IT'S TIME FOR HIM TO RESIGN AND GIVE WAY TO ALBO TO BECOME OUR LEADER.
SOMEONE WHO WILL NOT LET US DOWN.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was scathing of Julia Gillatd after he was deposed as the nation’s leader. Picture: Jack Tran
Source: News Corp Australia
Source: News Corp Australia
MONTHS after Kevin Rudd was deposed as prime minister, and in the
wake of Labor’s disastrous 2010 election campaign, he wrote a blistering
assessment of Julia Gillard, arguing that voters saw her as a
“backstabber” lacking legitimacy who had led the government to near
annihilation.
plot-line riddled with falsehoods about his government’s performance,
Labor’s re-election chances and the notion the coup was in the “national
interest”. He said those excuses were designed to mask Ms Gillard’s
overweening ambition.
GILLARD Rudd 'desperate for applause'
“This
was an entirely fabricated post-facto rationale for a leadership
change that was driven in large part by political ambition — an attempt
to elevate the reasons for leadership change above crude politics to the
highest reasons of state,” Mr Rudd said.
Part of Mr Rudd’s secret submission to Labor’s election review panel, which has been obtained by The Australian,
steams with bitterness over his treatment. He is defiant about his
government’s record and lashes Ms Gillard and the “faceless men” who
supported her, including Bill Shorten, for “ripping the party apart”.
The
disclosure of part of Mr Rudd’s damning submission to Labor’s 2010
national review committee chaired by Labor elders Steve Bracks, Bob Carr
and John Faulkner comes as Ms Gillard’s memoir, My Story, is
published today. Mr Rudd provided a detailed written rebuttal to “the
arguments advanced for a change in the leadership” by Ms Gillard and her
supporters who plotted to bring him down. He had given an oral
submission to the review team in December 2010.
He said there was
“no formal or informal warning” by any minister or MP “of changes that
needed to be made if a leadership challenge was to be avoided”. Mr Rudd
characterised his removal as “a total surprise to me — as I expected (it
was) intended”.
“The extraordinary step of deposing a first-term
sitting prime minister can only be explained if we assume those
planning for a leadership change concluded that due process might damage
their chances of success,” he wrote. “Reasons offered for the
leadership challenge were, in the main, post-facto rationalisations to
mask the real political ambitions that were at play.”
When Ms
Gillard replaced Mr Rudd as prime minister on June 24, 2010, she argued
as justification that the government had “lost its way”. Mr Rudd mocks
this rationale and argues the words were market-tested before the coup.
Mr
Rudd wrote that one of the strongest supporters of the coup was former
minister Tony Burke, who was motivated to turn on him by the prospect of
becoming deputy prime minister. He wrote that Mr Burke “offered himself
unsuccessfully” as a running mate to Ms Gillard two months before the
coup.
Mr Rudd argued his government was not “chaotic”, its “policy
challenges” were not insurmountable and it had a “clear political
narrative”.
But he acknowledged “heavy political weather on four
policy fronts” — asylum-seekers, climate change, the mining tax and
stimulus program waste — and accepted “ultimate responsibility” for
those polices. Others, he said, were not blame-free.
He wrote that
Ms Gillard ran an “internal campaign” to abolish the carbon pollution
reduction scheme and suggested she or her supporters were behind a
damaging leak to a newspaper that it had been shelved by a cabinet
committee before it was considered by the full cabinet, in order to
ensure cabinet compliance.
“(Gillard) sent me a written
communication saying that under no circumstances could she, or would
she, support an emissions trading scheme going to the next election,” Mr
Rudd wrote.
Nor did Ms Gillard support an early election or double-dissolution election on climate change.
While
recognising the “postponement” of the CPRS was “wrong”, Mr Rudd said it
was necessary to “prevent a total split in the government in an
election year led by (Gillard’s) implacable hostility to the ETS”.
On
asylum-seeker policy, Mr Rudd accepted responsibility for the increase
in refugees travelling to Australia. He noted that Ms Gillard was a
persistent internal critic of the government’s policies but never had
any “credible” alternative ideas.
“(Gillard) in particular argued
that it was inconceivable to risk the re-election of a Labor government
on the basis of prevailing asylum-seeker policy settings,” Mr Rudd
wrote.
“(Gillard) consistently argued for new policy options but failed to offer any until the week prior to the 23rd of June.”
Ms
Gillard advocated “what has become known as the East Timor Solution”.
But Mr Rudd “did not believe it to be credible” as it would undermine
Australia-East Timor relations and was likely to fail. Ms Gillard
subsequently championed this idea but it was not supported by East Timor
and never implemented.
Mr Rudd also lashed Wayne Swan for his
botched handling of the mining tax. He accused Mr Swan of “a fatal error
of communication” with the mining industry and fellow ministers,
including Ms Gillard, over the negotiation of the tax. As “public debate
became intense”, Mr Swan “went abroad at crucial junctures” for
“non-essential meetings”, he wrote.
Although Mr Rudd accepted
“responsibility” for the resource super-profits tax, he said “it cannot
be sustained that the treasurer discharged (his) responsibility
competently”.
Mr Rudd added that the industry’s campaign against
the tax “assisted those in the government seeking a change in the prime
ministership”. “(Gillard) supported by (Swan) acted to remove the prime
minister at the point when a negotiated outcome with the bulk of the
mining industry … was within days of being reached,” he concluded.
Mr
Rudd also wrote that Ms Gillard must accept responsibility for the
failures of the Building the Education Revolution program and former
minister Mark Arbib must be held accountable for the Home Insulation
Program, which led to four deaths.
While accepting that Ms
Gillard took responsibility for the BER “seriously” and implemented it
“effectively”, Mr Rudd said Mr Arbib never raised any concerns about the
insulation program with him and “has, by and large, escaped any form
of serious public scrutiny”.