Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In comparison to you lot we bring civility to a new level. We all remember what Wayne Swan said about Kevin Rudd. This, of course, is a leader who you put back into the prime ministership after you had gotten rid of him. You all knew how dysfunctional he was. Wayne Swan said:

… for too long, Kevin Rudd has been putting his own self-interest ahead of the interests of the broader labour movement and the country as a whole, and that needs to stop.

The Party has given Kevin Rudd all the opportunities in the world and he wasted them with his dysfunctional decision making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people including our caucus colleagues.

He sought to tear down the 2010 campaign, deliberately risking an Abbott Prime Ministership, and now he undermines the Government at every turn.

He was the Party's biggest beneficiary then its biggest critic; but never a loyal or selfless example of its values and objectives.

For the interests of the labour movement and of working people, there is too much at stake in our economy and in the political debate for the interests of the labour movement and working people to be damaged by somebody who does not hold any Labor values.

This is what Wayne Swan thought of Kevin Rudd. This is the guy that those opposite put back into leadership after all of those years of dysfunction.

We know that all the players have admitted what they thought of him. We saw on 29 June 2014 the headline "Julia Gillard admits political war with Kevin Rudd was 'all about ego'". Then there was the article with the great line from the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate which said:

Senior Minister Penny Wong came to her in tears. She, too, was abandoning Gillard. Why? “It’s the South Australian seats,’’ Wong replies.

“I knew then that I’d lost it,’’ Gillard said.

Then there was 'Bill Shorten: The man who knifed two prime ministers'. That article said:

Mr Shorten did not believe he had been dishonest in telling the media over the past two weeks he was still supporting Ms Gillard.

"As I was going through the process of thinking what to do, do you think it is my job to be a public worrywart? That just destabilises the situation," he said.

"Up until the spill ... I was going to support the prime minister."

Of course, that was until he did not.

Then we had the Gillard article titled "She says: 'Why I had to knife Kevin Rudd'". Then we had Nicola Roxon's classic line in another article. It said:

She acknowledged that removing Mr Rudd from The Lodge in 2010 was "an act of political bastardry" but she said it was only possible "because Kevin had been such a bastard himself".

That is what we have left behind.

Let's be clear: all governments face their challenges. You can react to it in that way, as the Labor Party did, or you can react to it in a far more sensible way. That is what we in the coalition are going to do. We are going to get on with building on our achievements. Getting rid of the carbon tax, stopping the boats and the deaths at sea, securing our borders, conducting free trade agreements, hundreds of millions of dollars of environmental approvals, removing red tape all over the place—these are the achievements that we need to continue to build on. We are not going to be lectured to by the Labor Party.