Ten years after losing the prime ministership, Kevin Rudd was back in Parliament House holding court - but seemed almost lost for words.
“It’s a funny thing being asked to speak at an event like this,” Rudd told current and former political figures, among them many of them his former cabinet colleagues, reporters and other dignitaries.
“Speaking at the unveiling of your prime ministerial portrait is the closest you come in life to being the after-dinner speaker at your own wake.”
As it turned out, Rudd had plenty he wanted to say before the covers were pulled off the portrait that will remain on permanent display in Parliament House.
With visiting schoolchildren watching from the first-floor balcony, Rudd declared he was proud to have served as Australia’s 26th prime minister.
His government “didn’t sit around and waste time” even though some critics had accused it of biting off more than it could chew. Rudd was “always haunted” by the words of Paul Keating, who once advised him: “Kevvie, Kevvie, Kevvie! In politics – if you’re gonna go into politics – mate, just don’t waste time. Hop into it.”
Rudd, now the Australian ambassador to the US, offered some sombre “reflections” about global trends, including that “the democratic project around the world is under threat” and that the risk of war in the Indo-Pacific is real.
With the US ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, among the special guests, Rudd confessed he was “anxious for the future of all of our democracies”. Democracy, he said, was a “delicate flower” that must be nurtured “because the raw wild wilderness of raw politics can devour all in its wake, unless we are careful”.
Rudd recalled the scare campaigns about the national apology he made to the Stolen Generations in 2008 – including that “it would unleash this torrent of litigation from Indigenous communities across the country”.
“We proved them wrong,” he said.
Given his current diplomatic responsibilities, Rudd said, it was not his place to wade into the politics of the forthcoming referendum to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice in the constitution – but his message was clear.
“Fears were raised 15 years ago about why we should not do this thing called the apology. Other fears have been raised today. I would simply ask all Australians to reflect on the fundamentals about whether those fears are well founded, or not.”
Anthony Albanese picked up where Rudd left off. With Sussan Ley representing the opposition at Thursday’s event, Albanese lauded the apology as a beautiful piece of work “only matched by the beauty of that one-page Uluru statement from the heart in 2017”.
“We have unfinished business,” the prime minister said.
The ceremony turned to the immediate piece of unfinished business: taking the covers off the portrait by the artist Ralph Heimans.
Heimans said among many artistic decisions he had to weigh was whether to set the portrait in the past or in a more contemporary setting. “Clean-shaven or with the Hemingway beard?”
They went with the latter present-day option. Having visited Rudd’s study, Heimans was struck by the sheer number of books “from floor to ceiling” and Chinese vases – which feature in the finished work. A contemplative Rudd is studying a book, while three Indigenous totems in the background are a nod to the apology.
The family cat Louie made it into the portrait, in part because he kept interrupting the sitting. He doubles as an ode to the now deceased Jasper, the “first feline”, who lived in the Lodge during Rudd’s prime ministership. Louie climbs over a chessboard – itself likely a reference to Rudd’s interest in geopolitical strategy.
“For painters, given all the time it takes to produce a work, everything is very purposeful and deliberate in the end,” Heimans said.
Albanese had one question: “How on earth did you persuade Kevin Rudd to sit still for long enough?”
• Additional reporting by Australian Associated Press
