Kevin Rudd insists Tony Abbott's his 'main course'

KEVIN Rudd has strongly defended his right to speak out after rejecting suggestions he had stepped up his public appearances while Julia Gillard was out of the country.

KEVIN Rudd has strongly defended his right to speak out after rejecting suggestions he had stepped up his public appearances while Julia Gillard was out of the country.

Fresh off a plane from China, Mr Rudd courted the media for the second time in as many days to renew his attack on the Queensland Liberal National Party government for hacking into the health budget at the claimed expense of transplant services.

The former PM said his appearance at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital had nothing to do with the Prime Minister's absence to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

“What you can conclude from that is that I take seriously my responsibility to get out and argue the case for what the Australian government is doing in health and hospitals when they are being ripped and torn apart by the Liberal National Party at the state level - the facts speak for themselves,” Mr Rudd said.

And he insisted he would continue to take the fight up to the conservatives at both the state and federal levels.

“It's my continued objective to do everything within my power to prevent Mr Abbott from becoming the next prime minister of Australia. Because what we have with Campbell Newman, Barry O'Farrell in NSW and Ted Baillieu in Victoria, we have simply the entre, the entre of slash and burn to basic government services nation-wide,” Mr Rudd said.

“Tony Abbott, he's the main course. So I will do everything while I draw breath to make sure that that man does not become prime minister of the country, and I have a contribution to the public debate to make and I remind you we are here in my electorate of Griffith, on the southside (of Brisbane), where my constituents use this hospital.”

Mr Rudd also hit out at former Australian Medical Association president Bill Glasson, who has been endorsed by the LNP to run against him in Griffith.

And despite suggestions to the contrary, he said Australia's bid for a seat on the UN Security Council was not in the bag. “When I launched the bid back in 2008 I made it very plain that this was going to be very, very difficult - it's going to be hard-fought, all the way.” Mr Rudd told reporters.