Unveiling of Kevin Rudd’s official portrait at Parliament House, Canberra
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
[Acknowledgements]
It's a funny thing being asked to speak at an event like this. I have done a lot of public speaking over the years, most of you have had to endure it, but speaking at the unveiling of your prime ministerial portrait is the closest you come in life to being the after-dinner speaker at your own wake. But here goes! I mean, most of you think I can speak underwater — you're right — I'll give it my best.
In fact, this event didn’t kind of almost didn’t nearly happen.
For those of you who remember, it's nearly 10 years since I left the office of Prime Minister here in this country and then sought political asylum in the United States and either running a think tank, being an academic and, now most recently, being appointed as your Ambassador to the United States.
So frankly, I've always pushed to one side the business of having this stuff done. In fact, the directors of the parliamentary collection here became so exasperated that they got to the point of threatening to organise anybody to do a knock-up job based on my official photograph. And if you've seen my official photograph, that's not something of which you'd be proud. And so vanity ultimately prevailed and I decided to yield to having an official portrait done.
In fact, the directors of the parliamentary collection said ‘a lot of people are complaining that you're this missing piece in the chronology of paintings of former prime ministers and many of them think that you've gone the way of Harold Holt — you've either been taken by a Chinese submarine, or taken by aliens. Where are you?’
And this actually is not an idle reflection because when I was at the Asia Society, someone actually wrote me a note asking ‘where is your portrait?’ and on the front of the envelope it was ‘Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia, Area 51, Nevada, c/o the Asia Society in New York’. So that's how all this came about.
As you know, we've done a few things in government in the period that we were in office — some of them good, some of them contested, some of those things have endured, others less so — but I'm proud and honoured to have served as your country's 26th Prime Minister.
As you know, in government, we didn't sit around and waste time. We did a lot. And I notice those nodding who were part of the cabinet and the government at the time. In fact, we're accused of doing too much. Far too much.
But you know, something in the full effluxion of time, I'd much rather have — effluxion, by the way, Riley, is like programmatic specificity. It means passage of time — in the passage of time, I'd much rather be accused of having tried to do too much than too little because it is a precious opportunity you have, as a government of the Commonwealth of Australia, to achieve lasting reforms for the nation.
I was always haunted by the words of PJ Keating and I know Paul can still have that haunting effect today. When I was just starting out in political life, I was a junior woodchuck then working for Premier Wayne Goss. And in Queensland, Paul was attending a Premier's conference with Bob. And Paul lost interest after about 20 minutes and was wandering around the Queensland Parliament building. And I noticed he was missing so I thought I should chase after him and see what he was up to.
He then proceeded to give one of those impeccable Paul-ine presentations on the purpose of politics, which began like this: ‘Kevy, Kevy, Kevy,’ he said, ‘in politics, if you're going to go into politics,’ he said, ‘mate, just don't waste time. Hop into it.’ He said ‘a lot of people think that in politics, it's like flying a Lancaster bomber, slow and ambling over the target before eventually you deliver your ordinance. Mate, they can take you out before you even get to the target. Our job is to be a spitfire. In. Out. Do your business, and get it over and done with. Don't waste time. Classic Keating. So Paul has a lot to answer for in terms of the pace of activity in the government, which I was privileged to be Prime Minister of.
Two or three quick reflections on not what we achieved, but on our nation's future.
One is this: when I look at our democracy, in this great chamber of democracy, which is our parliament building, I say as someone who has now lived in the United States for the last decade, I am anxious for the future of all of our democracies. For those of us who assume that democracy is the natural state of things, reflect for a moment on history. It was never thus. Our democracies were crafted by women and men out of much struggle and achieved only universal suffrage within the last century. And that's against 5000 years of recorded human history. So this flower, this delicate flower we call democracy is something to be nurtured, like a flower in the garden, because the raw, wild wilderness of raw politics can devour all in its wake unless we are careful.
So for me in this place and in Australia, defending this great institution, which we've inherited from the palaces of Westminster, that's fundamental. Defending the institutions which underpin the parliament, including the independence of the public service, a robust institution to carry forward the institutional memory of our nation — the residual body of wisdom and intelligence to reflect on the challenges of today and tomorrow — is equally important.
And to ensure that the people when they vote for our members of parliament are mindful of and drawing on a free flow of unbiased information, where facts are separated from opinion and where people can distill their own judgments about which course they want for the country's future.
Nurturing all of that actively, not passively, is what we now must do, because the democratic project around the world is under threat. It's under challenge. And our global democratic project in so many countries is in regress, not progress.
My second reflection, as I see the PM, sitting before me today is a sense of empathy for the vast nature of the great challenges which we now face together as a nation in the world.
When I was Prime Minister, we had to deal with a global financial crisis, keeping the country out of recession. We had to deal simultaneously with an emerging climate change challenge. And then, on top of that, implement reforms in health and education, industrial relations, in the aged care, the age pension, paid parental leave. This seemed really hard at the time, and it was as we tried to do all of that, in a limited frame of time. But when I look at what this government now has to wrestle with, in this Parliament, against the huge structural challenges which we face, Prime Minister, you have the harder job than I did. And I mean that.
One, we are in a region where the risk of crisis, conflict and war is real — not a theory; it's a real threat — and this requires our democracies to navigate our security circumstances with a level of care, intention and foresight, and the hard decisions to be made. That requires acute management and leadership by our leaders here in this Parliament and this government.
Second, we have an accelerating climate crisis — extreme heat events, which are now life-threatening around the world.
And third, if that wasn't enough, artificial intelligence. Machines. Machine autonomy over human beings, or human control over those machines. Artificial intelligence — a great force for good, or one which actually brings into deep challenge our ability to navigate our futures as free and individual members of the human family? And what are its consequences for our national security and our long term national economic resilience?
These are three enormous structural changes facing this democracy and all our democracies. So when I reflect upon the state of our debate here in Australia, and this is not a partisan reflection at all, it is simply with a degree of admiration and empathy that I observe the complexity of all of this and the urgency of it. These three great challenges, which sweep across everything else, including what passes for our day-to-day political discourse, in the normal business of day-to-day politics in our countries.
And the final one is this: we often, in positions of political leadership, think that it's too hard. That is, that the challenges we face are too great. My experience, for what it's worth is, the great challenges we face as a nation often appear much greater in the anticipation than in the execution. Reaching the point of decision is hard because we're mindful of the risks. Sometimes afterwards, however, it is seen that that was just a decision we should have taken.
When, for example, we were wrestling with the global financial crisis, they said we could never avoid a recession, we proved them wrong. When they said we could never secure for Australia, a place at the world's top table, once again we proved them wrong and secured Australian membership at the G20.
And when they said that the Apology would be a problem for the nation — it would unleash this torrent of litigation from Indigenous communities across the country; that it would in fact set the process of reconciliation backwards, not forwards — we proved them wrong. In fact, what we did with the Apology was actually bring the people of our country together. Black and white. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. And we began a process, a hard process, for both sides of politics of Closing the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
So it is not my place to wade into the politics of this referendum. I'm now an Ambassador on behalf of all of you in the United States of America. But I would simply reflect on this: fears were raised 15 years ago about why we should not do this thing called the Apology. Other fears are being raised today. I would simply ask all Australians to reflect on the fundamentals about whether those fears are well-founded, or not.
The arc of history bends slowly towards justice.
To conclude with some thankyous.
To the Prime Minister: thanks, mate. You were a key member of my government. You did a bloody good job as Minister for Infrastructure. The Prime Minister and I've often discussed this in the thousands of infrastructure projects for which he was responsible, not one was the generator of a single item of public controversy. How do you do that? It's quite remarkable.
To all the Ministers who worked with me in the Cabinet at the time, thank you, for your extraordinary contribution in the critical roles that you played.
To the Members of Parliament, past and present, and those of the Parliamentary Labor Party who honoured me by voting for me on three occasions to be your leader.
I thank also the Australian people for the confidence they placed in me.
I thank my former and current staff who, as I said before, have become members of our extended family.
I thank Thérèse, my wife of 42 years — that deserves a long service medal — who had the audacity to say to me as a young kid at the Australian National University nearly half a century ago, when we first met in orientation week at Burgmann College, myself at the vastly mature age of 18, Thérèse 17, when she said ‘you should be in the parliament’. That was a long time ago. So it's both PJK and Thérèse whom you have to blame for what's happened since. Darling, thank you for your encouragement and support.
To our three fantastic kids — to Jess and to Marcus and to Nick, who's not with us today — Thank you so much for the unqualified love you've extended to your dad. It's a hard thing being the kid of a Prime Minister. It's a really hard thing. It's even a hard thing being the kid of a former prime minister, also a hard thing.
And to our three wonderful grandchildren for being such sources of joy to Thérèse and myself — to Josie and to Mackie and two baby Scarlett who is back in Brisbane — thank you for being the lights of our lives. You give us hope and cause for the future.
And finally, I thank Philip Bacon. Philip for co-commissioning this portrait of Ralph, the artist. And Ralph, for you applying your craft to render your subject with considerable sensitivity and a lot of kindness. Most of it, much of it, perhaps all of it, undeserved.
I thank you one and all.
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