Behind the facade of Kevin Rudd

KEVIN Rudd's public persona is in stark contrast to the acid-mouthed tyrant he can be away from the spotlight.

THE fact that the Prime Minister swears a lot has become common knowledge after various news reports such as his outburst towards a RAAF flight attendant.

But the pattern of behaviour is nothing new to many in the media who have known Kevin Rudd over the years.

And that's the side of the Prime Minister so at odds with his image in the public. There's the formal Rudd, the Prime Minister who answers a question like a consulting surgeon at your bedside - and with about the same amount of warmth - responding with the analysis of the problem, the potential solutions in a series of bullet points and the likely outcomes. In other words: diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and all wrapped in political-speak.

But ask journalists, editors and media executives who have known Rudd for years and a different picture emerges. Behind the scenes, the Prime Minister is known to yell and curse at editors for stories that run contrary to his tightly controlled agenda.

It's clearly not lost on News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch, who said last week that Rudd is "too sensitive for his own good".

"We're no shrinking violets," says one press gallery journalist of he and his colleagues in Canberra. "And you were kind of accepting Rudd's style as an opposition frontbencher, but when your Prime Minister swears like he does, it's kind of off-putting, frankly."

The contradictions in the Prime Minister are an emerging narrative as the media itself are increasingly willing to call him on it. Indeed, behind the scenes there are few nice words for Rudd and his media advisers as the frustration of two years in dealing with the PM's command and control style starts to find more air.

The ABC's Canberra-based political editor Chris Uhlmann is one who deftly skewered the PM in a piece published in The Australian last month in which he examined Rudd's tendency to frame great questions in moral terms.

"There is a lot to be said for moral arguments. One of the problems with deploying them is that they are impervious to compromise. And if you lay down fields full of moral landmines to blow up your opponents, you run the risk of stepping on one yourself," Uhlmann wrote.

And he told Cameron Stewart in The Australian's Weekend Magazine: "There is a view that he [Rudd] has the face and a bearing of a parson, and the heart and soul of a dictator. He has cowed his party, his caucus, his cabinet and the bureaucracy. He holds all the prizes, and anyone who wants to advance must pay homage to him. He bludgeons alternative opinions to death."

This is where News Limited, and more specifically The Australian itself, comes in. One of the stories that the gallery likes to endlessly gossip about is Rudd's relationship with The Australian and its editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell.

Along with Treasurer Wayne Swan, Mitchell, a former editor of the Courier Mail in Queensland, has known Rudd for a long time. They have at times been friendly. But that appears to have changed in recent months.

Just last month Rudd grew impatient with a questioner at a community forum in Hobart who quizzed him on the impact of an emissions trading scheme. Rudd challenged him to name the source of his analysis and was told it was The Australian.

"If you cite your source as The Australian newspaper, I simply say this: [It is a] free country; every paper can express their point of view - the editor of The Australian has said that he edits a right-wing newspaper - and so he does," Rudd said.

"Let us not pretend that it [The Australian] would seek to present itself as an objective source of information. It opposes the government's actions on climate change, and has done so consistently. That's their democratic right; we have a free press. And so they should; that's a matter for them."

Mitchell responded at the time: "The actual quote referred to The Australian as a centre-right paper but the PM is loose with his verballing these days."

Sitting in his office at The Australian's Sydney headquarters, Mitchell says it is clearly frustrating the PM that the national newspaper is offering the kind of scrutiny that he says he is not getting elsewhere. "I would think he looks at most other media organisations that have depopulated their Canberra operations, especially The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and it irks him that the only paper that really scrutinises him is us."

Mitchell cites The Australian's reporting on the children overboard affair and its relentless pursuit of the AWB scandal by reporter Caroline Overington as examples of the newspaper's record of holding governments of the day accountable.

But more importantly, when it comes to Rudd's rise to power, Mitchell points out that The Australian gave plenty of editorial space, including its opinion pages, to allow both Rudd and Swan to prosecute their case against the Howard government in the lead up to the 2007 election.

This included a confluence of opinion between the newspaper and the opposition at the time that the Howard government had squandered reform opportunities.

"On one level the superficial case against Howard was the culture-war case," Mitchell says. "But the more telling case against Howard, and one that Howard hated, was that he was frittering billions of dollars on regional electorates. Rudd and Swan got a lot of play with that in this paper, while Fairfax concentrated on the cultural story.

"I think they [Rudd and Swan] might have thought that since I had known them a long time that somehow we might go a bit easier," says Mitchell, who approved an editorial on the eve of the 2007 election backing Rudd. "I think they are surprised that we are applying the same standards to them."

Mitchell points to a framed print of the first front page of The Australian, printed in 1964. Under the title "Good Day" the original charter of The Australian is set out, noting it was a newspaper not affiliated to any party and "we will not be influenced when there is public need for us to be outspoken". Says Mitchell: "We judge government according to those parameters."

Former opinion editor at The Australian Tom Switzer (who recently unsuccessfully contested the Liberal pre-selection in Sydney's Bradfield) was in the front line for the Rudd's strategy to become prime minister, witnessing first hand the man's pursuit for air time and column inches.

"He was by far the most relentless, self-promoting contributor," Switzer says. "Hardly a week went by without hearing from him. He was always calling.

"But he was always professional, courteous and his copy was flawless; he could write. He knew how the game worked, the ideological fights and his pieces were always on pace."

On that score Rudd encapsulates the modern political campaign. The media has an almost insatiable appetite for news, and ambitious politicians use the occasional vacuum to build their profile and hone their skills.

What made Rudd different before winning Labor's leadership in late 2006 was the way he simultaneously engaged with popular media as well as serious news and current affairs. "He was very good at building credibility with the opinion makers at the same time as making sure your average Joe knew who he was," says Wayne Errington, who lectures in political communication at the Australian National University.

"Rudd's media strategy highlights his generational leap beyond Howard," adds The Australian's editor at large Paul Kelly. "Howard was elected to parliament in 1974 and Rudd in 1998 and in communications they belong to different worlds.

"Rudd is interested, almost obsessed, about new technology and adapts easily to new media. It is important to identity both their similarities and their differences. As PMs, Howard and Rudd were both fixated on the media, the 24-hour media cycle and winning the short-term contest each day, unlike Keating who couldn't stand this brand of daily retail politics.

"But Howard knew only the old media, notably talkback radio, where Rudd moves between old and new media according to need."

Rudd initially built his profile among a quotient of voters who took little interest in politics. In 2002 Seven's Sunrise morning program was looking for a light-hearted political segment involving two politicians. Rudd and now shadow Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey got the gig and used the platform to ingratiate themselves to an audience of millions.

For anyone monitoring the media cycle in 2002-07, any given day could be book-ended by Rudd engaging in some light banter on Sunrise before fielding tough questions from Tony Jones on the ABC's Lateline. It is a model of balancing popularity and credibility that Rudd has tried to expand on as Prime Minister.

However, there is a view from sections of the media that as Prime Minister Rudd is more focused on the lighter side. ABC Insiders' host Barrie Cassidy expressed his frustration at Rudd's unwillingness to come on the program during the last election.

"He would rather tweet than answer tough questions in a political interview," one senior political journalist notes.

Political learning has been an important part of Rudd's evolution as a media performer. Before he became Labor leader Rudd took the time to lunch with conservative columnists and editors, using the opportunities to pick their brains about what made Howard such a successful performer. One of the themes Rudd seized on was the way Howard transformed the use of AM radio in the early period of his prime ministership. Howard loathed the filter the press gallery put on his message to voters. He wanted to bypass it. Rudd has followed the same principle.

Only it's not AM radio, but FM, infotainment and increasingly Twitter he now uses to sell his messages. Last week Rudd used Twitter to tell his 735,000 followers: it's "Time for the 'do nothing' climate change sceptics to stop playing roulette with our kids' future". The message lacked detail but it served its political purpose.

Australian politicians have always had concerns about getting too close to comedians and radio jocks for fear they might be seen to be denigrating the prestige of high office. Rudd has been prepared to do so in a bid to get the ear of voters who don't listen to political messaging.

One of Rudd's strengths in this has been the youthful advice around him from his media team. Headed by press secretary Lachlan Harris, the team helps keep the PM in touch with a generation of young voters.

The question is that Rudd's spin means there is, in the end, little substance to drive serious policy debate. When the PM fronts up for interviews he increasingly doesn't answer questions put to him, perhaps nothing new for a politician but the frustration with this PM is becoming legend in the press gallery. Just ask Laurie Oakes.

"A couple of days ago, I found myself shouting at the radio. 'For God's sake, answer the bloody question!'," he says of the PM's media blitz on the asylum-seeker issue following last week's dip in Newspoll. "He had nothing to tell us. No answers. Just platitudes, slogans and spin."

In watching a prime minister who engages as freely with the many forms of the media as Rudd does, we are in uncharted territory. If he maintains popularity it will permanently change the way our leaders talk to the nation.

If, however, voters start to see Rudd as little more than a celebrity politician, he may be forced to rethink his style. Either way, those who get to know the Prime Minister through his various uses of the media get a filtered impression. They won't ever know the real Rudd journalists and editors see behind the scenes unless a hidden camera or microphone one day catches the action.

Geoff Elliott is The Australian's media editor. Peter van Onselen is contributing editor.