Kevin Rudd - The PM Years

About The PM Years

It was the coup that killed Australian politics.

Less than three years after taking government in a landslide election victory, Kevin Rudd was betrayed by his deputy and the factional powerbrokers of the Australian Labor Party, the Faceless Men, despite enjoying historically high personal and party approval ratings.

The betrayal of June 2010 is the most significant Australian political event of the century. No prime minister including Rudd has since seen out a full term before being dethroned by their own caucus. But how did party games in Canberra spiral so catastrophically out of control?

Kevin Rudd defeated John Howard on a platform of fresh ideas, progressive innovation and new leadership. He inherited two wars and the legacy of eleven years of conservative economic mismanagement. And within months of taking office, his new government would face the greatest economic cataclysm since the Great Depression the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. But none of these deterred Rudd from his vision of bringing Australia into the modern age.

In witty, forthright and audaciously honest prose, Rudd recounts his early triumphs and challenges in the hard business of government. But beyond the policy goals he kicked from raising the pension to axing WorkChoices to laying the foundation for a decades-long Labor dream of paid parental leave he takes us into cabinet, the prime ministers office and the back-corridor conversations that reshaped the country. We learn of the wheeling and dealing of governance as Rudd works with President Obama in the face of the financial crisis, apologises to the Stolen Generations and ratifies the Kyoto Protocol.

Yet regardless of Rudds efforts to combat climate change and his success in keeping Australia out of recession the great moral and economic challenges of our generation dark forces within his own party conspired against him. The unceremonious removal of a first-term prime minister from office shocked Rudd as much as it did the nation.

Despite great pain, Rudd continued to serve his party, and his country, as backbencher and foreign minister. He documents his time in the wilderness before his brief resurrection as Labor leader and the 2013 election, retaking the party after it had truly lost its way.

After years of silence, the 26th Prime Minister of Australia is finally on the record about his time in government, in this second volume of his autobiography. This is the memoir of a prime minister full of energy and ideals, while battling the greatest trials of the modern age. This is Kevin Rudds response to the ultimate political and personal betrayal.

To Thrse, Jessica, Nicholas and Marcus,

who stood with me alone in the prime ministers courtyard on 24 June 2010, the day after the coup.

And every day since.

Contents

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

William Shakespeare,

Alls Well That Ends Well

Introduction

The Coup That Killed Australian Politics

The state of our national politics causes many Australians to feel uneasy. Growing disillusionment in the face of unrealised, perhaps also unrealistic, expectations has given rise to anxiety, anger and even outright rage. This is often followed by a deepening sense of apathy, resignation and despair, concluding with a pox on all their houses. Apart from that, its all going pretty well.

In some respects, of course, its always been thus. But I sense that there is something new afoot as well something potentially dangerous for the democracy itself. The range of responses described above are a little like the seven stages of grief, as if the country is mourning the loss of politics as it once was, or at least believed it once to be.

When I was elected prime minister in 2007, there was a real sense of hope for the countrys future. Yet after 2010, that was no longer really the case. This book seeks to explain why. It also seeks to examine what might in practical terms be done about it. Preserving the integrity and vitality of our democracy is the essential business of the nation.

A number of people advised me against writing a two-part autobiography, saying it would only confirm my reputation for always preferring two sentences, when one would have done the trick! Besides, they said, nobody wants to read about politics anymore because most people now think all politics is pointless. My friends may have been right on the first point, but they are wrong I hope on the second. I believe politics still matters. It matters enormously, because its about how the powers and resources of the state are used, and whether these are used for the many or the few. For its this core proposition for the many or the few that remains the essential divide in our political life. It may be masked in our day-to-day political debate. It may be distorted or obscured by what remains of our national media. But whether we are conscious of it or not, it is fundamental to how we determine the future of our politics, our economy, our social fabric, the environment and our view of our role in the world. It was what I spoke of in the opening lines of my first speech in the parliament some twenty years ago. I meant it then. I mean it still. The many or the few.

I wrote the first volume of this book last year, ten years after winning office in November 2007. I thought a decade might provide some perspective on the events of that extraordinary election campaign and what led up to it. Distance certainly helps, even if none of us can lay any claim to objectivity. Autobiography, in fact, renders objectivity impossible, almost by definition. I said in the introduction of volume one that I intended it to be a letter of encouragement to young people considering a future in political life. That book was about what motivated me as a young person to leave a comfortable profession in diplomacy and take a walk on the wild side in politics. It was a book about belief. About purpose. About failure. And about resilience.

The purpose of this volume is different. First, it seeks to provide an account of what our government delivered during two terms in office, and where we failed, covering the prime ministerships of both myself and Julia Gillard in the period from 200713. Contrary to the tenor of much of the commentary during these years, significant economic, education, health, Indigenous, income support, environmental and climate change reforms were delivered which have proven to be of enduring significance to the nation. These have been overshadowed so far, understandably perhaps, by the leadership politics of the time. But the Murdoch media, the ever-reliable coalition partner of the current conservative government, has also worked overtime to delegitimise our achievements at every turn as part of their proprietors continuing ideological project to fashion Australia in his own twisted and commercially self-serving image. The time has come to analyse the achievements of our government in their own right.

The truth is, we didnt exactly sit on our hands during these years. Our government kept Australia out of recession, avoided mass unemployment and protected the savings of all Australians while maintaining the lowest budget deficit and public debt of all the major developed economies despite the ravages of the Global Financial Crisis a crisis which destroyed many other economies for most of the following decade; we established Infrastructure Australia and initiated the biggest investment in our national infrastructure needs since the Snowy Mountains Scheme; we launched a high-speed, maximum-bandwidth National Broadband Network (later emasculated by Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull at Rupert Murdochs request); we delivered a national apology to Indigenous Australians; we legislated a fifty-fifty split in Commonwealthstate funding for the public hospital system to preserve the long-term financial viability of the public health system; we created a National Disability Insurance Scheme; we reformed the age pension; we legislated to increase the Superannuation Guarantee Levy from 9 per cent to 12 per cent (although this too was subsequently repealed by our conservative successors); we introduced Australias first paid parental leave scheme; we removed all discriminations against same-sex couples from Commonwealth statutes before, in 2013, becoming the first government to go into a federal election campaigning for marriage equality; and we re-established the independence of the public service.