Former PM Kevin Rudd quits federal politics

[Matilda]

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has announced his retirement from politics in an emotional speech to Parliament, adding "it really is time for me to zip".

Mr Rudd, who has served as the Member for Griffith since 1998, says he will leave Parliament at the end of this week.

"This has been the product of much soul-searching for us as a family over the last few months," he said, fighting back tears.

"But for me, my family is everything, always has been, always will be, which is why I will not be continuing as a member of this parliament beyond this week."


Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/

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Personally, I always admired Rudd, in that I think he did have a vision that stretched beyond the usual three-year attention span of most politicians. There's no doubt that he was - is - something of a control freak, who tried to micro-manage every department, but I believe that knifing him was not only tragic for him but for Labor as a party. To this day, it remains divided, and the wounds haven't healed.

I think he's been treated shabbily by Labor - he saved, by all estimates, at least 15 seats for them in the last election, yet he's been shunned by the party and left idle on the shadow backbench. Is this his payback? Because his seat will now go to the LNP Coalition, and Labor will be down one more seat.

Will his friend Julie Bishop push for a position for him in the UN? She once said that the Coalition would have a job for Kevin when they took power again. But that might be reckoning without one Tony Abbott, who's shown himself to be spiteful and vindictive in victory.

Vale, Kevin.

[dotymed]

1. Maybe the NSA has some unflattering information

that could destroy his family unit.
If so, that info. could also keep him silent about all Australian political shenanigans.

[ballaratocker]

2. As long as KRudd was there

the ALP would never be able to properly unite and his shadow would be cast over the parliamentary party.
The defining thing between him and Gillard was how they both went out:
1) Rudd: Nearly in tears both times and narcissistic as ever.
2) Gillard: A simple press conference, telling her colleagues that sometimes shit happens and then barely ever letting out a peep.
I was elated when he finally knocked off Howard in 2007. I just couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief as he stood on that podium on election night, looking like the cat who got the cream as he doled out the spoils of defeat for all to appreciate. I wonder if he ever asked himself whether or not it was all worth it. Did he ponder on whether his white anting and eventual toppling of Gillard was worth taking down the government that he himself had created.

[Matilda]

3. Did Gillard ever ask herself the same question?

I don't believe a PM should be toppled for anything other than a civil crime.

It's simply bad politics, and we've all seen the fallout that ensues.

Although if someone wanted to knock off Abbott, I'd understand.

[ballaratocker]

4. That whether this was all worth it?

It probably would have been worth it had Rudd not relentlessly white anted her until she was unelectable. Remember, up until the leaks about paid parental leave and aged pensions, the ALP was up 45/55 on the two party preferred.
I think Nicola Roxon got it about right: 'Removing Kevin was an act of political bastardry, for sure, but this act of political bastardry was made possible only because Kevin had been such a bastard himself to too many people already.'

[Matilda]

5. Both have major flaws.

Rudd's huge mistake was in not calling a double dissolution election over the ETS; an election he would have won. He simply lacked the courage to see it through, and it was his undoing.

And issues like paid parental leave and aged pensions were a foreshadowing of Gillard's later forcing single parents on to Newstart and cutting funding for unversities - she lacks empathy and vision. Her tragedy was that our first female prime minister came to office through knifing her leader - one of many bad political judgment calls she made in her career.

Jonathon Green has summed it up very well today in The Drum:

"For the truth of it is that between Rudd and Gillard the party had two halves of the best post-Howard prime minister we would never see. They were complementary opposites, two incomplete and irreconcilable portions of what might have made a formidable whole if only circumstance, ambition and animus could have been put to one side.

As it was, both would spiral through the years after the 2010 coup in an unbreakable death grip that ultimately would do for both of them."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-14/green-rudds-sometimes-soaring-but-ultimately-failed-career/5090734