[Keith Webb]

Source: Daily Telegraph

This is fascinating, funny and tragic all in one article. This is only part of it - it's an amazing read.

COULD Kevin Rudd be this vindictive? Our complex, brilliant, idiosyncratic, angry former prime minister, seething like an exiled prince in the north, is widely regarded as the likeliest source of the most damaging allegations to surface about his deposer, Julia Gillard.

In the crucial first weeks of her election campaign, Gillard has been forced to fight anonymous allegations that she reneged on a deal to give Rudd more time as leader, and that she opposed pension and parental-leave policies in confidential Cabinet meetings.

All the while, Rudd has played the humble Member for Griffith, smiling for the cameras, playing with schoolchildren and pretending he can't hear journalists' questions.

The leaks may have come from other politicians or staffers, authorised by Rudd or not. They may be old information, gleaned by journalists when Rudd was still PM.

Or they may be a pieced-together account by staffers who weren't in the Cabinet room, but who subsequently heard reports.
Whether or not Rudd is deliberately trying to lose Labor the election - and one day return to his throne - he is undoubtedly the beneficiary. And he has a long history of leaking against his own side.

The people who know Rudd best tell of his coldness and his kindness, his brutality, his consideration and his conceit.

Today, former foreign minister Alexander Downer reveals he regularly used Rudd to leak damaging information against his then-Opposition Labor colleagues during the early 2000s.

"I don't use the c-word, but I do use the f-word pretty freely, and I can tell you that Kevin Rudd is a f****** awful person," Downer says.

Others have plenty more to say about Rudd.

"I think he has some form of Asperger's syndrome," broadcaster Alan Jones says.

"We called it 'the icebox'," says one of Rudd's many disgruntled ex-staffers, describing the way Rudd would freeze out anyone who gave him bad news or tried to argue.

"If Rudd was p***** off with you, he would stop asking you to do things.

"You'd end up with nothing to do, and he'd give your work to other people. And if you disagreed about anything, he'd shut you out."

But ice-cold was better than blazing hot. When Rudd kicked a hole in the wall of his own office, screaming with anger, none of his staff quite knew what to say.

It was 2007 and Rudd, as Opposition leader, had just conducted an aggressive press conference in Sydney. He returned to his Phillip St office and let everyone know how strong his rage could be. "We all saw it - all the staff," one witness says. "It was extraordinary."

What frequently set Rudd off was the feeling that he was unappreciated - like the flop of his speech before the UN general assembly in September, 2008.

The UN auditorium was three-quarters empty, and Rudd's then-chief of staff, David Epstein, nodded off. That was bad enough, but when Rudd got wind of the Australian news reports mocking his appearance, he lost it.

In his private suite on the jet home, surrounded by staff and RAAF personnel, Rudd raged.

"He actually punched the wall of the plane," one observer says. This time, luckily, he didn't put his foot through it.