Former prime minister Kevin Rudd slams Julia Gillard in memoir

In an explosive new memoir, Kevin Rudd reveals that he thought he had a deal with Julia Gillard for two terms in office.

Rudd as prime minister with deputy Julia Gillard in 2008. Picture: Ray Strange

In an explosive new memoir, Kevin Rudd writes that Julia Gillard promised he would be given two terms as opposition leader, which he thought was a deal that extended into government.

Instead, Ms Gillard deposed Mr Rudd in 2010 even though he was “committed to ensuring a smooth transition” to her as prime minister “in the future”.

Ms Gillard apparently conceded she could never become prime minister from Labor’s left faction without “having proven herself” first as deputy prime minister. Indeed, Kim Beazley thought Ms Gillard was “toxic” and Wayne Swan, Stephen Conroy and Stephen Smith — known as “the roosters” — argued she was “an electoral liability”.

Mr Rudd also says one of his greatest regrets is appointing Mr Swan treasurer over the more able Lindsay Tanner. He argues Mr Swan was intellectually not up to the job, was a poor communicator and his parliamentary performances were an embarrass­ment. But not appointing him would have risked destabilising the party.

In Not for the Faint-hearted: A personal reflection on life, politics and purpose — provided to The Weekend Australian ahead of publication next week — the former prime minister writes that Ms Gillard was “reluctant” to join with him to topple Mr Beazley and his deputy Jenny Macklin, whom Ms Gillard “loathed”. Yet together they plotted a coup for months over wine and takeaway food.

“She said I should be given two terms as opposition leader,” Mr Rudd writes. “If I had failed to win by then, then she would reserve her rights. She then added a caveat that if I went backwards in the 2007 election, when measured against (Mark) Latham’s result in 2004, she would also have to give some thought as to her next move. Both propositions sounded reasonable to me. We shook hands on it.

“This agreement was one of the reasons I was taken by surprise during the events of June 2010, when Julia acted to ensure that not only would I not be given two terms as Labor leader, I would only be given one, and that would be as a Labor prime minister who had actually prevailed against the then invincible (John) Howard. Such is the brutal nature of Australian politics played at its hardest.”

In the lengthy chronicle of his pre-prime ministerial life, Mr Rudd savages Mr Howard for trying to destroy him personally and smear his wife, Therese Rein, and unleashes vitriolic attacks on the media and former leaders Mr Beazley and Mr Latham, whom he describes as emotionally unstable, intellectually incoherent and an unmitigated “disaster” for the party.

Mr Beazley was a spent political force and Mr Howard had his measure. “The public had made their mind up,” Mr Rudd writes. “They wanted change.”

He describes Mr Beazley as more passionate about military history than public policy and not hungry enough for the prime ministership. Mr Beazley “flew into a rage” when Mr Rudd told him he would challenge his leadership.

The first volume of the often moving and reflective memoir provides an account of Mr Rudd’s life growing up on a farm in Queensland, family hardship, his troubled schooling, his developing interest in politics, an extended rumination on his faith, working as a diplomat abroad and for Queensland premier Wayne Goss, and his time as a backbencher and opposition spokesman.

Mr Rudd gives a brutal deconstruction of Mr Howard’s foreign policy, which he says was characterised by Mr Howard’s dangerous compliance with US interests and littered with gross errors of judgment such as the Iraq war, scandals such as “wheat for weapons” and “children overboard”, and the exploitation of fear and xenophobia.

He also bitterly attacks Mr Howard for his alleged involvement in prosecuting a politics of personal destruction that included aiding and abetting journalists, including from The Weekend Australian, for targeting his private life and Ms Rein’s businesses. He describes the 2007 election clash as “a bloody battle”.

Mr Rudd recalls his empty feelings when defeating Mr Beazley in the leadership contest in 2006 and Mr Howard in the election in 2007. “It’s strange,” he writes. “I felt no elation. No sense of triumph. No personal vindication.”