Bill Shorten was reason Labor lost election: Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd says Bill Shorten was a major reason Labor lost the May election and his franking credits policy strategy was “nuts’’.

Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd. Picture: AAP

Kevin Rudd has blamed Bill Shorten for Labor’s shock election ­defeat, accusing the former leader of making “cardinal” mistakes and failing to win over the public, as he lamented the party’s failure to more seriously discuss removing Mr Shorten prior to the May 18 poll.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Rudd yesterday said Labor committed a “cardinal political error” by proposing the negative gearing and franking credits tax changes from opposition, labelling the strategy “nuts”.

He also attacked Mr Shorten’s performance in Queensland and his indecision over the Adani coalmine, warning that the Greens had dictated Labor’s climate change policies.

Mr Rudd said “every candidate” was aware of Mr Shorten’s unpopularity and there should have been discussions in the last term of parliament about replacing him.

“I campaigned in about 12 seats and so I was here for a couple of weeks. I saw and felt a fair bit of what was happening on the ground,” Mr Rudd said.

“Rightly or wrongly, the Australian people didn’t warm to Bill, they didn’t particularly like him and they didn’t trust him. From time to time (Labor MPs) were thinking about (changing leader) but I think that’s where you require senior leadership in the party, after a period of time, to say to the leader, we should think this through.”

Mr Shorten was a key numbers man who helped topple Mr Rudd as prime minister in 2010, replacing him with Julia Gillard. Mr Rudd returned to the prime ministership by ousting Ms Gillard in June 2013 just months before a federal election.

Mr Rudd yesterday argued that ­despite the May 18 election result, it was still possible for an opposition to campaign on “big policy ideas”, declaring he did so himself during the 2007 campaign.

“We have to think big about the future, but that doesn’t mean committing cardinal tactical errors in an election campaign,” he said.

“It is unwise in my view in ­opposition to recommend complex changes to tax and retirement ­incomes, for the simple reason it is too difficult to explain and it is easily turned into a fear campaign by the conservatives. I have been around in politics long enough to know what the conservatives are capable of doing with misrepresenting even modest changes on tax and retirement ­income.”

Mr Rudd’s comments follow criticism from Paul Keating that Mr Shorten “failed to understand the middle-class economy that Bob Hawke and I created for ­Australia”.

Declaring this month that Mr Shorten’s policies were too focused on the “bottom end”, Mr Keating said Labor should have used its ­revenue-raising measures to fund tax cuts for high-income earners.

Chloe and Bill Shorten on election night. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Rudd took aim at Labor’s management of the climate change debate, saying Mr Shorten had made the mistake of being “neither Arthur or Martha” on the issue of coal and on the Adani mine.

“We should never find ourselves defined, in terms of the appropriateness or otherwise, of our climate change strategy by what the Greens party says,” Mr Rudd said. “For them to define the Labor Party’s climate change credentials simply in terms of Adani, I think was a profound political error.”

He said Labor needed to recognise Queensland was a small business state and had “certain religious sensibilities”.

“You can’t just ignore that. You can’t just disparage it. You have to work with it,” he said. “To win ­nationally, you must win Queensland. It is hard. It is not just Brisbane. It is wider southeast Queensland and each of those provincial cities is different.”

Mr Rudd also took aim at News Corp, publisher of The Weekend Australian, declaring the company set the tone of the debate during the election campaign.

“Can you blame them, however, uniquely for Labor’s loss? No. But was it part of the equation? Absolutely. Because they set the parameters and the tone for the conversation,” he said.

He also threw his support ­behind an indigenous “voice to parliament”, declaring claims it would act as a third chamber were “bullshit”. He compared the proposal to his apology to victims of the Stolen Generations in 2008.