Kevin Rudd quits as leader as Tony Abbott storms to victory
BY: BEN PACKHAM AND DENNIS SHANAHAN From: The Australian September 08, 2013 12:50AM
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KEVIN Rudd conceded defeat to Tony Abbott in the election and immediately declared he will not recontest the Labor leadership.
Mr Rudd, speaking in Brisbane, called on the nation to unite behind Mr Abbott as prime minister.
“As Prime Minister of Australia I wish him well now in the high office of Australian prime minister.”
“Tonight is the time to unite as the great Australian nation. Because whatever our politics may be we are all first and foremost Australian.
“And the things that unite us are more powerful than the things that divide us.”
Mr Rudd, who retained his seat of Griffith, said he gave everything he had to the election fight, but it had not been enough.
He said the party must unite behind a new leader.
It was a decision he took with a heavy heart, “but the time has come for renewal”.
While Mr Abbott will be Australia's next prime minister, Labor managed to retain seats in Queensland and NSW that senior party figures feared were lost.
After confirmed victories in Tasmania and unexpected gains in Victoria, the Coalition tonight clearly won the election, although the margin was not as great as originally thought.
The Coalition will have at least 90 seats in the new House of Representatives and Labor may hold more than 50.
Labor has managed to hold on to seats in Queensland although it won no seats back and has had mixed success in western Sydney, where local candidates have fought fiercely to hold on to their seats against a national anti-Labor swing.
Mr Rudd said he accepted responsibility for the defeat, but was glad the parliamentary Labor Party had been largely preserved as a “viable fighting force for the future”.
He said Labor would regroup and come back to be competitive once again, declaring Ben Chifley's “Light on the Hill” would continue to burn as the beacon of progressive politics.
He said he was proud Labor appeared to have retained all its Queensland seats, including his own, in defiance of predictions.
He was also pleased that practically all his ministers had been returned.
Mr Rudd thanked his deputy Anthony Albanese, provoking chants of “Albo, Albo” from the audience, and Senate Leader Penny Wong.
He also singled out his personal campaign manager Bruce Hawker and - despite tensions during the campaign between his travelling team and campaign HQ - ALP national secretary George Wright.
He said he and wife Therese Rein looked forward to welcoming the Abbotts to The Lodge next week, as the Howards had welcomed he and Ms Rein.
Mr Rudd failed to acknowledge Julia Gillard in his speech.
However Ms Gillard, who kept her distance from the Rudd campaign, tweeted her commiserations on the result.
“A tough night for Labor. But a spirited fight by Kevin, Albo, George + the whole team. My thoughts are with you all. JG,” she said.
Mr Rudd said Labor had endured a hard day but would remain a party of “hard heads and soft hearts”.
The party would never overlook those most vulnerable in Australian society.
“This is a great movement, and I salute the movement for its strength, its vitality and its future,” he said.
Mr Rudd thanked the people of Griffith for re-electing him, but did not confirm whether he would stay on as the local member.
However, he did take a shot at the rival LNP candidate. “It would be un-prime ministerial of me to say Bill Glasson `eat your heart out', so I won't,” he said.
Mr Rudd also passed on his best wishes to Tony Abbott and his family.
“Therese and I wish he, Margie and their family well in coping with the stresses and strains of high office that lie ahead.
“I also wish his government well for the great and difficult challenges that now lie ahead for Australia.”
While Mr Rudd held his Brisbane seat of Griffith, Labor frontbenchers Chris Bowen and Jason Clare hung on to their western Sydney seats.
The low Greens' vote nationally did not help the ALP and contributed to large swings in Tasmania.
However Adam Bandt retained the Greens' only lower house seat after Cath Bowtell conceded defeat in Melbourne.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie also declared victory in the Tasmanian seat of Denison.
Former prime minister John Howard said those who claimed Mr Abbott was “unelectable” had been proven to be “foolish”.
Mr Howard said it appeared Mr Abbott had delivered a “resounding verdict”.
“I can't speak too highly of what a wonderful job Tony Abbott has done,” he said.
“He's been a splendid leader of my party, and all those ridiculous people who said he was unelectable, they should understand how foolish they were to underestimate him.”
As Labor's soul-searching began, frontbencher Mr Clare, who retained his Sydney seat, said Mr Rudd should go as Labor leader, and it was time to put the Rudd and Gillard era behind the party.
“My view is it's time for generational change,” Mr Clare told the Ten Network. “We need to put the Rudd and the Gillard era behind us.”
Bill Shorten, the favourite to lead the Labor Party in opposition, said the party needed to recognise the electorate had told it to get its house in order.
But he said Labor should not give up on its principles, including the need to have a price on carbon.
“I don't believe anyone in Labor is going to walk away from the issue of putting a price on carbon pollution,” he told Network Ten, flagging a fight with the incoming Abbott government as it tries to axe the carbon tax.
“Because a failure to act on pollution is in fact just making the problem harder for our kids, and that's not the Labor way.”
Mr Bowen also backed Labor's ongoing support for a carbon price.
“I don't think the Labor party should walk away from its core beliefs,” he said.
“We believe climate change is real, we believe governments around the world should do something about it, we believe we should do something about it, and we believe a market mechanism is the right thing to do.”
He called for a renewed period of unity and common purpose within the party as it went forward.
“We need a period of rebuilding, but rebuilding on the strengths of the (Labor) government,' he said.
While Mr Rudd looks to have seen off challenger Bill Glasson in his seat of Griffith, Wayne Swan also appears to have retained Lilley and Labor candidate Jim Chalmers appears to have retained Rankin.
In the Sydney seat of Greenway, Labor's Michelle Rowland is on course to see off trouble-prone challenger Jaymes Diaz.
Elsewhere, the Coalition appears to have picked up the seats of Bass, Braddon and Lyons in Tasmania; Corangamite, Deakin and La Trobe in Victoria; Lindsay, Banks, Reid, Page and Robertson in NSW; Hindmarsh in South Australia' Lingiari in the Northern Teritory.
Former Speaker Peter Slipper conceded defeat in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher. But while the seat looked set to go to Howard government minister Mal Brough, Mr Palmer said his candidate was in with a chance.
Mr Palmer also said he was on track to win the neighbouring Queensland seat of Fairfax.
Senior Labor figures earlier conceded the election was lost.
“The question will be how far will the blows go to the loss of Labor seats,” former cabinet minister Stephen Smith said.
Labor elder statesman John Faulkner also conceded defeat.
“Tonight is not going to be a night, as Paul Keating said, for the true believers,” he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said voters had punished Labor for its disunity.
“No doubt that's one of the issues that's come through in terms of the election campaign itself,” he told the Seven network.
Former prime minister Bob Hawke said Labor had lost the election, rather than the Coalition winning it.
He said it was “sad” to see his once-proud party in the state it had found itself.
He said many of the standards and values he and others had fought for had been lost, with the party over-taken by personal squabbles.
Labor sources say Mr Rudd would not “wait long” to concede defeat and would deliver a concession speech to the Labor faithful.
Mr Rudd recently arrived at The Gabba in Brisbane and would soon call Mr Abbott to congratulate him on his victory.
Earlier, at the close of polling in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania, Labor was already on track for a landslide defeat, with exit polling predicting the loss of an estimated 21 seats while the Coalition stoods to gain at least 25.
A Sky News/Newspoll exit poll put the two-party preferred vote at 53-47, compared to 52-48 when the election was called, suggesting Kevin Rudd's erratic campaign has cost Labor votes.
It predicted the Coalition would win 97 seats, Labor 51 and independents two.
Labor Speaker Anna Burke said she had been feeling Labor wasn't going to get over the line for the past two weeks.
“The Liberal Party will win this election,” she told Fairfax radio. “It will just depend on the numbers that it falls to whether it is a landslide or it's a comfortable majority.”
As Labor began to acknowledge the looming defeat, dumped Northern Territory Labor senator and Rudd supporter Trish Crossin tweeted “if we see a massive defeat tonight then (ALP national secretary) George Wright has to go.”
Asked about The Australian's inside story today Horror at HQ as old Kevin Rudd ran amok, Tanya Plibersek refused to bite on claims of chaos in the Rudd campaign. “I'm certainly not going to get involved in that sort of talk,” she told the ABC. “Any recrimination in public or private will only make it worse... it's up to all of us to take responsibility collectively in good times and bad.”
Peter Beattie, the former Queensland premier and Labor candidate for the Queensland seat of Forde, said Australians had not liked Labor's leadership divisions. “That's where the damage was done, people thought they wanted a change for that reason,” he told Channel Ten.
Additional reporting: Joe Kelly
