Rudd’s Way: November 2007 – June 2010, by Nicholas Stuart

Nicholas Stuart’s third book on Kevin Rudd and his Labor Government between 2007 and 2010 has much valuable detail, interesting insights and nuanced political analysis. However, it is somewhat marred by its bitchy tone and obvious loathing of its subject.

Nicholas Stuart has now written three books concerning Kevin Rudd, prompting one to think that the Canberra Times columnist and former ABC journalist is a bit obsessed with his subject. The first book was an early biography of Kevin Rudd, before he became prime minister. It was Stuart who early on wrote about Rudd’s volatile dark side. Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Political Biography did what seemed a fair and balanced portrait of Rudd, painting a picture of the then Labor leader as both flawed and idealistic. His second book on Rudd, What Goes Up…Behind the 2007 Election I have not read, but as the title says, it deals with the 2007 election.

In the introduction to Rudd’s Way, the third book in Stuart’s Rudd trilogy, the author comments that most of the manuscript had been completed when the shock change of leadership happened in 2010. Stuart writes in the introduction that those dramatic events did not cause him to revise his manuscript in anyway. In essence, the highly critical approach that is taken in Rudd’s Way was in no way influenced by Rudd’s sudden end.

Rudd’s Way is ostensibly a review of the Labor government from 2007-2010, but in effect it’s a damning critique of the personality, management style and abilities of Kevin Rudd. As Rudd apportioned power and key decision making to himself, dispensing with government by consensus or consultation, he slowly sealed his own demise. The autocratic Rudd burnt every bridge possible, until everything collapsed. (Remember how Rudd even refused to speak to Bob Brown in order to negotiate a compromise on the Emissions Trading Scheme.)

In just about every area, Rudd is portrayed as a control freak addicted to useless busy work. He nominated climate change as the biggest moral challenge of the twenty-first century, then dumped his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) when things got to hard. Worse still, barely anyone in his own party could stand him, and when his support in the polls collapsed, he could find no support in his own party. The bright star that dazzled the Australian electorate for close to three years suddenly fizzled out.

Stuart ranges over many policy areas, such as Aboriginal welfare, the pink bats scheme, the response to climate change, economic stimulus in response the financial crisis and foreign policy, but doesn’t have anything positive to say at all about Rudd's government. That’s fair enough as there is much evidence presented here to support such a view, and Stuart does have a sharp and nuanced mind, but there is a bitchy note that creeps into his writing that can overwhelm things. You sometimes wish he would pull back a bit and let the facts simply speak for themselves. It makes you wonder whether you’re reading a personal vendetta, or a reasoned political critique.

For example, when trying to explain Rudd’s approach to politics, he speculates that he may have been influenced by his study of China.

“The so-called Middle Kingdom has never been genuinely democratic. Its size has always made it easier for the rulers in the centre to issue policy edicts and expect them to be obeyed throughout the country. Persuasion had rarely been a valued skill. Rudd attempted to impose a similar political style in Australia.”

This is going too far, but that aside, there are many interesting insights that Stuart brings to the story of Kevin Rudd’s leadership. He paints a picture of a hollow man doomed to be eventually exposed. It took the Australian public barely three years to figure this out, and the man who had enjoyed the highest approval ratings since polling began eventually found himself about as useful as yesterday’s newspaper.

Stuart makes an interesting explanation as to why the whole Rudd phenomenon happened. In essence he suggests that politics and a celebrity obsessed media have gone hand in hand to create leaders who more resemble TV stars (a criticism made by former Rudd Minister Lindsay Tanner in his book, Sideshow). Television and politics have become muddled in the voters’ minds. We have forgotten that we elect local members to represent us in parliament, and that they don’t just turn up as annoying entities to be loathed on television or the Internet.

Rudd’s Way: November 2007 – June 2010, by Nicholas Stuart. Published by Scribe Publications. ISBN: 978-1-921640-57-5