The Rudd factor

As the public mood changed on key issues, so did Rudd. Whether it was asylum seekers, his desire for a large population (I make no apologies for that), softer rules for foreigners buying Australian homes, or the ETS, the Rudd government changed on all such issues in line with the public mood. Rudd, inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who helped save some German Jews, was even prepared to have asylum seekers end up marooned in Indonesia, a nation which has not signed that UN convention.

While this behaviour is hardly surprising in a democracy where there is a crucial relationship between public opinion and policy (although not always), Rudd’s growing list of policy changes or backdowns left no doubt to the public that he was no different from other politicians.

In my view, he was worse. At least Howard had the honesty in 1995 to indicate a desire to take on militant trade unions and to encourage mutual obligation for social security recipients. Howard, prior to the 1996 federal election, also indicated that extra spending on the environment was dependent on the partial privatisation of Telstra.

Over time, the public was informed more about Rudd “the control freak”.

During April 2009, considerable publicity was given to a 23-year-old flight attendant driven to tears by Rudd shouting at her for serving him the wrong meal.

In June 2009, an article pointed to Rudd’s considerable bid to control the media. While Rudd initially vowed to slash numbers, it was noted that the Rudd Government “employs 40 communications staff in the Department of Agriculture, 30 in the Department of Innovation, 23 in the Department of the Environment and six in the PM’s office”.

David Gazard, former media adviser to Howard and political adviser to Peter Costello, stated that “Rudd is the most media-driven PM we’ve ever had”.

It is also noted that, although past governments also sought control, even press releases and media by CSIRO had to be first approved by the PM’s office (Greg Callaghan, Drew Warne-Smith, “Rise of Rudd’s sentinels of spin”, The Australian, June 6, 2009).

While Rudd cited the need for truth and change in his essays, these were just words. As evident in Rudd’s article “The Global Financial Crisis” (The Monthly, February 2009), Rudd blames so-called neo-liberalism as some kind of strategy “starving the beast, cutting taxes in order to strangle the capacity of the government to invest in education, health and economic infrastructure”.

Rudd goes on to suggest he is a social democrat committed to social justice within a belief that “all human beings have an intrinsic right to human dignity, equality of opportunity and the ability to lead a fulfilling life”.

The only trouble is that Rudd’s policies also added to these same trends. During his leadership, he cut income tax rates for individuals and the company tax rate from 30 to 28 per cent in 2010.

But that is the joke that was Rudd. He would rather distort the truth, on a par with a average undergraduate student (although left-wing academics loved it), than admit that major economic reforms since the early 1980s occurred because they were deemed by most major political parties around the world as being necessary.