ideas: on government

K-Dudd: The heartless wonder

Kevin Rudd gets far too much credit.

Those who say he is being dragged to the Right – that he takes a more cautious, more conservative approach to appeal to John Howard’s battlers – discount the increasingly obvious reality Rudd is already there.

Howard-lite, he was dubbed during the election. If anything it’s a fairly flawless reproduction. At least Howard had conviction – Rudd just has robotic rhetoric.

This is not an act. Rudd is typecast as the Australian PM we know and apparently love – mean, tricky and out-of-touch.

This Prime Minister told us he would help save the world by reducing our carbon emissions, yet takes to global climate change talks laughably weak targets and rich trading permit exemptions for the biggest polluters. And can’t even get that legislated.

This Prime Minister promised a revolution in education that has delivered little more than laptops and playground equipment rather than the serious investment in state education and radical realignment in school curriculum and study pathways needed.

This Prime Minister vowed to end the blame game in health funding, yet hundreds of millions of dollars still disappear down the black hole of bureaucratic overlap as emergency rooms struggle to cope with the daily intake. If there’s been any improvement in health outcomes it’s hard to see where.

This Prime Minister emotionally apologised to a generation of stolen aboriginal children while giving hope to the next. Yet indigenous disadvantage remains devastating and the health and education outcomes for black children are a national disgrace at least on par with the discrimination and neglect of governments past.

This Prime Minister pledged to rebuild Australia with his pork-free infrastructure plan, which has barely topped up Howard’s kitty and failed to invest in the really necessary public transport networks for our congested, car-dependent, disastrously planned sprawling cities.

And so we come to the refugee debate, the true test of a leader’s humanitarian chops. What a sniveling, miserable failure this Prime Minister has been.

What a cold-hearted coward Kevin Rudd has shown himself as.

Why do we reject the huddled masses?

They part with their life savings and crowd on leaky boats to escape unimaginable horror. They come in greater numbers not through domestic policy failure but as economic collapse and bloody war devastates more of the developed world. From the state-sanctioned brutality of Burma, or caught in the still simmering civil wars in Sri Lanka. They come from Afghanistan and Iraq, wars Australian troops participate in.

They set sail for Australia – the tired, the poor; these huddled masses yearning to breathe free – only to face further persecution if they get anywhere near our shores. We lock them up if they’re lucky enough to make the trip, or wipe our hands of them entirely if they fall short.

Presumably Rudd is aware of the barbaric conditions asylum-seekers face in Indonesian facilities; The Australian painted a particularly dismal picture over the weekend. Certainly the 78 Sri Lankans holed up aboard an Australian customs ship are aware of what they face – they’re smart enough not to get off.

Union leader Paul Howes has called on Rudd to show compassion on the issue: “He’s still the most popular Prime Minister ever I think he could change the debate,” he said.

He could. Just like he could have demonstrated real leadership on so many other debates; climate change, education, health, infrastructure, aboriginal living standards, same-sex partner rights… He chose not to.

To say Rudd has squandered the opportunity – with unprecedented public approval ratings and at least 12 months out from an election – is to let him off the hook. To say he turns his back on people in desperate need in search of political approval is almost flattering.

The real charge is much uglier: Rudd just doesn’t care enough; more ‘tough love’ Liberal than sympathetic liberal.

Fair-minded Australians voted for this Prime Minister more in hope than anything. The poll numbers are, to borrow a term Rudd levels at alternative refugee policy, soft. They show approval for the rhetoric, not the reality. Kevin Rudd is a shell of the politician his supporters wish he was or think he is.

No vision. No conviction. No heart.

No hope.

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• How Bartlet made me an idealist
• A symbolic step means so much
• The Right does love you. Mostly

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