This is a guest blog by journalist and former senior Howard Government press secretary Niki Savva, whose book So Greek, confessions of a conservative leftie, has just been published by Scribe. We thank her for this post and wish her well for the book, it’s a terrific read.
If anyone out there stumbles across the real Kevin Rudd, could they please call his wife and kids. They are very worried because they haven’t seen him for a while and have apparently lodged a missing persons report with the police.
There have been images of Rudd on television and in the newspapers, usually smiling and joking, often with toddlers, but there is no proof it is really him. Or anybody, really. He just looks and sounds like a clone of someone he wishes he was.
Like some alien body snatcher he slithered into John Howard’s skin one night towards the end of 2006 and wore it comfortably all the way through the 2007 election to convince people they were electing a fresher, more modern version of Howard.
The cops should have dropped Haneef, and arrested Rudd instead for identity theft.
Rudd shed Howard’s skin as soon as the election was over, and ever since he has been sliding around desperately looking for someone else’s skin to crawl into.
As Opposition Leader, Rudd dragged out the brand new conservative suit Therese had bought for him, and vowed to halt reckless government spending. He said climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time and pledged to tackle it, promised to take over hospitals in a year and bring in an education revolution, threatened to take the Japanese to court over whaling, warned he would turn back refugee boats, and promised to live at the Lodge.
He has done none of those things, and I doubt he ever will.
I don’t know why he is there, who he thinks or is, or what he thinks a Prime Minister’s job involves. It actually means he can and must do things, big things, which can shape the country he leads and not just spin from one pic fac to another.
In his first term, Howard took on his own base and reformed gun laws, an action which has had a hugely positive impact on Australian society; challenged the stranglehold of unions on the waterfront, and began the difficult task of introducing a goods and services tax. At the same time his Treasurer, Peter Costello, wiped out billions of dollars of deficit and put the Budget back in the black.
Consider just two examples of Rudd’s gross dereliction. First his approach on climate change. It was lazy and gutless. He relied on the media to make the opposition the story - and the Liberals stupidly obliged - and to pressure Malcolm Turnbull to support the Government’s policy. He failed to take his arguments to the people, to explain what his scheme entailed, and how they would be affected by it.
Second. When he was casting around for something else to do, he commissioned Ken Henry to undertake a comprehensive review on tax reform. He is now treating it as if someone has sent him a stink bomb. They probably have.
It’s an independent report, he tried to tell Laurie Oakes the other day, it’s got nothing to do with the Government, and we might or might not pick up its recommendations. Oakes pointed out the head of Treasury was not exactly independent from the Government.
The man’s got a teleprompter where his ticker should be.
Granted he succeeded in staving off the recession threatened by the economic crisis which saved him from disappearing into vapor, but any fool could do that by spraying around billions of dollars. The trick is to spend money wisely on long term productive enterprises, and there is little evidence that is happening.
By the time people realise how much has been wasted, and how hard it will be to repay, he will be long gone, and Julia Gillard will probably be out there trying to explain it all.
That can’t come soon enough for me. I watched all the Oakes interview with Rudd on Sunday. It went about 20 minutes and it felt as if half my life had slipped away. His voice acts like a verbal sedative. He throws in lots of facts and figures and uses his favorite expressions – you know something? Guess what?- as if he is about to offer some profound insight, then whacks us with another cliche.
He is both anal and banal.
Away from the cameras, the secret Kevin is given to hissy fits, foul language and bursts of revenge. In public he is the eminently reasonable, totally predictable, and infuriatingly, nauseatingly hammy actor who got elected Prime Minister.
Like I say, if anybody finds the real Kevin Rudd, please call his family.
Tony Abbott on the other hand can’t help but be interesting. It is both a blessing and a curse. He has opinions and he expresses them in ways people can immediately understand and the reactions are not always positive.
The trick for politicians is to be interesting enough to attract attention, but not too interesting so that they come across as scatter brained or weird or ill-disciplined(see Barnaby Joyce) and invite the kind of media exposure than can end up killing them.
So far Abbott is having some success. He is rattling Rudd’s cage like a great white shark in red speedos. Rudd is so tightly wound, it wouldn’t take much to unhinge him and if Abbott keeps his team united he might just manage it. Bring it on.
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