Labor conference: Rudd-flip: we’re all friends now

Kevin Rudd has called for healing in the Labor Party while being made a life member by colleagues he panned in a recent memoir.

Kevin Rudd receives his Labor life membership from Bill Shorten at the party’s national conference in Adelaide yesterday. Picture: AAP

Kevin Rudd has called for healing in the Labor Party while being made a life member by colleagues he panned in his recent memoir.

Mr Rudd and his wife, Therese Rein, flew from New York to the ALP conference in Adelaide to be bestowed with life membership by Bill Shorten and party president Wayne Swan, Mr Rudd’s nemesis since serving as his treasurer.

The former prime minister jovially referred to Mr Swan as “Swanny” and spoke of their work together for the Goss government in Queensland 30 years ago, ­despite writing in his recent memoir that Mr Swan did not have the “cerebral horsepower” to be treasurer, and “was a party secretary whose interests in numbers were more to be found in Newspoll than the national accounts”.

Despite writing of the Opposition Leader that he “was not entirely delighted when I made him parliamentary secretary for disabilities — he was hoping for something more,” Mr Rudd yesterday praised “the next Labor prime minister of Australia”.

“I honour his strength, his resilience, his capacity to build consensus in what is often a motley crew,” Mr Rudd said.

Mr Shorten also bestowed ALP life membership on Mr Rudd’s fellow former prime ministers Paul Keating and Julia Gillard.

Although Ms Gillard lives in Adelaide, neither she nor Mr Keating attended the conference.

Mr Rudd paid tribute to Mr Keating and Bob Hawke and ­offered a rare compliment to “the very formidable Julia Gillard”.

His assessment of her in his memoir was a little different.

“Unfortunately there is now a large body of evidence to tell us Gillard was actively working for a change in the leadership for a long, long time before her alleged conversion on the evening of 23 June, 2010, to the cause of removing the prime minister,” Mr Rudd wrote.

In a speech harking back to his childhood in Queensland and decision to join the Labor Party, Mr Rudd yesterday echoed a call from Mr Shorten for healing in the Labor Party. “For us to fully grasp the future, we have to put to bed the disagreements of the past,” he said. “That time has well and truly come. That is why I am here.

“You know, we had our occasional disagreements, just here and there, at the margins, but you know something? I just have a simple suggestion. Let’s let history be the judge of these things.

“I base that also on a pretty ­simple view that the values which unite us, as a labour movement, as a Labor Party and as a trade union movement, are infinitely broader and bigger and greater than any single ambition which may individually divide us from time to time, because we are Labor.”

Mr Rudd then turned to the Murdoch press (publisher of The Australian) accusing it of being a “political party” in coalition with the government.

The Australian editorialised in favour of Mr Rudd and against John Howard in 2007, and named him as “Australian of the Year” during his prime ministership.

The paper had similarly written favourable editorials when Bob Hawke and Mr Keating were Labor leaders.

“Our movement has the ­audacity of hope to stand up and say, ‘We don’t accept your ideology and your commercial interests’,” Mr Rudd said.