Trashing of Kevin Rudd only damages Labor, says Lindsay Tanner

FORMER finance minister Lindsay Tanner has broken his long silence on Labor politics to condemn the removal of Kevin Rudd in June 2010.

Lindsay Tanner

FORMER finance minister Lindsay Tanner has broken his long silence on Labor politics to condemn the removal of Kevin Rudd in June 2010 and the assault by senior ministers on the former prime minister's reputation during the leadership contest in February this year.

"I think panic was a significant factor in the removal of Kevin Rudd as prime minister but there were multiple factors involved," Mr Tanner told The Australian.

Asked if he believed it was a mistake to remove Mr Rudd as PM, he said: "Yes, I do. I agree with John Howard's assessment. Had Labor kept its nerve, we would have won the 2010 election."

He repudiated the attacks by senior ministers on Mr Rudd's management earlier this year, calling them "extremely perverse" and "highly exaggerated".

And he revealed that in late 2009, when concerns about decision-making were raised in cabinet, "only a couple of ministers complained at the time".

While he did not criticise either Julia Gillard or Wayne Swan by name, they were the obvious targets of his critique.

Mr Tanner said Labor had not recovered from Mr Rudd's removal and was "caught in a trap of its own making".

The damning thesis in his essay "Inside the Gang of Four", published in The Australian today, and in an exclusive interview is that Labor, having deposed Mr Rudd, felt driven to trash its own record as justification.

Mr Tanner - a member of the "Gang of Four" at the heart of government decision-making that included Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard as deputy and Mr Swan as Treasurer - announced his resignation from parliament the day Mr Rudd was removed as prime minister. He did not contest the 2010 election.

While conceding difficulties under Mr Rudd, Mr Tanner said: "The Rudd government wasn't dysfunctional. That description is completely unfair.

"Removing a first-term elected Labor prime minister by a caucus vote, ostensibly because of his management style, is such an extreme thing to do that those involved have found it necessary to enormously exaggerate the deficiencies in Kevin Rudd's leadership.

"There were some deficiencies, it's true. The critical question, though, is whether they justified a leadership ambush of the kind that occurred on June 23, 2010. I think the answer is, clearly, no, and that many people who supported that challenge would now privately concede it was wrong."

He dismissed the Prime Minister's justification for the change - namely, that Labor was a good government that was "losing its way" - as a "figleaf to cover concerns about opinion poll results".

He contrasted the lack of strong complaints when cabinet ministers were asked for comment on decision-making in 2009 and subsequent fierce public assaults on Mr Rudd, describing them as "unprecedented".

Mr Tanner said the consequence of removing Mr Rudd was that Labor was locked into "publicly impugning a government that remains central to its current identity".

"It is impossible to attack the Rudd government without undermining the Gillard government," he said. "The sad thing about all this is that Labor is thrashing its own great achievement. In spite of everything that has since happened, we should be very proud of our government's handling of the 2008-09 crisis.

"And we should be proud of the fact that when it really mattered, four leading Labor figures with a lengthy history of personal rivalries and conflicting ambitions were able to put tensions aside and act to protect Australia in a time of global turmoil."

Ms Gillard, speaking in New York, brushed off criticisms by Mr Tanner that Labor had lost its direction and that it was motivated more by political expediency than internal belief.

“I can be very clear about the government's purpose,” she told reporters. “The government's purpose is to keep the economy strong, to make sure that not only today, but tomorrow, Australians have got the best of opportunities and we maximise our prosperity as our region changes, and then we find a way to share that, that is fair and meets the needs of the Australian people.”