Rudd back on the campaign trail and loving the limelight

KEVIN Rudd revelled in the limelight when he stepped out for the first time in his new role as Labor saviour-at-large.

KEVIN Rudd revelled in the limelight when he stepped out for the first time in his new role as Labor saviour-at-large.

 He challenged Tony Abbott to muscle up on the economy.

For a change, Julia Gillard was not on the receiving end of a campaign distraction generated by the former prime minister, who proved at Brisbane's Carindale shopping centre he could still pull a crowd and land a punch on the opposition.

His two-hour appearance yesterday with Labor MP Kerry Rea, who holds her Brisbane bayside seat of Bonner by 4.6 per cent, was timed to take attention off the Coalition's election campaign launch across town.

True to form, Mr Rudd's shopping centre outing took on a life of its own, with uncertainty until almost the last minute over where he would pop up.

He had been due to fly to Gladstone in central Queensland to campaign with Labor's Chris Trevor in his marginal seat of Flynn, after he agreed to take a wider role in Labor's struggling campaign.

A hotel room had been booked for Mr Rudd in Gladstone, and Mr Trevor admitted to The Australian he had been on stand-by to hit the hustings with him. Mr Trevor, a Rudd loyalist who threatened to quit when the former PM was knifed and clings to Flynn by a 2.3 per cent margin, was at a loss to explain the change of plan.

"I don't know what happened overnight. I know he's still recovering from surgery, and I personally thought it was a little bit too soon for him (to travel)."

Mr Rudd received a warm and enthusiastic welcome at Carindale shopping centre, which is in Bonner but used by people living in his adjoining seat of Griffith on Brisbane's southside.

He posed for dozens of photographs, cheerfully shook hands and borrowed notepaper from reporters to write messages to some of the well-wishers who mobbed him.

Mr Rudd again refused to answer questions from the media pack that assembled with only about 30 minutes' notice from his office. But there was no way to avoid Indian student Santosh Kumari, 25, after she clasped Mr Rudd's outstretched hand and quizzed him about the skilled migration program.

"We are all immigrants," Mr Rudd told the puzzled young woman. "Really?" she replied.

Mr Rudd said he had one word for Mr Abbott. But, typically, that turned into quite a few.

He said his "challenge" to Mr Abbott was to come out and defend his position on the economy, though he had "no interest" in it.

"(His) strategy is to lie low and subject himself to no scrutiny . . . it's quite worrying with two weeks to go before a national election."