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September 5th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says losing Labor’s leadership spill to Julia Gillard was not as crushing as the “searing experience” of failing in his first bid to become an MP.
Mr Rudd’s first crack at politics was in 1996, when he stood as a Labor candidate for the Brisbane seat of Griffith but lost to Liberal Graeme McDougall.
“I’d been on one of those career trajectories where … each stage had worked out OK and then you go bonk up against a brick wall,” he told Kitchen Cabinet’s Annabel Crabb.
Mr Rudd says his “determination” led him to pick himself up and again challenge for the seat at the next election. He beat Mr McDougall and has held Griffith ever since.
He says while it was a difficult learning curve, the experience helped him build up “scar tissue” that served him well when he was ousted from the top job in 2010.
“I think I’d become more philosophical or even theological about it all; life’s never even, it’s never smooth, it’s never perfectly predictable,” he said.
“But if that causes you to then retreat into a hole and say ‘don’t have a go again then’ it’s pointless.”
However, he has told Kitchen Cabinet that does not mean the events of 2010 were easy.
“It’s not gilding the lily to say it was a very hard time and those hours were very hard, not just on me but on Therese and the kids,” he said.
“We actually function as a family unit very closely … and we’re not just family, we are friends and so we look out for each other big time.
“Back then we were all affected by it because I think each person felt it was a whack at them as well.”
Mr Rudd says he tries not to look back at what he could have done differently to avoid the spill, which was underpinned by poor polling.
“I think the worst thing you can do in politics is pretend that you can go back with 20/20 hindsight and then pretend retrospectively you can have 360-degree radar,” he said.
“No one can do that, let’s just be honest about it.”
In the wake of his defeat, Mr Rudd kept on as an MP and in June this year, reclaimed his place at The Lodge.
He says his upbringing has a lot to do with the fact he never walked away from politics.
“My mother was a big influence on me and she was a phenomenally strong person. So her influence, I think, as I reflect back on it, would have been very simply one of pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get back into it,” he said.
Rudd ‘pretty relaxed’ about election
Mr Rudd, who describes himself as being “the patron saint of nerds”, joined the Labor Party at the age of 15 in 1972.
“I believe deeply in the values of the movement and that’s the product not of life experience or family history, because both my parents were probably conservative voters,” he said.
“[With my values] there could be no alternative to the Labor Party.
Life’s never even, it’s never smooth. It’s never perfectly predictable. But if that causes you to then retreat into a hole and say ‘don’t have a go again then’ it’s pointless.
“It’s the Labor Party that brought in things like the age pension, the Labor Party who pioneered the equality of women, it’s the Labor Party that’s been out there caring for the homeless since goodness knows when.”
He says he is “pretty relaxed” heading into Saturday’s election, which polls suggest will see his Government lose to Tony Abbott’s Coalition.
“You make a decision, you work out what you want to do and why and whether the reasons you put together in your head make sense and make some form of moral sense, ethical sense and then off you go,” he told Kitchen Cabinet, which was filmed on the day he diverted his attention from the election campaign to the crisis in Syria.
“You can’t judge whether everything’s going to succeed or not; in a democracy that’s the decision of all the folks watching your program.
“I’m pretty relaxed about that. I’ll say yes, they’ll say no, they’ll say I want Kevin or they want Tony.
“Fine, matter for them. My job is simply to take the argument up.”
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appeared on Kitchen Cabinet on Wednesday. Read the story here.
Topics:
federal-elections,
elections,
government-and-politics,
federal-government,
alp,
political-parties,
rudd-kevin,
australia,
qld,
brisbane-4000
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/rudd-says-scar-tissue-helped-him-in-wake-of-labor-spill/4939064
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