Former prime minister Kevin Rudd says he made the wrong decision when he shelved the Government’s emissions trading scheme last year.
Mr Rudd’s decision badly damaged his popularity and Labor MPs dumped him as prime minister within months.
Last night Mr Rudd told ABC TV’s Q&A program that the Government could not force the scheme through the Senate and said some members of his cabinet wanted to abandon it for good.
He said he decided to wait until the Senate became less hostile after the next election, but that was a big mistake.
“We tried twice, they voted it down. But it was a wrong call, for which I uniquely am responsible,” he said.
Mr Rudd delayed the scheme until 2013 despite calling climate change the “greatest moral challenge of our time”.
“The judgment I made then was wrong,” he said. “You make mistakes in public life. That was a big one – I made it.”
Mr Rudd said he faced the difficulty of placating party colleagues who wanted to “kill the ETS” completely.
“You had some folk who wanted to get rid of it altogether, that is kill the ETS as a future proposition for the country. I couldn’t abide that,” he said.
“There were others that said we should stick to the existing timetable, apart from the fact that the Senate couldn’t deliver it.
“I tried to find a way up the middle of all that, preserve the unity of the Government.
“On balance it was the wrong call. We should have simply tried to sail straight ahead.”
Mr Rudd was then asked why he had not explained Labor’s internal debate to Australians at the time, having chosen to instead blame opposition senators.
“Guess what? Political leaders are not perfect,” Mr Rudd answered.
“I take responsibility for communicating the Government’s message. But no one gets it right every time, and I did not.”
Support for the Government dropped sharply after Mr Rudd announced he would delay the scheme.
Mr Rudd lost his leadership on the back of the issue, as did then-Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.
Deputy Opposition leader Julie Bishop told Q&A that Mr Rudd’s mistake had been to trust Ms Gillard, who was his deputy at the time.
Leaked Cabinet documents have suggested it was Ms Gillard, along with Treasurer Wayne Swan …
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Carbon plans take toll on Labor: Newspoll
* Dennis Shanahan, Political editor
* From: The Australian
* April 05, 2011 12:00AM
SUPPORT for Labor has crashed again, collapsing to an eight-year, two-party-preferred low as Julia Gillard fights the Greens on “traditional values” and sticks by a carbon tax.
The latest Newspoll reveals backing for Tony Abbott and the Coalition has risen in the past fortnight, with the Opposition Leader making up ground to again trail Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister by only nine points.
During the past two weeks – as NSW Labor was wiped out at the state election and the Prime Minister targeted Greens’ policies as extremist – federal Labor’s primary vote fell from 36 per cent to 32 per cent and the Coalition’s rose from 40 per cent to 45 per cent.
The Greens’ support fell back to its 2010 election level of 12 per cent two weeks ago. The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian last weekend, reveals it has not shifted, despite the Greens picking up their first NSW lower house seat in the state election.
Based on preference flows at the last federal election, the Coalition has a 10-point lead over Labor on a two-party-preferred basis of 55 to 45 per cent. This is the Coalition’s biggest lead after preferences and Labor’s lowest two-party-preferred vote since April 2003, when Kim Beazley declared he wanted to take the Labor leadership because Simon Crean was not making any impact on the Howard government in the polls.
Labor’s plunge in the latest Newspoll comes as former prime minister Kevin Rudd last night admitted he made the wrong call when he decided to shelve the federal government’s emissions trading scheme last year – a move that ultimately led to his demise as Labor leader.
