YOU CAN’T have it both ways; treating all and sundry as mere plebeians and shit beneath your feet, then claiming to be “hurt” when called on it. Yet Kevin Rudd seeks to do just that, and in so doing waves a red rag at every individual he has ever roughed up or abused in almost 25 years in public life.

I was originally going to write a short post on an article appearing in the Canberra Times yesterday, of all places; it seems even traditional Labor friends like Uncle Fairfax have little time for Heavy Kevvie, and the article — accessed here — is a compelling little read about the self-obsessed and downright deluded little world in which he lives.

Seven years after he first became Labor leader (and with many years prior to that in and around the public eye) it’s surprising anyone still feels the need to say this: Kevin Rudd’s greatest strength is the ignorance of most of the electorate of his true nature, and his greatest weakness is the risk they will find out, en masse, soon enough to turn on him.

There is, of course, 10 days to go until polling day.

And it’s relevant because in the wake of the latest manifestation of his true nature as a pig of an individual — almost reducing a Sky News makeup artist to tears ahead of a “community forum” in Brisbane last week — Rudd has apparently judged it necessary to start talking about what a decent chap he really is.

It’s dangerous ground to tread, and not just because of the ghoulish memories of the “real Julia” debacle it conjures up.

A report in Melbourne’s Herald Sun yesterday quotes an interview Rudd did with the Seven Network, in which he says that “commentary” to the effect that he has a “rude personality” is hurtful to both him and to his family.

The poor petal…”Toughen up, Buttercup” would seem apt advice to a man who has not only spent 24 active years in politics and government, but who is — by repute — a master of the art of dishing out what he is incapable of taking.

Seeking to refute the notion that he is a rude man, Rudd said “anyone who has worked with me closely for a period of time will have a conclusion that is vastly different to what is run in Liberal Party political advertisements.”

Well, published by the Liberal Party the advertisements to which he alludes (like this) may well have been; the problem for Rudd is that the entire content of those advertisements has been provided, publicly and on the record, by his own closest colleagues.

Just like this sterling effort was, too, although nobody seems keen to admit leaking it.

With no apparent irony, Rudd said he hoped the Australian public would not be fooled.

And that would seem a vain hope indeed, because there is far too much evidence on the record to the contrary, and very little of it derives from Liberal Party TVCs.

Like the time he reduced a stewardess on a RAAF flight to tears for bringing him the wrong meal.

Like the time he was thrown out of a strip bar in New York, intoxicated, for alleged improper conduct.

Like the time he constructively described the Chinese leadership — with whom he has spent years trying to ingratiate himself with on the basis that he speaks their language — as “rat fuckers,” which they learned of in short order.

Indeed, like the time he deeply upset a makeup artist in Brisbane; Rudd says it was a “misunderstanding” and that the lady in question deleted the Facebook post that started the furore. But such a justification ignores the fact the post was removed only after senior Sky News figures pressed her to do so.

I’ve only ever laid eyes on Rudd in the flesh once; 20 years ago I saw him, at lunchtime, shoulder his way ahead of about 15 people to get served quickly at the cafe under Education House in Brisbane. Even then people knew who he was, and even that day the muttered consensus was along the lines of “what an arsehole.”

But plenty of other pointers to what Rudd is really like derive from those very people who — in Rudd’s own words — have worked with him closely for a period of time.

The endlessly revolving door on his office, for starters, with an unprecedented turnover of Prime Ministerial staff, is not suggestive of an amiable taskmaster.

Indeed, the stories of staff being driven into the ground over 12, 14, 16 hour days on Rudd’s first stint as PM are commonly known.

There would be no Liberal Party TVCs featuring the bulk of his most senior ministerial colleagues if there was nothing behind their damning indictments, in unison, of Rudd.

And the fact no fewer than nine ministers walked out of the Cabinet within 24 hours of Rudd’s reconfirmation as Labor leader does nothing to dispel their views in favour of his: one could be passed off as a dummy spit, two maybe. But a third of the ministry?

Even during this campaign, there are plenty of stories of Rudd keeping people waiting for hours at a time and in some instances simply failing to show up for arranged meetings and events — sometimes after first digging them out of bed in the small hours or the morning.

It goes without saying that in complaining about people having the temerity to air their views of him — which is no more than he deserves — Rudd has made himself into a target.

Nobody questions the humanity of either Rudd himself or of his family.

But in squawking — to use the vernacular — he’s shown a soft underbelly and a thin skin, which sit alongside his notoriously fragile glass jaw and a famed and volcanic temper.

He is now fair game for anyone who has worked with him — colleagues, associates, staffers — who harbours a real grievance against him to now step forward.

To date, it is universally acknowledged that Julia Gillard and those loyal to her have shown remarkable restraint during the election campaign.

Some of them might not feel so constrained now.

Rudd has waved the red rag at the bull, so to speak, and the cocky taunts about how decent and courteous and charming he is will only enrage the beast even further.

It will be interesting to see if any of the (significant number of) people Rudd has rubbed the wrong way over the years now emerge from the woodwork to tip a bucket over him.

FOR A GOVERNMENT with a truly shocking record when it comes to projects, budgets and commercial projections, Kevin Rudd’s promise that a high speed rail link between Brisbane and Melbourne will be built by 2058 is ridiculous. This is election campaign dross at its most crass, and deserves to be ignored.

First things first: I think the idea of a bullet train network down the country’s eastern seaboard is a brilliant one in principle, and one which could be extended west; the idea of a train trip to Sydney in a little over two hours opens all kinds of possibilities — including, for example, interstate job commuting and an explosion in domestic tourism.

I have been reading a report in The Australian which details an apparent ALP election promise to build such a network, announced today by Rudd and his deputy Anthony Albanese, and I have to say it is easily the most ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky excuse for a silly election eve stunt I have come across in more than 25 years of watching Australian politics.

Rudd’s immediate promise — as I can ascertain — is that if he wins the election he will pass legislation to reserve land for a rail corridor between Brisbane and Melbourne, via Sydney and Canberra, and spend $52 million on a new bureaucracy to “finalise station locations and to develop a business case.”

(More Canberra bureaucrats with backsides the shape of their chairs…just what we need.)

Beyond this, the whole thing is little more than hyperbole.

Thanks to the flat topography of the country’s inland, the smartest place to run the rail lines would be well away from coastal areas with branch lines to places like Sydney and Canberra; this runs up the coast by the sound of it, meaning sparse available land will be exponentially more expensive to acquire — to say nothing of the routes being longer.

On the Melbourne to Sydney leg, the train would stop in Shepparton, Albury-Wodonga, Wagga Wagga, Canberra, the Southern Highlands…and no doubt all the other places in the “I’ve Been Everywhere” song too (try this while you read on).

The point: with so many stops it’s difficult to envisage how truly meaningful efficiencies of time can be realised.

It is said to cost $114 billion in today’s dollars, which in Labor Party terms means closer to $500 billion.

Albanese — rather helpfully — suggests the project will return $2.10 for every dollar invested. “This is a project that stacks up,” he said.

Given Labor’s experience to date with the National Broadband Network, however — with costs already ballooning out to almost $100 billion from an initial projection of $37 billion — this sort of assertion of commercial feasibility is a dangerous one for Labor types to make.

The proposal satisfies what Paul Keating termed “the vision thing,” with the rider that the vision required needs to be unlimited in case the eventual destination is never sighted.

But there’s more to this latest cack-brained Labor Party announcement than just that.

There’s something for Communist Party Greens voters, with the contention that “this is about a low-carbon, high-productivity future” with no elaboration as to how it might be about either.

There’s something for a) the business community and b) anyone worried about the end of the mining boom, with Albanese stating it would create 10,000 jobs during construction. But in a country of 25 million people, so what?

There’s something to allow Labor to avoid the politically hazardous decision to bite the bullet and build Sydney’s second airport at Badgery’s Creek, with the unbelievable claim that such a rail network would absorb up to 40% of airline travellers across the equivalent air routes it covers.

And there’s something to have a laugh about, too, with the government’s early proposals calling for a 67km tunnel to provide access to the Sydney CBD. Yeah, right.

It is true that so-called “nation building” projects of this nature are exactly the sort of infrastructure governments of all political stripes ought to be embarking on.

This, however — replete with a litany of delivery dates including 2030, 2035 and 2058, take your pick — is precisely the kind of stunt the ALP now appears driven to resort to, in a clear attempt to bamboozle voters with bullshit over an unbelievable scheme unlikely to ever see a sod turned, let alone constructed in its entirety.

And of course, far from offering something voters could hold the government accountable to, the likelihood of Rudd being dead (or alive at age 73) by the first of those dates in 2030 would seem to absolve he and his cohorts of all responsibility.

Exactly, I’m sure, as it’s intended to.

Ten out of ten for “the vision thing,” but this garbage — clearly — doesn’t stack up, the earnest protestations of Anthony Albanese to the contrary notwithstanding.

And for the record: the Greens are critical, on the curious basis that they were years ahead of the ALP in advocating such a rail link, and with the inference this is all too late now.

Read into that whatever you like, but it seems to typify the turbidity and opacity of thought that is characteristic of Greens policy nowadays.