Resurrected Kevin says he is determined to get major policy settings right before going to the polls
At his first full press conference after once again becoming prime minister, Kevin Rudd managed to pick a fight on asylum policy with the Coalition and on carbon pricing with the Greens. Those who put him back in the job could not have been more pleased. This was Kevin Rudd 2.0.
Rudd was prodding the same policy weak spot Julia Gillard has been prosecuting for weeks – the obvious contradiction between Tony Abbott's policy to turn back asylum seeker boats and Indonesia's very public and repeated insistence that it will not co-operate with the policy nor accept the boats back.
He warned it could trigger a "conflict" with Indonesia, later clarifying that he was "talking about a diplomatic conflict … but you have to be wary about where diplomatic conflict goes … you end up with a pretty robust diplomatic conflict and you become a little bit concerned about where that heads."
Pushed about whether he had meant an armed conflict he clarified, "I certainly hope it doesn't, I don't believe it would."
A deeply aggrieved shadow foreign affairs spokesperson Julie Bishop appeared almost immediately to renounce his statement as "deeply irresponsible, ridiculous and absurd" because the Coalition intended to turn boats around in international waters rather than in Indonesia's territorial zone. But then she had to try to explain the discrepancy all over again – achieving what was undoubtedly Rudd's aim of turning the focus back onto the opposition.
And he did not rule out bringing forward the starting date for a floating carbon price – in technical terms an end to the politically damaging carbon tax.
Rudd said he would be speaking with his cabinet about it. Any change would need to be legislated, and would impact on other aspects of the carbon pricing scheme, making it practically difficult to start a floating price before July 2014 – just one year before it would be due to happen anyway.
But the very suggestion of a change also brought an angry reaction from Senator Christine Milne, who helped negotiate the carbon pricing regime. Again Labor strategists were delighted.
"Do you think it hurts us to be having a blue about carbon pricing with the Greens?," one asked, rhetorically.
Besides changing the conversation on both of Labor's political weak spots, Rudd gave little away about any of his own policies – a commitment to proceed with the schools funding reforms and a two-week extension of the deadline for negotiations with the states, signals that he would also be taking a fairly tough line on asylum policy, the predictable promise of economic responsibility, an open door to some changes on carbon pricing and – the possibility – somewhere down the track of a plebiscite or referendum to legalise gay marriage.
But there was also a rationale for the vague answers – this was a kinder, gentler Kevin. He was determined to get "major policy settings right" before he went to the polls.
Former communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy once accused him of having "contempt for the Cabinet. Contempt for Cabinet members. Julia Gillard said he had "very difficult and very chaotic work patterns"
Resurrected Kevin said he was taking briefings on almost everything, and that "If I have learnt one thing from my previous period as prime minister, and I have learnt quite a lot, is the absolute need for proper orderly decision-making process...proper orderly processes of Cabinet decision making." He had promised colleagues "anything major" would go through Cabinet. The only caveat was a crisis, or as the prime minister put it, "when stuff happens."
Since he won't announce until the weekend who will replace the six ministers who stood down from the frontbench as soon as he returned to the prime ministership, and they won't be sworn in until next Monday, that also provided an immediate out for any specific questions about policy.
But there were some clues. The increasing number of asylum boats was risking "a fragmenting of support for the system of orderly migration" and it would be delusional not to recognise that some of those arriving on boats were "economic migrants" rather than refugees. If he decides to go to next weeks' scheduled meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the issue would be discussed.
He did not rule out bringing forward the starting date for a floating carbon price - in technical terms an end to the politically damaging carbon tax. He said he would be speaking with his Cabinet about it. But any change would need to be legislated, and would impact on other aspects of the carbon pricing scheme, making it practically difficult to start a floating price before July 214 - just one year before it would be due to happen anyway.
He again declared that the China-driven mining boom was "at an end", with big consequences for Australia, and that it was not an economic situation in which any government could bring the budget immediately back to surplus.
And he challenged Abbott again to a debate at the National Press Club, this time on the Coalition's claim about the national debt and the deficit. He has said he is happy to debate Abbott every week.
With some inside the new cabinet arguing the government should stick with the 14 September election date so that the already legislated local government referendum could proceed, and Rudd keen to attend the G20 meeting in September in St Petersburg, the timing of the federal election is again up in the air, and Rudd did not absolutely rule out the 43rd parliament sitting again.
And as ministers who have served for decades left parliament for the final time, and Julia Gillard packed to leave the Lodge, the man whose supporters triggered three ballots for the Labor leadership during a single term of government went out of his way to pay tribute to his predecessor and demand she be treated with "appropriate respect and dignity".
He did, however, point out that the same treatment had not been meted out to him when he was deposed in 2010.
He said he had told colleagues "I will not tolerate anyone going out there and trashing Julia's reputation. I've had some experience of that and it's not pleasant."
For those in the room the press conference was like travelling back in time, the same folksy language, the same slight convoluted rhetorical style.
But in the electorate, for now at least according to early polling, and in the minds of Labor tacticians, the Rudd restoration seems to have achieved its aim of putting Labor back into the electoral game.