Today on my prayer pilgrimage I have been catching up on my reading and I note three reflections from a longer article by Tim Costello on Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership:
Who is leading who? – leaders or opinion polling?
The polls delivered Kevin Rudd the Lodge. The same pre-election polls took it away. But does this teach a lesson that our leaders are to behave as mere ciphers? Rather than pursue the national interest, even when unpopular, it seems now leaders must be in lock-step with polling. Principles and vision are apparently secondary to what the polls tell us swinging voters in the critical marginal seats want. “Stop the boats, ditch the mining tax, don’t raise my electricity prices to fight climate change.”
Perhaps it’s a case of “blessed be the polls and their interpreters, the faction leaders”.
A leader juggling national compassion and national fear:
In my mind, he (Rudd) did not always faithfully represent Bonhoeffer. For example, when he called people smugglers vile scum, he moved away from the Bonhoeffer who was first arrested by the Nazis on people smuggling charges, for getting Jews out of Germany. Only later did the Nazis charge and execute him for the assassination plot against Hitler. I remain impressed by Rudd as a self-confessed Christian leader who stood up against the sentiments of many Christians: Christians who read the same Bible and spout, “I will vote for the party that stops or turns back the boats, whatever the cost.”
Rudd in his last week tackled this magnificently in front of the Australian Christian Lobby, who met in Old Parliament House last Monday evening. On being questioned, Rudd rejected the disconnect between the Bible and the sort of refugee populism that does not blanch at kids in detention and the temporary protection visas that sent many mad. He reminded us of the prophetic tradition of the orphan and stranger (and refugee) as the object of God’s love. And the shame of Australia’s participation at the 1938 Evian conference, when we refused to accept any Jews because we did not want a racial problem. Out of the moral failure of the Holocaust, the UN convention on Refugees was born. Christians should remember this is the policy that expresses the story of the Good Samaritan.
A leader who increased Australia’s generosity through increasing our overseas aid:
Unmentioned in his (Rudd’s) list of achievements at his final press conference was one that I think is his finest legacy. He lifted our overseas aid program by more than $1 billion to date because he saw development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty as something that was right. Against the Howard government’s refusal to budge, he took an electoral risk. He promised to lift our aid to 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015 or 50c in every $100 because this would help cut the number of hungry and absolutely poor. Thankfully, this promise is now bipartisan under Tony Abbott’s leadership. As an internationalist, Rudd’s work with the G20 and creating a financial architecture response to avoid an economic meltdown in Australia was laudatory.
Yes, he loved Australia but he saw beyond our shores and knew that we needed a global vision beyond defence, trade and diplomacy, and that was advancing development for the world’s poor. Vale Kevin Rudd.
Tim Costello is chief executive, World Vision Australia.
(* Please note that it was not Tim Costello, but The Australian newspaper that added the heading line I will miss Kevin Rudd, a great Christian leader brought down by his party’s factions)
I find it interesting to reflect on the nature of leadership in conjunction with my previous article on William Wilberforce and Co. ‘Liberating the Captives’:
Is Australian political leadership to be towards a healthier society or the paralysis of clinging on to political power with power brokers interpreting opinion polls ‘day by day’?
