Kevin Rudd discusses the things that matter

Friday 31 August 2012
 
FORMER Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke of the need for Australian academics to become more engaged in the public space at the Eureka Street 21st birthday celebration in Melbourne on 17 August.
 
Speaking with Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan on the theme of ‘Things that Matter’, Mr Rudd opened up on a range of issues including the national apology to the Stolen Generations and the place of ‘forgiving and forgetting’ in national politics.
 
Fr Brennan began by harking back to the launch of Eureka Street 21 years ago by Tony Fitzgerald, and asked Mr Rudd to reflect on the legacy of the Fitzgerald Inquiry on politics in Queensland. He also mentioned the times he and Mr Rudd had butted heads in politics, and asked the recently deposed Prime Minister how he dealt with the past as a politician.
 
‘What happens for so many people who are in political life is they carry it around for a lifetime and it poisons their soul’, said Mr Rudd.
 
‘If you’re someone like me, and you accumulate a “who am I going to get next” list, you know, you just run out of paper! It just doesn’t work – apart from being bad for your health.’
 
Mr Rudd opened up about the time leading up to the national apology, and his fears about how the apology would be received.
 
‘When I actually delivered the apology, I feared two things. That Aboriginal people would, given the experience of the centuries, have said “no”, or worse that white communities would have engaged in a racial backlash’, he said.
 
‘I think the key to it is not the words that I spoke at all, the key to it was the open hearts of Aboriginal people, who were willing after all we had done, to say “okay, let’s move on”.’
 
Moderator for the conversation, ABC journalist Latika Bourke, asked Mr Rudd what was the one thing he would change about politics. Admitting it was a ‘utopian dream’,  he said he would like to see more space given to the discussion of real issues – things that matter in the long term of the country – away from the cut and thrust of everyday politics.
 
He also said that academics needed to play a part in that discussion. In the United States, academics were clamouring to be heard in the public space. However, this didn’t happen in Australia.
 
‘With some notable exceptions, I find our national academic climate timorous and disengaged. Perhaps through fear of our public funding models, that if you speak out against the regime of the day you get whacked’, he said.
 
A Discerning Conversation With Kevin Rudd was held at the Carillo Gantner Theatre, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, Melbourne, on Friday 17 August 2012 and is the inaugural event in the Eureka Street Discerning Conversation series.

View the full talk here: http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=32775