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Last updated on July 24th, 2017 at 11:08 am
Asked last week if he’d been “caught on the hop” by Mark Latham’s announcement last year that Labor would seek to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, Kevin Rudd avoided a direct response:
KEVIN RUDD: You know as well as I do, Kerry, when you’re dealing with complex questions of national security and you have a shadow cabinet that is functioning, a range of views are going to be put. There’s an outcome and the leader had a view.
KERRY O’BRIEN: And I think you were caught on the hop.
KEVIN RUDD: I am not about to breach that principle.
In fact, according to Alan R.M. Jones, who taped the 7.30 Report interview, Rudd’s smirking reply to that last question was as follows:
And you can draw your own conclusion. I am not about to breach that principle.
Hmm. Why would the ABC delete that line from its transcript? A line that could be seen as sly confirmation that shadow cabinet never approved Latham’s policy switch? Over to you, Media Watch! (Remember, too, this earlier example of ABC transcript-altering.)
