Kevin Rudd won power in 2007 as a transformational leader. Not only did he offer a sweeping agenda for reform and renovation, he offered himself as a moral leader promising to satisfy ''higher needs''. Yes, it was partly about his ostentatious embrace of Christianity. Most unusually for an Australian political leader, he made a feature of his religion. He delivered Sunday political sermons with his family church as backdrop. He urged Labor not to allow the conservatives to monopolise God, as the US Republican Party seems to have done. From opposition, he wrote an essay in The Monthly magazine where he claimed God as a supporter of progressive causes, the causes that Rudd Labor would go on to champion. He openly called on the churches to act as political advocates: ''The purpose of the church is not to be socially agreeable; it is to speak robustly to the state on behalf of those who cannot speak effectively for themselves. The church's increasing engagement on the environment - and specifically on global climate change - falls into a similar category.'' Churchiness was important to many, but also a bit offputting to others, so when he was found to have visited a New York strip club, it was reassuringly human. His approval rating, already high, went higher.

But Rudd's reach for moral leadership went beyond associating himself with organised religion. Consider two of his first acts as Prime Minister. The first was to sign the Kyoto Protocol, promising to address the ''great economic and moral challenge of our time''. The second was to apologise to Aborigines. Both were things that John Howard had extravagantly refused to do. Howard had given Rudd a precious gift. Both acts by Rudd were popular, as testified by the polls, and both bestowed a kind of moral benediction on a country that had been troubled by the government's failure to act on either. There was more. In his first months Rudd announced a pay freeze for federal parliamentarians. He appointed Australia's first female governor-general. He moved the primary prime ministerial residence from Kirribilli House back to The Lodge. Rudd's critics were scornful of his symbolism. They completely missed an important dimension of Rudd as leader. Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities. And while each symbolic act touched different invisible realities, the uber-appeal was moral. Religious voters and atheists alike found in Rudd a moral leader.

The earthier end of Rudd's reform agenda was also transformational in the sense that it was hugely ambitious and sweepingly broad. Rudd offered, in a moral sense, to lead Australia in rightness, and, in a very practical sense, to transform Australia as well. And Australians believed, and wanted to believe. Rudd's popularity clocked the highest sustained approval of any leader in the 39-year history of the Nielsen poll. Whenever the Coalition attacked Rudd on a personal level, it inevitably backfired. The Liberals scratched their heads. ''Whenever a situation arises in which Rudd's integrity and character is called into question, the voters will always back Rudd,'' wrote the poll analyst Andrew Catsaras in 2009. ''This is something the Coalition still does not understand.'' It was easy to miss. It was thoroughly unconventional. Julia Gillard saw it. She said at the time that Rudd had a ''special connection with the Australian people''. This was the chief reason she accepted her position as deputy, with Rudd as leader, when they first joined forces. But events since show that she didn't understand it. In an interview with the Herald this week to mark the approach of the first anniversary of his downfall as Prime Minister, Rudd talked about his ''soul-searching''.

He volunteered the admission that he had come to realise he'd made three key mistakes, but before entering the confessional he wanted to hold a brief party. He rejoiced in some accomplishments. The list of policies launched, some completed and others not, is a reminder of the scope of his agenda. ''There's a lot to be proud of'' in the Rudd government record, he said, and then listed 15 points, in the following order and without referring to notes: Getting Australia through the global financial crisis without a recession; improvements to school education including a national curriculum; the school building program; the increase in the number of university places; the start of comprehensive national early childhood education; the health and hospital reform plan; the national broadband network; the increase in the renewable energy target; the moves to a new Asia-Pacific regional framework that is now being delivered through the East Asia summit; the elevation of the Group of 20 countries as a global economic manager; the announced defence build-up; the proposed increase to compulsory superannuation; the increase to the formula for setting the value of pensions; the child-care rebate; and ''the beginning of a very long journey with indigenous Australians''. This partial list, which is conveniently free of some of the big policy muddles that he bequeathed Gillard such as the asylum seeker mess, is nonetheless a reminder of the breathtakingly activist agenda that Rudd pursued. The remarkable thing is that it was not the impossibly ambitious scale of his agenda that brought him down. Although he sustained some injuries on failures of competence - pink batts, anyone? - these were not the real problem.

Rudd's government was brought to its knees when he broke his promise on climate change. That decision ruptured the Rudd government's support in the polls. From that moment, Rudd was unable to do anything right, in the public's assessment. In other words, it was not the transformational aspect of Rudd that broke Rudd's government. It was when he breached the covenant at its core. His decision to defer the emissions trading scheme was a breach of a key promise, but it was also the abrogation of his claim to moral leadership. It broke the basic ethical rule that you should keep your promises, but it also tore Rudd's robes as leader in the larger march of righteousness. Because, in that single decision, Rudd descended from being a transformational leader to a transactional one. Labor had panicked at Tony Abbott's successful attack on the emissions trading scheme. Rudd had fallen prey to the panic. By deferring the ETS, Rudd was saying, in effect, ''if the polls say this reform is difficult, I am prepared to change my position on it - scrub the bit about the great moral challenge''. That is not the act of a great leader, not the act of a determined leader, and certainly not the act of a moral leader. By saying ''I will conduct the transactions I need to in order to hold power'', Rudd had joined the ruck.

Gillard offered a cut-down Rudd agenda, even less ambitious. She is a classic transactional leader. Tony Abbott is in the same mould, although he has changed his position on the key issues so often and with such little provocation that he is perhaps an ultra-transactional leader. Australia is deeply unhappy with this offering. If you add the approval ratings of Gillard and Abbott together, it's the lowest since Labor was led by Paul Keating and the Coalition by Alexander Downer 16 years ago. Labor faces an electoral wipe-out of the same dimensions as NSW Labor has just suffered. The Coalition is in a very strong position. But it is not being endorsed as an alternative government. It is offering itself as a pure protest against Labor. Rudd, a year after losing the leadership, is newly penitent. In his interview with the Herald, he has admitted error on the three principal criticisms of his government - that he was wrong to defer action on climate change, that he was wrong to shut his door to his Labor colleagues, that he was wrong to rely solely on the advice of inexperienced whizkids. His downfall was ''a learning experience''. In effect, he is presenting himself as a reformed character and an improved political leader. Gillard is in desperate trouble. Rudd is on the leadership catwalk, parading his credentials, without actually planning a challenge.

He is admitting his mistakes, he said, because ''my mum always said, 'You know, Kev, the truth isn't a bad strategy.' I think mum's right.'' This is Rudd, a moral politician, the penitent. He is asking for forgiveness and a second chance. Is a transformational leader able to transform himself? The polls strongly suggest that the voting public is ready to accept him. His caucus colleagues are a harder sell. Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor. Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU