“Those Chinese fuckers are trying to rat-fuck us,” declared Kevin Rudd.
As snow fell on Copenhagen – on its palaces and squats, on police and their dogs, on protesters rugged up against the fierce cold and on the big, bland Bella Center where the largest gathering of world leaders in history sulked and plotted – the prime minister of Australia faced the collapse of old dreams.
This was the little boy fascinated by China, the kid who longed to be a diplomat, the man who believed a better world might be built through international agreement, and a prime minister struggling to meet “one of the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenges of our age.”
Life had brought him, inevitably it seemed, to this icy Scandinavian city a fews days before Christmas 2009 and he blamed the Chinese for wrecking it all.
The Copenhagen that mattered began on 17 December and lasted forty hours. Rudd slept for one of them. He wasn’t shy. He relished working with the big boys, Almost to the very end he was a player in the meetings that mattered …
Australians with sharp ears might have picked the trademark boast that Rudd had done his homework: “If you examine, as I have done, the 102 square bracketed areas of disagreement that lie in the existing text before us …”
After Queen Margrethe’s state dinner at the Christiansborg Palace – Rudd so monopolosed Princess Mary’s attentions that the British prime minister on the other wide was left staring at his plate – he joined Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Brown and another twenty world leaders in free-wheeling and futile efforts to find agreement.
At 3am they left the haggling to their environment ministers. By this time delegates were sleeping on sofas all over the Bella Center. Rudd had an hour’s kip in an armchair, all he felt he needed to keep going …
Tired and exasperated, surrounded by a knot of Australian officials and press, Rudd began to rage gainst the Chinese. He needed sleep. His anger was real, but his languge seemed forced, deliberately foul. In this mood, he’d been talking about countries “rat-fucking” each other for days. Was a deal still possible, asked one of the Australians. “Depends whether those rat-fucking Chinese want to fuck us.” …
His efforts at Copenhagen are Rudd’s answer to those who accuse him of being a bureaucrat at heart, an incrementalist, a leader unable to dream. He sees Copenhagen as proof that he’s willing to go out on a limb, spend political capital and court trouble at home for a great cause. And Rudd insists Copenhagen was not a failure. He is one of an unusual species: the diplomat turned leader …
Thus begins David Marr’s Power Trip, The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd, in Quarterly Essay, www.quarterlyessay.com .
It’s the best Quarterly read since Robyn Davidson’s No Fixed Address – Nomads and the Fate of the Planet in the opine of this humble reviewer; and no wonder Phillip Adams couldn’t find a copy in any bookshop when he interviewed Marr on Late Night Live earlier this week.
For Power Trip is required reading.
It is a wonderfully concise, crisp, archetypal Marr analysis of the PM, from the idyllic days of the farm before the sudden death of dad, the casting into troubled waters as the farm idyll is left behind; of sometimes sleeping in the car with a heroic mum, a sometimes brutal Catholic boarding school, the influence of the once-hard-drinking print journo Bob Callander (fascinating aside, Kerry O’Brien, 7.30 Report, was a Callander protege); the foundations for the driven man.
Power Trip is the perfect primer for this year’s federal poll. Don’t miss it, if you can get it.
And just as this was going to press, into the postbox came another Rudd primer, Rise of the Ruddbot, observations from the Gallery by the ever witty
Annabel Crabb,
quoting from the blurb:
“From Howard’s dramatic departure to Rudd’s relentless march to power, the last (I think that should be past) few years have been momentous ones in Australian politics. In Rise of the Ruddbot, Australia’s funniest, most incisive political commentator chronicles these strange and turbulent times.
“Featuring Tony ‘People Skills’ Abbott, Julia ‘La Gillardine’ Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull, Penny Wong, Godwin Grech, Barnaby Joyce and more, this is the perfect companion for an election year.”
And, here’s a Crabb quote:
“Opposition leaders are like miniature piglets. They look so sweet in the shop, don’t they? With their whiffling little pink noses and their eagerness to please; with their intelligent eyes and their loving natures and the sales assistant’s guarantee that they are fastidiously clean and moreover, will fetch the paper every morning – what’s not to love?
“It is only much later on, well after the election’s won and the warranty’s expired, that you wake up and realise, with a dull sense of unsurprise, that you’ve got a six-foot grunter digging up your backyard.”
And there’s more:
Have a look at Paul Barry’s article on,
Brian Burke,
Life of Brian, in the latest issue of The Monthly. With its million parallels to our state, it could be a parable about Tas inc.
When it comes to Brian Burke, I can’t get past that panama hat. What sort of person wears headgear like that to face corruption charges? Surely only someone who has tickets on himself, who thinks he’s special and who wants to show he doesn’t care how the world judges him. But, of course, Western Australia’s most famous ex-premier does care, and deeply so. That’s why he broke down in tears when the latest criminal case against him was thrown out of court in Perth last month, and why he tried his best to convince me before the trial that he was not only innocent but the victim of a witch-hunt.
