Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I will be brief in my remarks but I think it is important that we acknowledge the contribution of people who reach the highest office in the land, and Kevin Rudd obviously spent two terms as Prime Minister of our great country. He was—and still is, of course—a great intellect and a man of great passion. But it is not an insignificant feat to defeat an incumbent Prime Minister. It happens very rarely in our political system and, when it does, it is substantial.

When you change the government you change the country, as Paul Keating famously once said, and undoubtedly Kevin Rudd changed the country when he became Prime Minister and during his terms as Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, you leave a mark on our nation; you leave a legacy for future generations to reflect upon and to live with, good, bad or otherwise. He is someone who has contributed in that significant way, and we should acknowledge and honour people who have been in that great office.

He was a very difficult candidate for the former Prime Minister—speaking as a member of the staff in 2007, it was a difficult election for us. Undoubtedly, that was the case because Kevin Rudd was a very skilled professional at campaigning and put the Labor Party in the best position that they had been put in for many, many years. They had the success that he undoubtedly brought for the Labor Party in that election.

No doubt he would be reflecting now upon what he achieved in that office, and I am sure he would wish some of the events had played out differently. But this is the life that we are given, and you deal with the events as they unfold.

I think Kevin Rudd has made a brave decision. He has been in parliament a relatively short time for somebody who reached the prime ministership. It is not usual. I think maybe in some ways he reached the prime ministership too early on in his career. It is an office which is enormously demanding. You have to be extraordinarily disciplined and utterly prepared for the mental and physical demands which the office puts on prime ministers, particularly in modern political life. The term that Sir Robert Menzies had in office was undoubtedly longer due to the fact that he did not face the intense scrutiny that modern prime ministers do, and we are unlikely to see a 12-year service such as John Howard's again in our lifetime because of that very fact—that the intensity, the pace, with which we now serve in this business has been ramped up to be so much more than what it once was.

It is an intrusive lifestyle, as all of us know, and it is an extremely lonely experience being a candidate in a federal election, particularly on that night when you are waiting for those votes to be counted. There are very few people across the country who can really understand what that experience is like, and that is exaggerated many times when you are sitting there waiting for the results as the leader of a party seeking government, as Kevin Rudd was in 2007, or the leader of a party defending government, as he was in 2013 at the recent election.

He should be congratulated on his career. His family should enjoy, now, that time with him and also be able to reflect upon what has been a very significant career. Very few people reach the office. Kevin Rudd was one of the very few lucky people in our country to have achieved that office. He should be congratulated. We should remember him fondly for the contribution he made to this place, and we should wish him well in whatever future he seeks to make for himself and for his family.

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