Rudd's pitch: Gillard cannot beat Abbott
Kevin Rudd says he will make an announcment about leadership when he returns home, while giving away a few valuable hints.
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It was the most audacious stealth attack in modern Australian political history.
At 1.20am in Washington, Kevin Rudd declared open war on Julia Gillard.
Gillard could hardly have imagined that Rudd would strike so dramatically from such a distance. Even Paul Keating went to Bob Hawke's Canberra office during waking hours to throw his grenade all those years ago.
Kevin Rudd resigns in an early morning press conference for the US. Photo: Supplied
Rudd's timing was chosen with smart-bomb precision: 1.20am in Washington was 5.20pm in Canberra. Just in time for TV reporters to prepare their nightly news packages; not enough time for the Prime Minister's office to assemble a coherent response. In fact, Gillard's response took three hours.
The whole story would be Rudd's decisive action at a time when the Prime Minister was pretending there was no need to do anything. It was shock and awe. Rudd chose every word of his declaration with laser-like accuracy. No questions were allowed, lest they threw off his aim. Plain speaking, he called it.
He painted his decision to resign as foreign minister as the only possible course for an honourable man saddened at being let down grievously by his prime minister while he was serving the nation internationally.
With the Labor caucus preparing to gather in Canberra as Parliament resumed next week, time was running out for Rudd. He had to turn on its head Gillard's claim that she held the position of strength, make a nonsense out of her statement that the business of government would go on as normal and puncture the idea that he was disloyal. Thus, it was not he who had been acting furtively, even though everyone suspected him of doing just that for 18 months.
Why, that honour went to Gillard and her ''faceless men'' when, in mid-2010, they had launched ''a stealth attack on a sitting prime minister who was elected by the people''.
In short, in the Washington declaration, it was Rudd who had been undermined in the first place, something that should never happen again.
The current situation was nothing more than a soap opera, he said dismissively, as if he had not been the producer, director and central star.
No. He wouldn't have anything to do with it. Subtext? Gillard was hoping, absurdly, that it would just go away.
And then, his real message.
Tony Abbott was going to win the next election if Gillard remained Prime Minister. Rudd knows this is the fear, largely unspoken, that has been consuming Labor MPs, particularly those in marginal seats, for many months. He spelt it out, knowing it was his big - perhaps only - real chance of melting Gillard's base and drawing significant numbers his way.
''There is one overriding question for my colleagues and that is, who is best placed to defeat Tony Abbott?'' he said, looking deep into the lens of the camera, knowing he was burrowing, long distance, into the psyche of frightened colleagues.
''Tony Abbott is on track to win and has been for a long time.''
Now Rudd was coming home to work out his next move. He was offering himself, clearly, as Labor's born-again saviour.
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