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STORY CHALLENGED
After disputed accounts of his father’s death, Kevin Rudd now faces disputed accounts of his own life during the years following.
UPDATE. More on Recollection Kevin from Andrew Bolt.
"I was born the son of a poor black sharecropper.” —The Jerk
Posted by bugscuffle on 2007 03 10 at 04:50 PM • permalinkThe thing to remember here is that the trail of bullshit Krudd leaves in his wake is catching up with him. Effective liars must have a good memory, yet perpetual liars like Rudd can only last so long until they get caught. By the time the election rolls around he’ll be so deep in bullshit that he’ll need a front end loader to dig him out of it before he does his gracefully staged photo ops.
I can’t wait to see the lefties ship him off to the same political closet as dear leaders Goofy and Latham.Ubique, and had to walk 20 miles uphill each way, in the snow, to go to school.
Posted by David Crawford on 2007 03 10 at 06:09 PM • permalink1 thanks for link. ‘Rudd may not have realised until last week it was suddenly brought home to him, along with the rest of us, how comprehensively Burke had got his hooks into him.”
In Perth, a few months from now:
Secretary: Mr Burke, Mr Rudd’s still on the line.
Brian Burke: Reel him in, will you?Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2007 03 10 at 06:12 PM • permalinkWith apologies to the four Yorkshiremen.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You’re right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who’d have thought thirty year ago we’d all be sittin’ here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o’ tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o’ cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an’ all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, son”.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, ‘e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, ‘e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin’. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, ‘alf the floor was missing, and we were all ‘uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t’ corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say ‘house’ it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our ‘ole in the ground; we ‘ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t’ shoebox in t’ middle o’ road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t’ mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi’ his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of ‘ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won’t believe you.
ALL:
They won’t!Posted by Mystery Meat on 2007 03 10 at 06:19 PM • permalinkCompletely off topic, but mark April 5 down in your calendars. That’s when 300 opens in Australia. You have to see this movie.
Posted by rightwingprof on 2007 03 10 at 06:20 PM • permalinkFrom Pearson’s column:-
Can there be any serious doubt that Burke probably has the power to destroy Rudd with a single phone call, where it’s a case of his word against the Opposition Leader’s? Such is the cunning of the snare that Burke wouldn’t even have to be telling the truth to end Rudd’s leadership.
This is the great elephant in the room Rudd’s media pals are conveniuently ignoring.
How Rudd’s backers must fear the power that Burke now has.
#11 rightwingprof:
Why? Just Sparta goes Hollywood, isn’t it?
Posted by Mr Snuffalupagus on 2007 03 10 at 06:40 PM • permalinkRemember a conversation from the newt room when he was eleven? Easy.
Remember a dinner conversation with an ex-Premier from a couple of years ago? Big problem.
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2007 03 10 at 06:41 PM • permalinkThis is curious indeed.
And by curious, I mean that Rudd’s a cold, calculating, opportunistic and exploitative son of a bitch, who will do anything to get power and apparently sold his soul to Burke for the leadership. A leader deeper in dirt than most, but who talks as those he were pristine.
I can only hope that high wire upon which he walks is fraying.
No surprises when ABC’s Insiders gives a free pass to Rudd. Kid-gloved Schubert and Megalogenis say these are the recollections of a grieving 11 year old boy. Henderson corrects them suggesting they are the recollections of a middle-aged man, one who is using the story to demonstrate his Labor roots.
Maybe Kevin was sitting around the Latham family kitchen table when it happened. Or maybe he was growin’ tobacco and pickin’ tobacco on Ol’ Man Gore’s sharecroppin’. This faux-battler crap is just nauseating.
Oh WOW. The significance here, as I understand it (I’m in Canada, not Oz) is that Rudd has played up his personal suffering for his personal political gain; but now, this suffering is revealed to be non-existant… or at woerst, no more than any other Ozzie could have expected at the time. In short, he bleats too much.
Hmm.... OK .... A liar.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 10 at 08:33 PM • permalinkPersonally, I’d be willing to allow a little latitude for variation in family memories. More to the point is that the kind of family histories recounted by Rudd and Maxine McKew weren’t so unusual for people of that generation. Families like theirs just didn’t have as much money as their modern counterparts do now (and Ruddy might like to ponder why that is). Things that look like hardships to modern eyes were more normal then. We’re not exactly talking about The Grapes of Wrath here. In my experience, people who really did it tough in early life and bettered themselves never whine about it.
#15 Says it all. The worrying thing though, is that Rudd puts himself up as the alternate Prime Minister, with an associate of dubious character in his background, who may have his hooks into him. How long before Burke pulls the strings, and Rudd would have to perform. I know it is a long stretch of the bow, but with the Labor Party’s penchant for ‘strange’ deals and arrangements, in the past, anything is possible.
#11 I intend to see it tomorrow. Sounds a bit strange tho. For example, three colours in the movie: red gold and black.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 10 at 08:45 PM • permalinkjust watched insiders- Lenore Taylor and George Megalowpenis eeeurgh
funny how ‘journalists’ who are always quick to label Howard a liar on the slightest of pretexts are willing to defend Rudd to the death no matter what whoppers he tells.
these excerpts from the bizarre lateline interview with Peter Costello are becoming typical
PETER COSTELLO: ... watching him [Rudd] tonight on the 7.30 Report, the story is shifting. Incrementally it is shifting bit by bit, because he knows the account he gave -
TONY JONES: Where do you see the shift? I read the transcript of his interviews this morning and the interview he did. I couldn’t see any major shift from this morning.
TONY JONES: It’s true to say, isn’t it, that the fact he had met on a number of occasions with Brian Burke was known and publicised in the The Australian back in November. Was it simply that you and your staff and the Government didn’t notice those articles or is this a much more opportune time to bring it up?
PETER COSTELLO: Have you gone back and seen that reference in The Australian?
TONY JONES: I have not.
They (abcist journos in particular) are like little kids sticking their finger in their ears and singing ‘I’m not listening’ in case they hear anything that may cast their new God in a bad light
Normal Journalistic inquisitiveness is thrown out the window lest curiousity kills the Krudd
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 03 10 at 09:15 PM • permalink#20 - That was Lenore Taylor, not Schubert - I’m only going off the radio version. Whoever it was the very model of a rich and comfortable apologist for Labor. Love Henderson’s work, but he was a bit drowned out by the apologists for the 11 yo Kev.
The questions have to be asked -
1. So its OK for a family to be defamed if it fits with Kevin’s misty eyed recollection?
2. The family gave the Rudd family 6 months rent-free to move out - pretty considerate deal, when the employed farmer was deceased, isn’t it?
3. Was the family supposed to keep them on, because it was Kev?
4. Instead of blaming doctors and farm owners, should you allocate the majority of blame to your drink-driving father who left a young family to survive?
5. Why do Labor keep on foisting these patently deficient men on us? Latham and Rudd, very different, but utterly deficient - both it seems largely through absent fathers?
6. When will the media actually perform some due diligence on Labor leaders? Why should the electorate have to work out each time that the leader would be a disaster?
.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 10 at 09:25 PM • permalinkrightwingprof—the 300: manly men, doing manly things, with lots of other manly men. Who could miss it?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 10 at 09:31 PM • permalinkWhat is it with peoples memories?
I married in the 60’s, sure we did not have much money and many womenn were not allowed to work after marriage in for example, ‘Our’ ABC, teaching and in many industries. Like many couples starting out we did not have much- who does, but for goodness sake the post wars years were boom years and we did not have the homeless street kids as we do now. We stayed at home, cooked for our family, sewed and knitted our own and our children’s clothes, and even bought at op-shops, obtained fabulous expensive material and trims for peanuts that I could not afford from a store.
It was not a hardship or struggle, we enjoyed doing it, we had no TV at first and no computers to distract and we did not go out to restaurants, we visited and were visited with friends for dinner or barbeques. trying to outdo each other on the latest Womens weekly recipes. Life was much better than it had been for our parents and grandparents, someting that I was reminded of very firmly if I ever complained about any perceived hardship, to my mother.
To read the comments from Kevin and others, one would think it was the depression years.
Kevin not only slimes Mr Low, but manages to make his mother look like a lying ungrateful whinger, with his statement"well thats what mum told me”.
This is a man we should trust representing us on the world statge? and very fond of the Chinese Goverment. Who could trust him to tell the truth about anything. He dares to call Mr Howard and Alexander Downer liars, WITHOUT a shred of evidence.Its the typical position of a scoundral, when on the defensive, attack. It is the biggest liars that are so fond of labeling others so to deflect critisism from their own falseness.
If Kevin has any morality at all he should leave parliament now and save his Kids the embarrassment of finding out how totally corrupted their father really is. They do not deserve this.
Time for Julia now to take over the lead in time for the Election, don’t you all agree?I think more investigation is required as to how he and his wife became so wealthy as former public servants- insider knowledge?
Krudd claims to have lived in a car for a while as a kid- anyone know what make/model?
A Dodge(y) Diplomat or a Honda (non) Integra perhaps?
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 03 10 at 10:36 PM • permalinkJulia Baird: I read somewhere that you, you read Hansard as a child?
Kevin Rudd: No, that’s just propaganda put about by my elder brother Greg ...
Everyone speakem with forked tongue, except Kevni?
... the mudder, the brudder and the man with the udders.What’s with these Labour leaders anyway,that their family lives were like some Victorian music hall melodrama? Here in NSW, we’ve got Morris Iemma’s hard luck life story being rammed down our throats in TV adverts every day: young Morrie driving his unemployed Italian father around factories, looking for work, but turned away at the gate because he couldn’t speak English. And now, young Kevvie turned out into the snow by a heartless landlord, without a roof over his head, sleeping in the car, like some Okie family on their way to the promised land in California. It’s enough to make you retch!
If I recall correctly, a puff piece about Krudd had Latham talking about mysterious gaps in Rudd’s cv.
What chance a journo investigating?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 11 at 12:27 AM • permalinkSlightly OT:
Mrs Patty Adams: Greens Lose Their IndependenceThe Greens want to close down the coal industry - in three years! Labor wants to dramatically increase coal, both production and export. Yet the Greens preference Labor - and Labor preferences the Greens.
Who can you trust nowadays? :)
#42
From same:Julia Baird: Did you, so you helped out, your job was to get the cattle, did you do any other chores?
Kevin Rudd: No I was the youngest of four so if you asked this question of my brothers and sisters, they’d say, “I did nothing”, and if they are listening to this programme, that’s just not true.You just can’t trust those lyin’ siblin’s either ...
I grew up in the 1960’s. My father died when I was seven, leaving very little money. My mother was a nurse who later became a TPI as a result of war-service.
My point that even for a less-than-affluent family such as ours, it was no dark age. There were pensions and social security provisions which, in terms of purchasing power, were not incomparably lower than those today.
Kids certainly had plenty of money to spend on Beatles records, milkshakes, the Jayne Mansfield issue “Playboy” and so forth.
We had a perfectly adaguate FC Holden car and I had a little sailing-boat. Rudd, like so many Labor politicians, is trying to create a false, lying historical mythology.
From Hansard:
Mrs WEST: ... I also noted that the same previous member for Bowman was quoted on page 2 of Tuesday’s Courier-Mail as agreeing to settle with AMP out of court a legal action relating to AMP’s demutualisation. It seems that the previous member was representing his former adviser, Mr Greg Rudd. Actions speak louder than words, and the action taken by the previous member in dropping the AMP action after its timing brings the whole sorry saga into question. It was so well constructed that it could have been devastating for AMP policy holders. AMP spent millions of man-hours and millions of dollars in identifying potential points of challenge to the demutualisation, so the challenge by Rudd and the previous member for Bowman was always on a hiding to nothing. If the action against AMP was not political grandstanding for profile, then call me a two-headed banshee. The electorate is alert to these kinds of antics and the whole action was a political stunt.
Chapter 1:
First the deprived childhood. That evilOil Can Harrybooting poor widows and her four starving children out into the dark, dark night.Chapter 2:
How my great grandfather was wounded at Gallipoli and evacuated to Egypt where he recovered before being sent to the Western Front where he had a leg blown off and won thePurple HeartVC.Chapter 3:
How I helped Al Gore invent the internet.Chapter 4:
How I was the chef who prepared Bush’s plastic turkey so I know it’s true.That’s all for now
comradesfriends. I’ll be back after I think up some more of my history.From the Bolta link:
Rudd has such contempt for people with his imagined intellectual superiority (typical DFAT/ Federal government public servant profile)it is astonishing - and he can’t help but treat everyone like they came down in the last shower.
(Posted by tony of coburg)A growing consensus, methinks.
The Heiner inquiry produced a document from an official in the Treasury who dobbed in Rudd for claiming residency status stamp duty exemption on a house he had bought, despite having a lease back arrangement on the house he sold.
What is funny is that he left an airconditioner on 24/7 to make the electricity bill look normal, which Treasury people check to see if the house is empty.
This went on for quite a while until said official dobbed him in, and Rudd was forced to re-pay the extra stamp duty he avoided.
So, Mr Rudd, flag waving greenie, global warming mercanary:
- left an airconditioner on 24/7, annoying the neighbours, driving up his electricity bill with electricity from a coal fired plant, polluting the atmosphere, to save a few bucks
- gets caught out and finds out who dobbed him in
- had to pay extra power bill on top of higher stamp duty.
He can deny none of this - it is all there in the Inquiry documentation.
I’m sure the libs know of this, and is it any wonder why Howard asked for an election on “honesty”.
BTW he had to swear on oath a statutory declaration that he occupied the house, and falsely swearing a stat dec is very naughty.
The chickens will come home to roost Mr Rudd.
From #41 and Rudd’s brother’s website.
“Lies and deception have a habit of catching up. Truth is the best weapon.”
Should have listened to his brother…
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2007 03 11 at 06:08 AM • permalinkKRuddy on honesty from Hansard:
Mr RUDD (Griffith) (3.34 pm)—The problem with this Prime Minister is that once the Australian people actually believed him. They heard him as a man responsible for this country’s national security and it did not cross their minds that he would tell them blatant lies. But what they have seen over the last 3½ years is a Prime Minister <span style="color: #FF0000;">who ducks and weaves around the truth at each opportunity.
Each time he is pinned down and asked a difficult question, each time as a clever politician he slips and slides his way around it, never answering it directly—as he slips and slides his way out of this parliament right now. Your credibility</span> on this war, Prime Minister, collapsed a long time ago and it is no wonder you cannot bear to face this parliament in the context of this debate.And because I can’t resist, Kev’s brother has a story of his own that is just as amazing as Kevvie’s heartbreaking tale:
Hitching back to Brisbane with the intention of working on a prawn trawler in Cairns, Greg ran out of money and got stranded during a petrol strike in outback Victoria. It poured down rain for days. He ended up living in a cave burning his underdaks trying to start a fire with wet wood. He had plenty of time to think on an empty stomach. It came to him. To progress through life with purpose, he had to identify doorways to opportunity, open them and keep them open long enough to construct a positive pathway forward.
Hitchhiking. Living in a cave. Setting fire to his own underwear.
What the hell was going on in Australia in the 1960s?Link
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2007 03 11 at 06:13 AM • permalinkRudd, Iemma and Latham drag out their hard-luck stories but never mention their rich Uncle Labor. The rich uncle buys them a tertiary education, showers them with high-paid positions in the public service or the party and gives them a comfortable seat in Parliament. It is never hard work and brains that drags them from the gutter. It is their limitless capacity to do what the party wants, no matter how foul or dirty the deed might be.
I find the collapse of kevni’s origin tale a bit disturbing..
Obviously, even though the
landed capitalistfarmer waited two weeks to discuss a sensitive matter with Mrs Rudd, she still managed to go off the deep end and bolt off well before she had too. The poor bloke trying to do the right thing by all concerned is made to look the bad guy.So either kevni knew the facts and is embellishing a tale, or he has issues. Now, I would be happy for him to go to a shrink rather than try to resolve them through getting to be PM. But if he is knowingly embellishing a tale to make us all feel well of him, then he can get proverbialised
#60
From Kevni’s account, appears Mudder Rudd was trying to extract money from the landlord because of (their) improvements to the property, whereas the landlord had prolly been very generous up to this point, according to his family, and was allowing the Rudds to stay on, rent free, until the replacement farmer arrived.
Sounds like Mrs Rudd didn’t intend to stay on for long anyway, and was disappointed in not getting some extra in the kitty before departure.
Kevni sounds like he comes from the same mold.Mark Latham knew it, and we know it . . . Kevin Rudd is a c***.
Posted by Young and Free on 2007 03 11 at 07:07 AM • permalink#59 - Contrail, very well put. Rich uncle put young Kev through Nudgee, a very well respected Brisbane private school. Haven’t heard that story yet in the media.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 11 at 07:09 AM • permalinkChildren aren’t responsible for the poverty of their parents. For many, it spurs them into action; for others, it is an excuse for idleness and never doing anything to better their circumstances. The clever among them figure out a way to remain unproductive while bettering their circumstances--such as going into politics. I guess when what you do isn’t so virtuous, you must attempt to make circumstance itself into a virtue. I find this damned unattractive.
Their ABC-TV News announcer (Qld edition) was tonight decrying that the government had ‘descended’ into personal attacks on poor little 11-year-old Kev.
Wayne Swann was allowed a bit of time by his ABC mates to attack this scurrilous behaviour of the Howard government. There was fear in Swann’s eyes as he wondered where it will all end.
Shouldn’t the ABC be attacking the journalists who started the story about Krudd’s porkers?
I know Howard is a clever old bugger but I don’t think even he could arrange a two-page spread with piccies in the SMH.#65 - Skeeter, ABC online (an official organ of the ALP) has had Swan’s song in the top stories all day. Didn’t have one on the SMH story itself - imagine my surprise.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 11 at 07:56 AM • permalink#63
I know nothing about Nudgee but I find the following interesting.
From the Julia Baird interview with Rudd link. Rudd lived in a residential college while he was at ANU. Wikipedia says it was the fully catered, church affiliated, Burgmann College which currently charges undergrads ~ $10200 for 37 weeks’ accommodation plus about $1500 for sign up charges, some of the latter of which is refundable. Clever kiddies (I suppose) can get one of five bursaries worth $5000.
Rudd graduated in 1981. So did I, so I understand what things were like then and I can tell you that, back then, the sons and daughters of ordinary working people did not live in fully catered residential colleges associated with universities that were hundreds to thousands of miles away from the parental home. What they did was enrol at a university that would allow them to live at home and travel in to lectures every day by train or bus.
Rudd’s hard-scrabble battler background looks more and more suss.
#67 - Quite right, Janice. He could have gone to UQ, QIT or Griffith - lots of choice.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 11 at 08:22 AM • permalinkLatest duet on whatever TV show has the duets.
Rudd and Latho aka “Ex-Leaders of the Opposition” sing a delightful medley:
“A little help from my friends”
“Back in the USSR”
“Neverending story”
“My way”Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 11 at 08:34 AM • permalinkKeating has come out in support of Kevni - that sounds like the kiss of death.
In doing so, Keating’s had a crack at Costello here saying:
“the treasurer works on the smart quips but when it comes to staring down the prime minister in his office he always leaves disappointed”.
“He never gets the sword out.”
Costello’s got far too much sense to be getting the sword out - that’s a Labor speciality, though it most cases it’s of the pork variety. The old socialist credo always come to the fore: “If it feels good, do it.”
I guess Keating gets a thrill at the mere thought of getting the sword out as it reminds him of halcyon days under a bloke reknowned for weilding it - one R J Hawke.
What we have here is the old public servant/politico’s sense of entitlement with regard to the Message.
“It’s exactly as I have said” means whoever might disagree with me is not in my elevated circle, and so can be dismissed...It’s the typical power-play of the one who has powerful mates to protect him from the hoi poloi - in this case the Lowys and any other less-connected Hicksville people with good adult memories.
Rudd hates the History Wars because Truth is being aired there, instead of Top People Myths like those of academics, former Gov-Gens. - and ambitious pollies.
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lol! this should be interesting… and while we’re on the topic, this article by christopher pearson.