Macklin on Rudd

Broadcast: 06/07/2007

Reporter: Philip Williams

Robert Macklin had his doubts about Kevin Rudd as he started his research into a man whose life has been shaped by bad and very good luck. Some of it right here in Canberra. After talking to the extended Rudd family, Robert Macklin has changed his mind. What hasn't changed is the Kevin Rudd as captured by his family over five decades.

KEVIN RUDD: My name's Kevin, I'm from Queensland, I'm here to help.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: What is it about him that suddenly propels him to the forefront of Australian politics and a potential prime minister, do you think?

ROBERT MACKLIN: You know I think the answer to that can be found in his life story. I suspect it goes all the way back to the time when he lost his dad in that car accident and then for the next two years was just flung from pillar to post in what he called the bleak charity of the times finishing up in that dreadful situation where he and his mum and his sister spent a couple of nights actually having to sleep in the car.

And I think that in a way Kevin Rudd is still running from that dreadful experience, you know, that sense of anxiety that the nightmare can create in a young kid.

I think that he decided at a certain time, it was about when he was 15, he actually made a decision that he would make a change in his life so that that sort of thing would never ever happen again.

He turned to education for that and it was education that propelled him to the next step and then the next step until finally you've got a person who is running to be prime minister.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: You've got though a person who has been through what many would regard as a severe experience and yet he's not radicalised, he's not on the fringes, he's not to the far left. He's very much in the centre of Australian politics, a very cautious person.

ROBERT MACKLIN: I honestly think that goes back to his family. His dad was a Country Party man. They were living in a very conservative area, Nambour, which I call the very buckle of the Bible belt of Queensland.

And he had a very supportive mum and sister and elder brother... two elder brothers. And he also seems to have had some inner resources that have allowed him to make the best of a situation rather than to drop his bundle.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Christianity too is at the core of his being and yet he doesn't come across as evangelising at all.

ROBERT MACKLIN: No, he doesn't. He has a sense that religion provides for him a moral compass. He actually believes that. I don't believe it. I think...


ROBERT MACKLIN: No, I don't. I think that his moral compass comes like it does for all of us, learned at our mother's knee.

KEVIN RUDD: I have an interest in sport, I've got an interest in reading, in music, in politics. I'm all those things.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: There was a moment in '96 where he decided he was going to enter the big arena. How big a decision was that for him and also for his partner Therese?

ROBERT MACKLIN: It was a big, big decision for him but what really surprised me was when I got to talk to Therese. It was then that I put to her what was your reaction when he said to you "We're going to have to change our lives if I run for parliament and I'd like to do it?"

And when I put that to her there was a silence and she began to cry, just a tear escaped, and I wondered what nerve I'd touched. And she leaned forward and she said, "Robert, I had been waiting for him to say that almost the moment we met."

It pangs a kind of relief and I said to him I will support you every inch of the way because you have supported me in all the time we've been together.

And she said that she knew that he had something very special to give and that was the reason she wanted him to take that step.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: He started his studies here and was in residence at Burkman College at ANU and that changed his life.

ROBERT MACKLIN: He met Therese there the very first time he went down for breakfast and it was something that she said to him that stuck in his mind.

She said something like "Do you know I don't think I've ever met a Kevin before" and here's this private school lady. I think he took that instantly as a challenge. He felt that she was putting him down slightly and maybe she was.

But they quickly formed a very close friendship and when Kevin went away to Taiwan for a year prior to doing his honours year, she stayed in the public service here and they corresponded and by the time he came back they had pretty much decided that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: And then a diplomatic career.

ROBERT MACKLIN: Almost immediately he was seen as the star, a riser star in the department.

I found it quite amusing that at the same time Alexander Downer was a young diplomat and he was not seen as a star at all and that had a very interesting little addendum to it later in life because when he missed out on that 1996 election, that first time he stood for Griffith in Queensland, he thought he might go back to foreign affairs in Brisbane.

But just at that moment, Alexander Downer was appointed Foreign Minister.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: I Alexander John Goss Downer truly swear that I will serve the people of Australia in the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs.

ROBERT MACKLIN: Kevin knew because of the rivalry that had been there that there was no way known he'd give a tick to that. So instead of continuing a diplomatic career, he went back to politics.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Is it too long a bow to draw then that perhaps that action back in '96 precipitated the man that could potentially undo Alexander Downer's Government?

ROBERT MACKLIN: Yes, and wouldn't that be an interesting irony.

He's very at home with himself. He's got a decency and an honesty that I think we desperately need in politics.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: And yet some people have said in past that he's displayed arrogance.

ROBERT MACKLIN: Oh, he has, oh, he has. In Queensland in his 30s, he was an arrogant character. I've got no doubt about that whatsoever.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Has it changed?

ROBERT MACKLIN: Yes, it has changed and I think the reason it's changed is the real kick in the backside he got when he stood first for the seat of Griffith in '96 and the electors said no and it gave him such... it knocked the stuffing out of him but I actually think it was the making of him. It gave him a sense of humility that was lacking before.

KEVIN RUDD: One of the factors which I had to consider was adding political weight, political firepower to Queensland's political presence in Canberra.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: What would you say to critics that might argue because of your interviews with the family, you've been captured?

ROBERT MACKLIN: Oh, I'd say they're probably right. I'd say they're probably right. I came into the project very unconvinced. I actually saw Kevin Rudd as being a bit of a light weight. It wasn't until I was exposed to his background and to his vision for the country and to his personality and to that of his fascinating family, that I could see that there was real depth there.

I'm unapologetic in saying that I would happily entrust my country to that man as prime minister.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: I've always thought he looked like John Denver myself. Robert Macklin's book is called Kevin Rudd, The Biography. The other biography getting good reviews is Kevin Rudd, An Unauthorised Political Biography by Canberra writer and former ABC journalist, Nicholas Stuart.