Kevin Rudd

• Born: 21 September 1957
• Place of Birth: Nambour, Australia

As the leader of the Australian Labor Party, Kevin Rudd became prime minister of Australia in December 2007. His party's landslide victory in the 2007 Australian national election brought an end to the government of conservative Liberal Party politician John Howard. Before becoming a politician, Rudd spent several years working as a foreign diplomat. He also served as the director general of the Queensland state cabinet office and worked in private industry as a consultant for Australian businesses with ties to China. Rudd had a reputation for being a formidable intellectual and an expert on complex foreign policy, particularly Australia-China relations. He served as prime minister until June 2010 and again from June to September 2013. Rudd subsequently worked in international policy organizations and later was posted to the United States as ambassador in 2023.

Background

Kevin Michael Rudd was born in the town of Nambour, Queensland, on September 21, 1957. His father, Bert Rudd, was a dairy farmer, and his mother, Margaret, was a nurse. Rudd has two older brothers, Malcolm and Greg, and an older sister, Loree.

When Rudd's father died in 1969, when Rudd was eleven, the family was forced to leave the farm. Rudd, who had been attending the Eumundi Primary School, then spent two years at the Marist Brothers College, a boarding school in Ashgrove, Brisbane. He returned to his hometown to attend Nambour State High School. There he was active in a student theater group and graduated at the top of his class. Rudd joined the Australian Labor Party in 1972, at the age of fifteen.

Interested in Chinese culture since he was a young child, Rudd enrolled at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra to pursue a bachelor's degree in Asian studies. He graduated with first-class honors in 1981.

Diplomatic Career

After graduating from ANU, Rudd joined the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and became a cadet diplomat. Initially, Rudd was posted to the Australian embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, where he served as third secretary. Because of his fluency in Mandarin Chinese and his knowledge of Asian culture, Rudd was posted to Beijing, where he served as first secretary.

Rudd's career as a diplomat was a successful one. Over the course of his time at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he was first promoted to counselor and then admitted to the Senior Executive Service.

In 1988, Rudd returned to Australia to accept a position as chief of staff for the Honorable Wayne Goss, an Opposition party leader in Queensland. The following year Goss helped his party win its first election since 1956, making him premier.

Public Service and the Private Sector

In 1992, Rudd was appointed director general of the state cabinet office under Goss, a post he held until 1995. In this capacity, he ran the entire bureaucratic engine of Queensland's government, and his direct, no-nonsense approach—which manifested itself in numerous cuts and restructures of the department—earned him the nickname Dr. Death. Among Rudd's policy interests during this time was the development of a nationwide school language program. He was the chair of the National Asian Language and Studies Strategy Committee. Rudd was also an advocate for better training in the workforce.

In 1996, Rudd made his first attempt at politics when he campaigned for the Brisbane seat of Griffith in the House of Representatives as a Labor Party candidate. He lost to the Liberal candidate, Graeme McDougall.

After Rudd's defeat, he left public service in favor of the private sector, where he became a senior consultant for accounting firm KPMG Australia. Once again, Rudd made use of his expertise in Asian affairs, helping the firm's clients negotiate business opportunities in both China and Taiwan. At the same time, he was appointed adjunct professor in the Asian Studies and Languages Department at Queensland University.

Parliament

In 1998, Rudd made another bid for the same Parliament seat he ran for in the 1996 elections. This time, he won. Rudd was re-elected twice, in 2001 and 2004. During his parliamentary career, Rudd also became more important figure in the Australian Labor Party. He was a member of the party's Policy Committee on Economic Development and Living Standards, the chair of the Policy Committee on National Security and Trade, and served on various other parliamentary task forces.

In 2001, Rudd was appointed shadow minister for foreign affairs (shadow ministers provide a political counterpoint to the party in power) in the government of John Howard. He also became the Opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs, a position that saw him criticizing the way Howard was handling the Iraq War. Still, Rudd's responsibilities in government only increased. In 2003 he took on the role of shadow minister for international security and, in 2005, the role of shadow minister for trade as well.

By 2006, Rudd had proven himself a competent politician who was seen by the public as representing integrity and strong moral values (he is chair of the party's Caucus Committee on Faith, Values and Politics). On December 4, 2006, Rudd was chosen to become the party's leader, replacing Kim Beazley.

The Road to Prime Minister

After becoming the leader of the Australian Labor Party, Rudd began an energetic campaign for the November 2007 elections. Because he could not raise enough votes to win the Labor Party's backing in the prime ministerial elections, Rudd joined forces with fellow party member Julia Gillard, who later became his deputy prime minister. Rudd's campaign platform included a wide range of policy reforms that he vowed would bring fairness, openness, and change to the national government. Among the issues Rudd emphasized most during the campaign were climate change (he promised to pledge the country's support for the Kyoto Protocol), health care, and education. Rudd also said that he would quickly withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, something the incumbent Howard, a firm ally of US president George W. Bush, had been unwilling to do.

In November 2007, Rudd was elected in a landslide win and was sworn in on December 3, 2007. He became the country's twenty-sixth prime minister and only the second Queenslander (after Andrew Fisher a century before) to lead the ALP to a federal victory.

The Rudd Government

In his early months as prime minister, Rudd made a point of following through on a number of campaign promises. One of his first acts, undertaken on February 13, 2008, was to issue an official public apology to Aboriginal Australians for the suffering they experienced as a result of discriminatory laws and policies implemented under previous administrations. He also canceled a scheduled parliamentary pay raise, a symbolic gesture that was intended to demonstrate the government's commitment to a national policy of combating inflation through “wage restraint.” Rudd continued to work on Asia-Pacific regional solutions to security, economic, and environmental issues. He met with visiting Chinese general Guo Boxiong in May 2010. The two officials discussed improving already friendly bilateral relations between Australia and China.

In June 2010, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard unexpectedly challenged Rudd for the leadership of the Labor Party. Rudd's approval ratings had plummeted nationwide. According to polls, the Australians disapproved of the way his government was steering the economy through the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008. In addition, many of Rudd's critics had become widely outspoken about continual delays in the creation of new carbon reduction policies. Although Rudd contested the immediate party leadership election proposed by Gillard, the vote took place nonetheless. After realizing he had lost the support of most of the Labor Party, Rudd stepped down as prime minister on June 24, 2010, and was succeeded by Julia Gillard. Rudd's resignation was the first resignation of a Labor Party prime minister to occur before completing a first term in office. Rudd later gave an interview for the documentary The Killing Season, which covered the political events of that period.

In September 2010, Rudd became minister for foreign affairs under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. In that role, he became known for his frequent travel abroad.

Rudd returned to the party leadership in 2013 and was made prime minister that June. His second stint lasted only a few months, however, as Labor lost the September election. Rudd left Parliament two months later.

Life after Politics

In 2014, Rudd accepted a senior fellowship at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Massachusetts. That same year, he established the National Apology Foundation to improve the quality of life of Aboriginal Australians. In 2015, he became the founding president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, where he worked for the next eight years. During that time, Rudd also earned a doctorate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies in the United Kingdom in 2022. Late that year, Australian Labor Party prime minister Anthony Albanese appointed Rudd ambassador to the United States, and Rudd's ambassadorship began the following March.

Rudd has also served as a distinguished visiting fellow at the think tank Chatham House, a distinguished fellow at the Paulson Institute, and an external adviser to the International Monetary Fund's managing director; chaired the Independent Commission on Multilateralism and the International Peace Institute; and participated in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Preparatory Commission's Group of Eminent Persons. He was named a distinguished, nonresident statesman to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in June 2019 in recognition of his racial justice, economic, and international policy work.

In the years since leaving office, Rudd wrote the memoirs Not for the Faint-hearted (2010) and The PM Years (2018), as well as a number of political treatises, including The Avoidable War: Reflections on U.S.-China Relations and the End of Strategic Engagement (2018), The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition (2019), The Case for Courage (2021), and On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World (2024). Additionally, Rudd publishes regularly in major world news organizations on subjects relating to his areas of expertise.

Personal Life

Rudd married another ANU student, Thérèse Rein, in 1981. They have three children—Jessica, Nicholas, and Marcus—and several grandchildren. Rein became a successful businessperson. The family attended an Anglican church, and Rudd, who participated in a parliamentary prayer group, often discussed his staunch religious views with the press.

Bibliography

“Former Australian Leader Kevin Rudd Appointed US Ambassador.” AP News, 20 Dec. 2022, apnews.com/article/politics-australia-kevin-rudd-88b72ab9f0df1e538b47ce2d3b3cfaf0. Accessed 4 June 2024.

“Kevin Rudd.” Australia's Prime Ministers, National Archives of Australia, Commonwealth of Australia, www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers/kevin-rudd. Accessed 4 June 2024.

“Kevin Rudd.” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 28 June 2023, www.belfercenter.org/person/kevin-rudd. Accessed 4 June 2024.

‌“Paulson Institute Welcomes Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as Its First Distinguished Fellow.” Paulson Institute, 11 Sept. 2014, www.paulsoninstitute.org/press‗release/paulson-institute-welcomes-former-australian-prime-minister-kevin-rudd-as-its-first-distinguished-fellow/. Accessed 4 June 2024.

Symons, Emma-Kate. “Kevin Rudd's New York and Life after Politics.” GQ Australia, 8 Oct. 2015, www.gq.com.au/success/opinions/kevin-rudds-new-york-and-life-after-politics/news-story/231984ffc00f7d92175aadf800f585ea. Accessed 4 June 2024.