Opposition leader says Malcolm Turnbull bowed to the wishes of conservative colleagues by opposing Kevin Rudd’s bid to become UN secretary general

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Bill Shorten says Malcolm Turnbull “danced to the string-pulling” of rightwing puppet masters by refusing to support Kevin Rudd’s bid to be United Nations secretary general.

On Monday video was released showing Rudd criticising the decision, as media reports suggested more cabinet ministers spoke to support Rudd than oppose him before the prime minister and deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, intervened to kill the bid.

Turnbull’s position on Rudd’s bid is now highly contested, with treasurer Scott Morrison claiming Turnbull expressed concern in cabinet last week and Rudd claiming the prime minister had supported his bid last year before ultimately reneging on the promise.

In a video posted to Facebook by Labor’s federal election candidate for Brisbane, Pat O’Neill, Rudd described Turnbull as a “brick wall” who stood in the way of his ambition to become UN secretary general.

Speaking at a Young Labor event in Brisbane on Saturday, Rudd warned that hard work doesn’t always guarantee success.

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“I’ve got a very dark deep secret for you, sometimes it’ll turn to shit and sometimes it won’t turn out perfectly,” he said.

“I’ve had a modest experience of that, just a little bit, including yesterday ... [it’s] part of the collective scar tissue of life.”

Rudd said he had sought to “make a huge difference” as prime minister, foreign minister and then on the international stage, until he was thwarted by a “brick wall” in the form of Turnbull.

On Tuesday the Australian Financial Review reported that in the cabinet discussion on Thursday one more minister spoke in favour of Rudd’s bid than against, but Turnbull and Joyce then met separately and decided to veto the proposed nomination.

Speaking on ABC’s AM on Tuesday, Shorten said Turnbull had a “fair bit of explaining to do about his actions”, referring to that report.

Shorten said the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, had thought she was doing the right thing by backing Rudd “and probably clearly [thought] she had some sort of agreement or some sort of signal from Turnbull it was the right thing to do”.

Bishop prepared a cabinet submission knowing the prime minister had some reservations about Rudd, but she proceeded, with consultation, in the expectation that he would follow the bipartisan practice of elevating former prime ministers to international roles.

Shorten referred to reports that the department of foreign affairs and trade had backed Rudd’s bid and to Rudd’s own recollections, in the form of letters he released documenting his claims that Turnbull gave him private undertakings supporting his nomination.

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“It’s clear to me that Mr Turnbull has put his own political survival ahead of prior positions he may have had,” Shorten said.

“It’s as simple as this for me: the rightwing puppet masters of Mr Turnbull’s government pulled the strings, and he has danced to the string pulling.”

Conservative critics of Rudd’s bid included the treasurer, Scott Morrison, and the immigration minister, Peter Dutton.

On Monday Turnbull avoided direct questions about whether he had ever supported Rudd’s ambition to be the UN secretary general, arguing his conversations with the former Labor prime minister were private.

Turnbull said some of Rudd’s correspondence was “at odds with my recollection”, contradicting his account of one meeting in December at which Rudd claimed Turnbull supported his bid.

But when asked whether he had given him support at other times, the prime minister said he would not “debate” Rudd about confidential conversations.

Asked on Radio National on Tuesday about reports he backed Bishop’s support of Rudd’s bid, the attorney general, George Brandis, refused to disclose cabinet deliberations but said he supported the prime minister’s decision.

“An orthodox cabinet process means every member of cabinet supports every decision of cabinet, and I adhere to that process,” he said.

Brandis described Rudd’s correspondence as “self-serving” and noted he had not released Turnbull’s replies.

“The irony is that the people who are now crying crocodile tears over the fate of Mr Rudd are the very people in the Labor party who decided he wasn’t fit to be the prime minister of Australia.”

The conservative senator Cory Bernardi, an outspoken critic of Rudd’s bid, has claimed that Labor frontbenchers have thanked him for opposing Rudd.

“I’ve had so many emails, I’ve had so many text messages and phone calls of support from Labor frontbenchers saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you – this bloke would have done enormous damage to Australia’s international relations’,” he told Sky News on Monday.