The Milky Bar kid

“I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist.” – Kevin Rudd

Rejecting capitalism and replacing it with an authentic democratic socialist society is much more imperative today than it was since voting was first granted in Australia over a century ago. It is somewhat paradoxical that throughout those years most of its progressive governments have done very little or absolutely nothing to achieve their fundamental aims and objectives.

This requires using the authority bestowed by the franchise to represent organised labour and reduce inequality between the rich and poor or the powerful and the powerless. In the past, many egalitarian parliamentarians used to apologise for this abject failure but now they boast about it.

Australia’s most popular dentist once served under Wayne Goss who eventually became Queensland’s premier following the notorious Fitzgerald Inquiry and subsequent state election back in 1989. Meanwhile Kevin Rudd’s wife, Therese Rein established a rehabilitation services provider company. It enigmatically obtained several lucrative government contracts following auspicious amendments to workers compensation legislation and the organisation flourished accordingly.

Greg Rudd, an elder brother of our former prime minister was engaged as a lobbyist for two companies that were awarded controversial multimillion dollar contracts for offshore detention processing facilities in Papua New Guinea.

The constitution of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) claims it is a democratic socialist organisation but during the 2007 election campaign its irascible show pony embraced free market fundamentalism and renounced socialism as an arcane 19^th century ideology.

The great financial crisis soon tested his leadership credentials, which included development and implementation of the Pink Batts home insulation program in a catastrophic attempt to attenuate construction industry redundancies. This let the market rip scheme was developed on the back of a paper napkin in an airport departure lounge. It abandoned a sensible, cautious and practicable regional brokerage model over a prudent five-year schedule in favour of an expeditious direct delivery prototype.

Extremely ambitious targets were established, which involved a fifteen-fold increase in insulation activities and required cramming the equivalent of a year’s work into each month and sustaining the hectic workload over thirty months. It was a disaster waiting to happen and it did, with hundreds of house fires and four fatalities, which included the electrocution of three installers and another death from heat exhaustion.

Some years later, The Milky Bar Kid was bestowed with life membership of the ALP although rustication would have been a much more condign option for the petulant chameleon. Indeed, the only parole for bereaved families following the home insulation program debacle is death or dementia. Meanwhile, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd carousel degenerated into a relentless cacophony of internecine bickering. This was exacerbated by extensive cabinet leaks and retribution, which reinforced that old political chestnut……Disunity is death.

In March 2023 the Milky Bar Kid became Australia’s ambassador to the United States of America. The former NSW premier, Kristina Keneally once described Kevin Rudd as a psychopathic narcissist. Other colleagues offered numerous terms of endearment such as a megalomaniac, a bully, a brat and a bastard. One former minister proclaimed he would chew his own arm off rather than ever work for Kevin Rudd again.

Whichever way it is sliced, diced and presented these were hardly favourable attributes for a such a critically sensitive diplomatic posting. The solipsistic show pony recently concluded his US sinecure. He will soon discover that those who he abused during his insatiable quest for power, he may well encounter them on the way back down. Peter Garrett, Kristina Keneally, Nicola Roxon and many other victims will be watching attentively.