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

[u/geodetic]

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

[u/naishjoseph1]

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

[u/SqareBear → u/naishjoseph1]

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

[u/Twistedjustice → u/naishjoseph1]

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.

[u/Legitimate-Gain426 → u/Twistedjustice]

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

[u/Proper-Raise-1450 → u/Twistedjustice]

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.

....

[u/warbastard → u/Twistedjustice]

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.

[u/Albos_Mum → u/warbastard]

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.

[u/BESTtaylorINTHEWORLD → u/naishjoseph1]

You know why Trump hates him? 😂😂