Opinion- 29 January 2008 |
Harry Robinson Asks for the Real Kevin Rudd to Stand Up |
Who
is living in The Lodge now? Harry Potter? A sinophile intellectual? A cold Dr
Death? Or just another politician?
Rule out the last for he is not just another anything. Dr Death was one of his
nicknames among the Queensland public service when he was reforming and reducing
same. The Undertaker was another. A sinologist he was and probably still is.
Harry Potter was one of the scornful names given him by the Coalition Government
when Mr Howard and colleagues first identified the threat.
They sensed that he had the potential to topple them but they had no inkling of
how to deal with him. They tried bullying at question time, tried to link him
with West Australia's notorious Brian Burke, tried to smirch him with the
scandal of a visit to a Manhattan strip club, tried to outbid him with election
spending promises -- they tried everything that a bunch of philistines would
think of: they never once attacked him on an intellectual plane.
Rudd, for his part, seemed to have read his opponents clearly. There is an aroma
of Zen about the way he held his fire while they destroyed themselves.
"Me-too-ism" chanted the shallow media observers. Still Rudd played a passive
role.
Has he been a Zen practitioner? Brisbane friends say they have never had
evidence of it, which leaves us the explanation that Kevin Rudd is a shrewd
assessor of character.
Google is well loaded with information on Mr Rudd, albeit you have to wade
through a flood of ALP propaganda. Try the Wikipedia bio and you get a fair
sketch of a man determined to succeed as an apparatchik -- chief of staff to
Queensland premier Wayne Goss, then director-general of the office of state
cabinet. This was bureaucratic power -- and how -- but he took advantage of his
position to push the teaching of Asian languages and widen awareness of our
northern neighbours. All this while shaking up the state bureaucracy.
It's impressive, but how much initiative came from Goss the boss, how much from
Kevin Rudd? We will never know. Friends say he was a mover and shaker but, while
they can't put a score-card to it, they do have two pieces of trivia which may
be significant. Early in his service to Goss, Rudd was inclined to be forever
po-faced and deadly serious. "You' have to learn to smile," said a friend in the
PR business. Breakfast TV viewers were among the first to see the Rudd smile.
Later, he referred to "Howard" and another adviser said, "Never refer to him
that way -- say Mister Howard." He took the point and stuck to Mister Howard
from that moment on. Formality and a smile became useful tools for the
knockabout rounds of the election campaign.
These two trivial wisps suggest that our man is willing to hear and heed good
advice. Do they also suggest that he was even then, while immersed in the
administration of a frontier state, aiming to become Prime Minister? Was his
career path plain destiny? The question goes begging.
Many questions go begging. Frinstance, how much of the Goss downfall could be
ascribed to Rudd? The Goss government fell in 1995 because it failed to read
public anger over freeway proposals. Did Kevin warn Wayne? Was Kevin aware of
the electoral danger? If so, did he fail to warn Wayne? If he was not aware, why
not?
And anyway, what does all this prodding and poking at the Rudd persona matter?
It matters because Kevin Rudd is clearly the prime agenda-setter for his
government. (Sorry Julia, your turn may come later, much later.) Higher
education and scientific research sorely need to be high on the agenda and so
far they've scarcely received a tick. Very likely the PM is taking care of
business first, clearing up election promises, surveying budget realities,
setting up a true broadband network before telling the public that they need to
spend big time on pointy heads who speak in strange tongues.
As to the opening question about who is living in the Lodge, I prefer Harry
Potter, boy wizard. Magic might achieve wonderful things. The dry minds of
philistines never did.
Harry Robinson -- for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.