Mile-high meltdown
A fireside chat in the Oval Office. A visit to Number Ten. An audience at Buckingham Palace. And one of the biggest headline from Kevin Rudd's two-week trip abroad is a "mile-high meltdown" from when he tore into an air hostess on board his VIP flight to Papua New Guinea earlier in the year. The "hostie" could not provide him with a special non-red-meat meal, apparently, so he reportedly spat out the prime ministerial dummy and reduced her to tears.
At his post-summit press conference in London, Rudd apologised - as he did, apparently, at the conclusion of his flight from Port Moresby.
Given that part of the focus of the G20 was to curb executive excess, the incident seems particularly unfortunate. After all, his RAAF plane ("Kevin 1", anybody?) reportedly costs $A28,000 an hour to run.
But perhaps it also highlights two issues which might dent the stratospheric approval ratings which we were discussing earlier in the week. The first is his travel. The second is his temper.
Rudd's positive approval ratings don't exactly nosedive when he jets off abroad, but the "Kevin 747" tag is a piece of excess baggage which his image makers would be happy to lose.
Given the distances and logistics involved, it's inevitable that trips to the US and Europe will take him away for a significant amount of time. Many of these trips are also clearly essential if Australia is to continue punching above it weight on the diplomatic circuit. But many Australians do not see it that way.
Some no doubt feel that Rudd is too easily dazzled by the big lights of Washington and London - even though it's really the big brains of Washington and London that he seems to enjoy. Perhaps there is something of the tall poppy about it, as well. I've written before that people don't seem to mind him being a tall poppy at home, but are less sympathetic when he ventures abroad and becomes a peripatetic tall poppy.
Perhaps there's a nagging sense that he sometimes seems more energised by his job when he is outside of Australia rather than within it - the feeling that Australia is not really big enough to accommodate his talent. Your comments please.
As for the mile-high meltdown? We all have tempers, but his is particularly interesting because it stands at odds with the public geniality which he tries to project, and which partly explained his political rise (those chummy, regular early morning appearances on Channel Seven's Sunrise programme were vital in showing that he could appeal to middle Australia). A while back, a Labor insider described to me a meeting with the Prime Minister at which he erupted into a "child-like tanty" [a tantrum] when someone crossed him. The episode speaks of a politician who has always found it easier to command respect for his intellectual prowess rather than attract genuine affection.
Wayne Goss, the former state premier of Queensland and Rudd's former boss, had this to say of him: "Kevin has worked hard at becoming normal. He's come close but I don't think he'll ever quite get there. But I don't think you want a Prime Minister to be normal, do you?" Over to you on that one.
On the travel front, it is perhaps worth remembering that Robert Menzies, that arch Anglophile, spent a considerable amount of time in London during the first two years of the war, and wrote in his diary on his return in April 1941: "A sick feeling of repugnance and apprehension grows in me as I near Australia." He went on, of course, to be the country's longest serving prime minister.
UPDATES: For those who prefer reportage to blogs, we've just paid a visit to the towns of
We've also been to the Northern Territory to report on the row over .
Thanks, as ever, for your comments. To Wollemi who suggested that I had underestimated Hawkie's legislative accomplishments by overlooking ATSIC and Medicare, I'd suggest that both were extensions of reforms instigated by Gough Whitlam, who created Medibank and the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee and the National Aboriginal Conference.
For those who think that I mischaracterized Queensland by calling it "arguably Australia's most conservative state", I offer this assessment: Queensland is "a state which could never make up its mind whether it wanted to be California or Louisiana....The home of innovation or the bastion of reaction". It comes from Australia's most famous Queenslander, one Kevin Michael Rudd.
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