me his deep feeling about the way Malcolm had pulled the rug out from under him in relation to the UN job.”
This unfolded in late 2015 and early 2016 when Rudd was two years out of parliament, having served as prime minister (twice) and foreign minister.
Turnbull had taken over from Tony Abbott as prime minister and Rudd, spending most of his time in New York in work for think tanks and a UN-related entity, had put himself in a position to run for the secretary-general’s job.
Many insiders, including Minchin, knew Rudd believed he had an undertaking from Turnbull to support his candidature. Aside from the details of any such undertaking, we know the rest.
“That’s essentially the case, and I’ve confirmed that with Liberal colleagues,” Minchin said. “And of course, I was in a position where — along with Alexander Downer (former foreign minister and then high commissioner to London) and Joe Hockey (former treasurer and then ambassador to Washington), as serving diplomats for Australia — where we had advised the government that we all thought that the government should formally provide the nomination for Kevin as an ex-prime minister wanting to nominate for secretary-general, because you effectively need to have the nominal backing of your own country if you want to succeed.
“We all thought that it was proper, given he was an ex-prime minister, to provide that nomination and backing and it would be churlish not to do so,” Minchin explained.
“None of us supported the government spending any money on his campaign, but we all, and Julie Bishop actually produced in cabinet a letter signed by the three of us, advocating that the government support his nomination.”
Wow. Rudd was that close to giving it a shot. Some of his old adversaries recommended his nomination and his friend, the serving foreign minister Bishop, took it to cabinet with their endorsement.
“Julie was certainly supporting him, and I know that right up until the decisive cabinet meeting, Malcolm had supported it, and had told Kevin that he would support it,” said Minchin.
“I gather what turned him was that there was a sort of a backlash in cabinet from people saying the Coalition can’t be seen to be supporting Kevin Rudd,” said Minchin, “I think that’s wrong. I think simply providing the formal nomination was a proper thing to do.
“But certainly, Kevin had every reason to believe that he had both Malcolm and Julie’s backing, and then Malcolm reneged on that and announced that the government would not be supporting it. So frankly, Kevin had every reason to feel very bitter and twisted at being let down and deceived in that way.”
Minchin’s is a reasonable position. Although, I should point out, that I burst into print a few months earlier in these pages saying Australia should not support Rudd because he had an appalling record and was a divisive figure — not that I played any role, but just to be open about my view and some of the public reaction that played out.
“I don’t want to breach too many confidences,” said Minchin, “but I saw a fair bit of Kevin when we were both in New York and I always got on with him personally, and he did express to me in no uncertain terms how deceived and let down by Malcolm he felt. And I must say, this is a bit of a character flaw with Malcolm.
“Malcolm should have either been more persuasive and determined at the cabinet meeting, or he should never have led Kevin to believe that it was in the bag.”
Former editor-in-chief of The Australian Chris Mitchell told me Rudd pressed him to lobby for Rupert Murdoch’s support for his UN bid. Mitchell said it was a bizarre request and he could hardly do such a thing given the history between Rudd and his newspaper, adding: “All I can really say on this is that Turnbull showed good judgment.”
This is an extraordinary tale. And that is even before we consider that Rudd and Turnbull have somehow gotten past this history to co-operate on climate change, co-authoring pieces for The Guardian Australia (the green left publication Turnbull instigated) and to rail against News Corp.
According to The Guardian, Turnbull met resistance when he proposed the nomination in a cabinet meeting on July 28, 2016, and was left to make a captain’s call. He chose not to nominate Rudd, declaring he was not “well suited” to the role and ducking a meeting with him. It seems Turnbull preferred to get Rudd offside rather than risk the same with elements of his cabinet.
Rudd’s older brother Greg, an experienced hand in politics and diplomacy, told me the nomination would not have succeeded anyway. “He had made a lot of enemies,” said Greg. “He said he was going to reform the UN. As soon as he said that I thought, ‘he is not going to get this’.”
And Greg Rudd is forgiving of Turnbull’s about-face, putting it down to the realities of cabinet government. But still, I asked him how Kevin could reconcile with Turnbull after such a betrayal? “You know the answer to that,” he said, “the enemy of my enemy.”
So here we are, and neither Rudd nor Turnbull have public roles. They clearly each want one. They are not done with public life. Yet a public backlash saw Turnbull dumped after getting a relatively minor role advising on energy for the NSW government (he blames News Corp). And if Rudd thought he could rule the UN, what would satisfy him?
There could be useful and constructive functions for them, although it is not easy to place people who have large megaphones and like to use them.
And every time they air bitter resentment and unsolicited advice they make themselves increasingly unemployable for governments of all persuasions.
Men In The Mirror: Rudd & Turnbull premieres Sunday May 2 at 8pm AEST on Sky News.
The United Nations has a desultory pedigree when it comes to delivering decisive political outcomes, so selecting Kevin Rudd as secretary-general would have been a wonderful moment for both parties. It is hard to conceive of a more complete manifestation of political revenge and personal one-upmanship.