The former attorney-general Nicola Roxon has launched a scathing attack on the Rudd years, slamming Kevin Rudd as a ''bastard'' and a rude and dysfunctional leader.
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''Removing Kevin was an act of political bastardry, for sure,'' she said. ''But this … was made possible only because Kevin had been such a bastard himself to so many people already.''
But in giving the John Button lecture on Wednesday night, Ms Roxon also acknowledged that while Labor did the right thing by getting rid of Mr Rudd in June 2010, the party did it in a clumsy way. ''I think we had all the right reasons to act but I think we were clumsy and short-sighted in the way we did it,'' she said.
The former frontbencher quit politics at the 2013 election to spend more time with her family. As the member for Gellibrand, who was health minister in the Rudd government and later Australia's first female attorney-general, Ms Roxon also suggested Mr Rudd had a messiah complex.
''Accept that you are not always right and cannot always fix everything. Kevin had a fatal attraction to everyone else's problems.''
