Rudd fires shot at critic Josh Bornstein over Senate candidacy

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has launched a stinging attack on a potential high-profile Labor candidate for previously resigning from the party on at least two occasions and his public criticism of several leading women, suggesting ALP members could not rely on him to remain loyal when things turn bad.

Prominent employment lawyer Josh Bornstein told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald at the weekend he was again considering challenging veteran Labor senator Kim Carr ahead of the next federal election, despite putting his “campaign on ice” last year after The Australian reported a series of inflammatory tweets as far back as 2013 he says he feared would cause too much distraction.

Kevin Rudd launched a stinging attack on a potential Labor candidate Josh Bornstein for previously resigning from the party. Credit: Simon Schluter/ Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Bornstein was a vocal critic of Mr Rudd as prime minister, declaring he had reached his “moral limits of political affiliation” when he returned to lead the former Labor government in 2013 and introduced a hard-line policy on asylum seekers arriving by boat. He tweeted at the time he would not vote Labor at that election.

Mr Rudd said his criticism was not about Bornstein’s past personal attacks on him, but about his commitment to Labor. He remains a close friend and political ally of Senator Carr, a cabinet minister in his governments and the longest-serving current member of the Senate.

“I couldn’t give a damn about Bornstein’s personal attacks on me. Water off a duck’s back. What I do give a damn about is that if Bornstein couldn’t stand with the last Labor government, why would party members have any trust that when the going gets tough, he would not give up again?” he said.

Victorian ALP records show Mr Bornstein resigned at least twice since he first became a member in 1992. He rejoined in September 2006 but by June 2011 he was no longer on the membership roll. Current records show he has been a member since June 21, 2016.

Several senior Labor figures said his “performative” resignations forced a party membership rule change, nicknamed the “Bornstein rule”, which meant a member needed to wait at least 12 months before rejoining the party.

Mr Rudd said when Australia was “staring down the barrel of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership”, Labor members and senators, branch members and volunteers worked together to do everything to stop an Abbott government and, at least, “keep as many seats as possible out of his hands”.

“Bornstein didn’t do that. Each of his attacks on the Labor Party during the 2013 election, it was a gift to Abbott and a blow to the Labor Party,” Mr Rudd said.

Victorian Labor is engulfed in bitter factional feuding including a legal challenge to the ALP’s national executive decision to suspend preselections until after the next Victorian and federal elections, denying about 13,000 branch members a vote.

Mr Bornstein, 56, has been encouraged to challenge Senator Carr for the Left faction position on Labor’s Victorian Senate by several cross factional figures, including party veteran Greg Combet.

Responding to Mr Rudd’s comments he said: “There are far more important issues confronting our fragile democracy and troubled labour market. I won’t spend time rehashing old personality politics with Mr Rudd”.

Mr Bornstein did not respond to questions about how many times he had resigned as an ALP branch member.

He had previously ruled himself out of preselection after he was the subject of a series of reports in The Australian last year detailing controversial tweets he had posted over the past decade. In the posts, he labelled federal Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen a “muppet” and compared a female unionist to a dog.

Mr Bornstein also compared Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong to a character from the TV program The Addams Family, prompting Ms Wong to release a statement affirming the need to respect women. He later apologised for the tweets.

But Mr Rudd said Mr Bornstein’s “disrespect” for Senator Wong – who he described as a “first-rate minister” in his government” and one of the most universally respected members of the caucus – “spoke volumes”.

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