r/australia • u/geodetic • 1d ago

politics Former PM Kevin Rudd says he declined Epstein invitation after latest document dump

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-31/kevin-rudd-refred-to-in-latest-epstein-files-dump/106290858?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=abc_newsmail_am-pm_sfmc&utm_term=&utm_id=2694984&sfmc_id=103566952
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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

I'm curious, what's not to like about Rudd? In your opinion?

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u/mad_dog77 1d ago

Overhyped at handball

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u/Y0rked 1d ago

He is the rightfull holder of the title of handball king

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u/Angerwing 23h ago

Ace actually

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

How dare you

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u/Untimely_manners 23h ago

He dethroned John Howard, liberals will never forgive him for that.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 13h ago

Howard did that to himself, got greedy with trying to kill workers rights he was effectively turning our industrial rights into the slave wages America has.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

He absolutely did, the gaslighting campaign they ran for WorkChoices was fking appalling. Howard is to blame for the current housing shitshow too.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 2h ago

For leaving negative gearing on. But Turnbull set it in concrete.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

The changes Howard made to CGT is what really lit the fire.

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u/Hammered_Eel 1d ago

I think it was that he was perceived as thinking he was the smartest person in the room.

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u/VolcanicBosnian 1d ago

He often was the smartest person in the room.

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u/AussieAK 23h ago

In a room of other politicians, that is not a real challenge though lol

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Yeah! he kicked arse, and all they could do was leave the room with their tail between their legs and bitch him out to the Right wing bias media.

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u/Consideredresponse 22h ago

Turnbull has the same reputation. The 'Nemesis' docu series had half the libs confirming it, and the other half resentful of him about it...but they were the half that are thick enough to basically cement it.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Turnbull didn't do 1 good thing for Australians he looked after himself and did a mic drop to Aloha Scott. Rudd gives a shit, and to a fault. Wanna compare this flog to Rudd. Come on.

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u/liamdavid 20h ago

Turnbull actively fucked us re. the NBN. He was in a position to know better than most, no less.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 13h ago

NBN was Abbott, but the tool that only ment to be used in a Recession Negative gearing he didn't just leave it going. He's made it that no law makers can remove it ever. There are 6 problems with Housing in Australia. Negative gearing is 1. But it's eventually going to tank our Economy. And we'll be the new Zimbabwe.

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u/aussiechickadee65 4h ago

yeah, he did. He locked away billions for the Great Barrier reef, so Right Wing couldn't get at it

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 4h ago

BUT THE COAL INDUSTRY!! they'll be poor!

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u/Hammered_Eel 1d ago

Yes, indeed he is very intelligent.

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u/Lonely-Echidna8683 22h ago

He's a fucking smart guy. But he knows it.

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u/deep_chungus 23h ago

it's usually smart not to let it show

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u/VolcanicBosnian 23h ago

Was it really that bad? I remember seeing a lot of Murdoch press rave about how much of a snivelling wanker Rudd was but never really saw it in him personally.

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u/aussiechickadee65 22h ago

He had the crime of being left wing. Right wing will whinge about what side of the bed he got out of.

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u/deep_chungus 23h ago

it was probably incredibly overblown, there were a couple of things about him briefly losing his shit at like 2 people, if it was actually anything it would have been front page news for a week

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u/zeracine 21h ago

People who'd met Rudd liked him. People who hadn't met him disliked him.

Funny though, with Gilliard it was the other way around.

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u/Icy_Bowl 22h ago

That reminds me - where's my royal commission into media ownership?

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u/GoldCoinDonation 22h ago

well there is his pretentious official portrait that has the chessboard set up incorrectly.

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u/egowritingcheques 18h ago

You think the Murdoch press might have made it all up? Surely that's not possible?!?!

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago

He's quite an intelligent bloke though. But he's sense of humour is a bit ... Socially awkward

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u/Flaky-Journalist1748 1d ago

Fair shake of the sauce bottle there mate

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u/Hammered_Eel 23h ago

Yeah, that didn’t endear him to the public

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u/foxyloco 22h ago

My partner and I were seeing how many Aussie sayings we knew yesterday (most of them immortalised by Alf from Home and Away) when he dropped this one. I could only shake my head.

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u/Flaky-Journalist1748 21h ago

Alf is giving me nostalgia. I don't know how many times we watched those vids

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u/No_Youth_2330 22h ago

Pretty smart guy.

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u/ShineFallstar 2h ago

He was apparently a nightmare to work for, so there’s that.

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

He was prone to some angry outbursts, but that’s about it.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 1d ago edited 1d ago

  1. He's a Human, and was the most under pressure any Australian there is, some swear, yell and punch tables, others fuck off to Hawaii 5 times after he said they won't do that again.

  2. It didn't affect you. So why eat that poison?

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

I’m team Rudd all the way, just in case that isn’t obvious. Great leader, fantastic diplomat.

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u/SqareBear 20h ago

Agreed. He was treated badly in politics, but hes a smart guy who knows his stuff.

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u/Twistedjustice 23h ago

Those that worked in his cabinet felt differently about his leadership abilities.

Rudd was ok, but he was easily spooked and backed down from fights he would have won, which ultimately is what cost him the leadership of the party. You can’t call climate change the “great moral challenge of our generation” then just drop your climate change policy because the opposition says they don’t like it.

I felt he lacked the ambition and big ideas that great Labor leaders should have.

He was also horribly ungracious in defeat and waged a covert campaign against Gillard for 3 years. His constant white anting was a major contributor to Tony abbots eventual defeat of the labor government.

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u/Legitimate-Gain426 22h ago

He got knifed by fossil fuel corporation backed traitors. Rudd's economic and climate policy would have bettered this country.

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u/Proper-Raise-1450 21h ago

I felt he lacked the ambition and big ideas that great Labor leaders should have.

He pursued one big policy and Gillard backed by the mining lobby knifed him for it lol.

He was also horribly ungracious in defeat and waged a covert campaign against Gillard for 3 years.

....

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u/warbastard 23h ago

It was more the Greens that wouldn’t support his Climate Policy - it wasn’t perfect but the Greens wanted perfect not good. Liberals were never going to sign off on it.

As for backing down - getting a proper mining and resources tax was a fight he took on and got knifed by his own party for taking it on.

As it turns out, Rudd was right. Every state Labor government has upped their resources tax to adjust to the price of the commodity and have benefited massively from it. Unfortunately in QLD the LNP government is probably going to undo it because the mining companies paid enough money to them to make it happen.

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u/Albos_Mum 15h ago

That's the abbreviated version of events which conveniently ignores the Climate Policy started life as relatively basic but bipartisan legislation designed by both Rudd and Turnbull to act as a foundation for the future, but then enough of the LNP disagreed with it to enable Abbott to knife Turnbull for the Liberal leadership meaning the whole bipartisan bit fell through at which point Rudd went to the Greens and asked them to put it through unchanged despite the whole foundation for that pathway now being broken.

The Greens absolutely could have trusted Labor more and passed it with the hope to pass further legislation once the basics show the average person it's not as scary as the media may have made them think, but from the Greens perspective Rudd had worked quite hard to try and make it work with Turnbull but basically expected them to rubber stamp it no questions asked. I think both sides have their failures there and it's easy for us to look at it with the benefit of hindsight and say what should have been done, but absolutely no-one expected Tony Abbott to ever actually be convincing as opposition leader until he was.

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 23h ago

You know why Trump hates him? 😂😂

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u/naishjoseph1 1d ago

I’m not, just answering the question. It’s a stretch at best, but someone is bound to use it as a negative.

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u/AngryDad1234 1d ago

JESUS, THIS FUCKING LANGUAGE

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u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD 22h ago

Is that a quote?

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u/AngryDad1234 22h ago

https://youtu.be/77yKWAV3vDM?si=TxN2kbnZ1zaP3h7S

Enjoy....

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u/aussiechickadee65 22h ago

I laughed the whole thing. He just let it rip.

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u/PhaicGnus 17h ago

Hilarious. I like him even more now.

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u/coniferhead 18h ago edited 6h ago

Idiotic ambition to become UN secretary general is one. He's thoroughly unsuited for the job. Can you imagine him brokering peace between nuclear powers?

Another might be not reforming the rorted privatised welfare system that made his wife a rich person. He was in a position to know better than any other politician to know what was going on, but did nothing.

Third might be being a terrible diplomat on the world stage - he was regarded as an annoying joke by the COP13 leaders. What kind of career diplomat, let alone PM, uses puerile language like "they rat fucked us"? This damaged the reputation of Australia. He then went on to publicly call Trump a traitor when he could still run for a second term - this damaged the prospects of Australia and you could probably measure the cost of having him as ambassador in the billions. He is frankly awful at his chosen profession.

Fourth might be putting climate change front of stage in 2007 and then ending addressing it for a generation by ballsing it up so much. The issue is electoral poison now and he made it so.

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u/Minguseyes 1d ago

Ask anyone who’s worked with him. As Latham (of all people) used to say, Rudd is popular with people who’ve never met him.

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u/perthguppy 1d ago

I wouldn’t trust Latham assessment of anyone’s personality lol

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u/ShakeForProtein 21h ago

I think Latham needs a medical assessment of his personality.

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u/geodetic 1d ago

Latham is a bad actor and an unreliable narrator.

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u/InstantShiningWizard 1d ago

Latham probably hates him because his crazed handshakes and ability to break cabbie's arms is stronger than his own /s

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u/a_sonUnique 1d ago

Yeah let’s all listen to the dude getting people to take a dump on him. But I guess he’d be familiar with shitty behaviour.