“Nothing comes close to the wild parabola of Kevin Rudd’s journey to the latest plot point in his story: appointment as Australia’s ambassador to the US,” writes “The Gadfly” columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.
SCREENWRITERS often talk about their main character’s “arc”. I first heard it during my Fellowship to the Australian Film and Television School.
It’s a nifty shorthand to describe the principal’s role in the story, the ups and downs before the big climax and the happy ending.
Hollywood has a few favored conventions for that trajectory, but not one comes close to the wild parabola of Kevin Rudd’s journey to the latest plot point in his story: appointment as Australia’s ambassador to the US.
In 2007, I spent many pleasant hours with Kevin at his Brisbane home and in Canberra researching his biography. It was published by Penguin that year, and a second edition arrived in 2008 when he snatched The Lodge from the gnarled claws of John Winston Howard.
Since then, Kevin’s arc has taken some wild twists and turns. And part of the reason I divined from those long talks. For Kevin – like his successors Tony Abbott and especially Scott Morrison – believes he’s on a mission from God. It began in early childhood in a divided home where the young Kev was the favoured son of a devout Catholic mother to whom he was deeply attached.
They shared the horror of homelessness after the death of his father, spending nights sleeping in the family car. Indeed, after she died, he wore her wedding ring on his little finger. And though he later presented as non-denominational, it was this religious passion that motivated his unrestrained outrage at Julia Gillard’s “coup” that ripped him from The Lodge.
Fellow God-botherer Tony Abbott was happy to turn the misogynistic screws until Julia was broken by Labor’s hard men and Kevin returned to “save the furniture”.
That was yet another plot point in the Rudd screenplay on the public stage. But already a new prayerful pathway was taking shape. It was one that I suspected had long been dormant in his imaginings: he’d become Secretary-General of the UN. Now that was a big one. It would at last allow him to shout like Jimmy Cagney in the climax to his arc in the classic “White Heat” – “Made it, Ma, top of the world!”
So it was off to America where the former First Lady soon to turn presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, became the target of his undoubted charm. He even crossed the political line back home and lobbied the new PM, Malcolm Turnbull for support. But then, from the depths of hell came Donald J Trump and the whole delicate fabric collapsed.
By now Kevin’s arc was coming to resemble that of the Prophet Job and he even appeared with a white beard to accompany Job’s anguished appeal in Chapter 30 verses 20-30: “I cry out to you God, but you do not answer… You turn on me ruthlessly; you snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm…”
But then, Hosannah! The latest rival God-botherer, Scott Morrison, surrenders to his own religious mania and gathers more ministries than even the Good Lord himself could juggle, then crashes to earth, almost squashing an eight-year-old boy.
And Lo! The happy warrior Anthony Albanese, whom Kevin had made Deputy PM while saving the furniture, is now in The Lodge.
Redemption!
So, from ambo to Washington DC and the final prize beckons once more, the golden orb atop Jacob’s ladder – the UN Secretary-Generalship.
Hollywood hasn’t seen an arc like it since Cecil B DeMille.
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