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The dust has settled on the Turnbull's government's consideration of Kevin Rudd's tilt for the position of United Nations secretary-general and the wreckage is on clearer view, although clouds of bulldust remain. Almost everyone – the government, many commentators and Rudd – emerges from this saga with a whiff about them of an acrid, Parisian pissoir. Much of the sound and fury shows why Rudd is unsuitable for the position he lusts for and which he may still kid himself he has some chances, more likely fat hopes, of snavelling. First, a chronology. Shortly after the 2013 federal election, in which the Labor government was crushed by the Tony Abbott-led Coalition, Rudd asks new Foreign Minister Julie Bishop if she thinks he should go after the UN job. For reasons she must now rue, Bishop encourages Rudd and suggests he should see whether other countries will back him. As he goes about smooching them, one of Rudd's spokeswomen says "Mr Rudd is not a candidate". During 2015, the non-candidate meets Malcolm Turnbull (the then communications minister) in Sydney and in Rudd's digs in the east side of New York near the UN building. Rudd says Turnbull tells him "the government would be mad not to support me". After he becomes Minister, Turnbull meets Rudd in Canberra and, according to the latter, the former is "completely supportive". On that basis, Rudd says he continues "to go about my business unofficially speaking to governments around the world about myself", a topic of some fascination. In December 2015, Turnbull tells Rudd he needs to take the matter of the government's backing of his UN tilt to cabinet and, in April this year, Rudd writes to Turnbull to formally seek support for his nomination. Several weeks later, Turnbull tells Rudd he does not regard him as suitable for nomination. "I was genuinely stunned," Rudd says. No doubt after a good ear-chewing from you know whom, Bishop re-enters the fray and obtained Turnbull's agreement to reconsider backing Rudd after the election. Rudd continues to seek international support. At the end of July, cabinet considers a submission from the Foreign Minister on Rudd's nomination. From all reports, cabinet is split evenly over whether to support him and leaves it to Turnbull to decide. According to Rudd, Turnbull then tells him he has "neither the interpersonal skills nor the temperament to be a candidate" for the UN secretary-general position. With this hammer blow to his ambitions, Rudd goes into a fury of recriminations; in a long interview with The Australian; he says Turnbull led him on and then cut him off at the pass. He also releases letters he'd sent to Turnbull summarising their discussions and purporting to sustain his grievance. "I'm a bit puzzled by it all," Rudd says, before going on to reassure us that "in my heart of hearts, I'm an internationalist; in my heart of hearts, I'm a global citizen". The Belco boy has come a long way, although now he's up the creek. What's to be made of this schemozzle? The most obvious point is that Turnbull and his cabinet mishandled the business shockingly. They treated it too casually and underestimated the trouble Rudd, a person much disliked by many Coalition parliamentarians, might cause them. Moreover, cabinet's leaving it to the Prime Minister to decide is a dismaying flight from the kind of collective responsibility that's crucial in binding together the working of governments. The Financial Review's Phillip Coorey wrote: "It is unusual this was taken to cabinet in the first place." On the contrary, given the contentious nature of Rudd's nomination, there was every reason why it should have gone to cabinet even if, in the end, that lynchpin of the system shirked its responsibilities. But Coorey's slip-up is of nothing compared to those of his Fairfax colleague, Peter Hartcher. He wrote: "The decision for the Turnbull cabinet is this: is it more important to snub Rudd or empower Australia?" That's an entirely false dichotomy. Rudd's ascension to the UN position should have nothing to do with Australian empowerment. Indeed, if any UN secretaries-general were to use the position to "empower" their countries, they would be abusing their powers. Hartcher wrote: "Perhaps it wasn't explained to Turnbull. It's not a job offer ... it's not Turnbull's place to decide the suitability of the next secretary-general." After irrelevant observations about Turnbull not vetting members of the Olympic team (he's not asked to do so) but being happy to wish them luck, Hartcher went on to say "the Turnbull government has decided, without assessing the dozen others, to prejudge the contest and prejudge the Security Council". Whatever else Hartcher may know, he seems to know nothing about staff selection. The decision before the Turnbull government was whether to support Rudd for the secretary-general position. It could not in all honesty and good conscience do that without forming a view on his suitability. On Hartcher's logic, the federal government should back any Australians wanting to put themselves in the race. What if Abbott or Eddie Obeid were to throw in their hats? Further, Hartcher does his case no favours by citing a beneficiary of Rudd's largesse, Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson, who, in a Delphic way, tells the journo "this is an occasion where we need to be at our best as Australians". Hartcher may have an ally, however, in Geoff Raby, a former colleague of Rudd's in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a former ambassador to China. He is now chairman and chief executive of Geoff Raby & Associates, which describes itself as "a Beijing-based business advisory firm" helping businesses "run successful operations across cultures and borders, and informing public and private policymakers". Raby says "I think the question of suitability is not really one that's relevant in this big geopolitical game" and "I don't think pining on suitability is wise". Raby reckons it might have been better if officials had advised Turnbull that Rudd's chances were "exceedingly slim" and that it would therefore not be in Australia's interests to put effort and money into "a doomed campaign". But Raby doesn't believe the campaign is doomed. Thus, in a notable display of intellectual "agility", he says that, if the decision on the secretary-general position is delayed, Rudd's candidacy might be backed by Hillary Clinton if she becomes president of the United States. "Rudd's run at the job is far from over," he says. Well, maybe, Raby, but why would Clinton risk Rudd as a long-term irritant in relations between the US and Australia? Finally, in The Guardian, up pops Carl Ungerer from the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Without declaring he is a former adviser to Rudd, Ungerer writes Turnbull's decision was the "most churlish act of partisan politics in the history of Australian foreign policy". A sweeping judgment, to be sure, in a field likely to contain many thousands of contenders, all of which, dear readers, you can be assured Ungerer has assessed carefully. Nevertheless, unlike Raby and Hartcher, Ungerer believes in merit and says that, in selecting a new secretary-general, it "should override" geopolitical considerations. Indeed, he says that, if the decision was based on merit, "Rudd would get the job" and that "he would have brought his bureaucratic and diplomatic skills" to change the UN organisation "for the better". Not so fast, Carl. Rudd was a prime minister who trashed cabinet government, centralised policy formulation in his office, didn't talk to his principal adviser for three months, fell out so badly with his colleagues that they gave him the boot and, apart from the efforts of John Faulkner and Terry Moran, in which he seemingly took little or no interest, only worsened the administration of the Commonwealth. Ungerer must be too distracted by the heady atmosphere of Geneva to remember this appalling form, which suggests Rudd would have little aptitude in improving the UN's organisation and operation. The position of UN secretary-general has had some unusual occupants, the most notorious being Kurt Waldheim. He was a member of the paramilitary wing of the German Nazi Party who, in World War II, served as an intelligence officer with German military units that executed thousands of Yugoslavian partisans and deported thousands more Greek Jews to murder camps. In such a context, Rudd looks good. While his experience as a DFAT official was at a relatively junior level, he held an important senior position in the Queensland public service. As federal opposition leader, he led Labor to a major victory over a highly politically successful Howard government. Initially, Rudd was an immensely popular prime minister and he can take a great deal of credit for ensuring that Australia weathered the 2008 financial crisis better than just about any other country. Then things curdled. He failed to set up a carbon emissions trading scheme, the management of government business became fraught, and Julia Gillard deposed him as prime minister in 2010. In turn, he deposed Gillard in 2013 and was comprehensively defeated by the Abbott Coalition later that year. Since then, he has been involved with several international relations institutions, mainly in the US. That is to say, his raw-experience CV stacks up well against previous secretaries-general and those now said to be contenders. When it comes to personal qualities, however, the picture, while imprecise, is not so attractive. His fellow caucus members called him "autocratic", "self-serving", a "narcissist", a "micromanager with a dysfunctional office" and a whole lot worse. His colleague, Wayne Swan, said Rudd put "his own self-interest ahead of the interests ... of the country as a whole". Gillard accused him of "a long-running destabilisation campaign" against her. That wise owl of Australian political commentary, Richard Farmer, says Rudd was "one of the most untrustworthy and self-centred men ever to achieve high office in Australia". Many of these things are matters of judgment, some may be self-serving and others are difficult conclusively to prove – however, they cannot be brushed aside. Taken together, they are more than sufficient to create serious doubts about Rudd's qualities and go a long way towards justifying Turnbull's view that Rudd has "neither the skills nor the temperament to be a candidate" for secretary-general. Indeed, Rudd's behaviour in his dealings with the government on his nomination confirm many of the adverse views people have of him. The letters he wrote to Turnbull after their discussions seek to bind the Prime Minister by putting words in his mouth. His ambition seemed to blind him to the internal controversy that support for his nomination would have caused for the government. Then, when he got the bad news, he spilt his guts in an orgy of self-justification and self-pity. It's hard to escape the conclusion that Rudd is a dyed-in-the-wool troublemaker. When combined with an ego prone to get out of control, doubts about trustworthiness and an inability to accept setbacks with grace, troublemaking is a fatal flaw in a person seeking to be the chief of an organisation dedicated to avoiding, or resolving, trouble. A University of Queensland academic is now touting Rudd as a mayor of Brisbane. This may be more like it. "Hi. I'm Kevin. I'm from New York and I'm here to help." Paddy Gourley is a former senior public servant. pdg@home.netspeed.com.au

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