Rudd Reveals He Would've Had Kerr Shot As A Spy And His Body Thrown In The Lake

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has broken his silence on today's revived debate over the 1975 dismissal, declaring that Sir John Kerr "would not have lasted an afternoon" under his watch.

Speaking to The Advocate via wireless telephone from New York, Rudd said he would have "handled the situation with the necessary administrative firmness."

"It was a coup. Let's not sugarcoat it," said Rudd.

"If one of my governors-general had gone rogue and tried to topple my elected government government during the Cold War, I would have him dragged from his bed, read his charges, twos counts of espionage, two counts of treason, and then kicked down the stairs, hauled outside down to the edge of the lake and shot."

Rudd's intervention follows Paul Keating's claim that he would have arrested Kerr on the spot, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's speech calling the dismissal a calculated political ambush and nothing less than a coup.

Rudd said both men were "close to the mark, but not quite procedural enough and didn't take into account the context of the age."

"Keating leads with emotion. Albo leads with nostalgia. I lead with process," said Rudd.

"You don’t just cuff the bloke. You send a message. You don't convene a taskforce or ask some compromised government agency to look into it. You put him in the lake,” he added.

The comments mark the latest escalation in Labor's annual bout of historical self-examination, as surviving members of the movement continue to process the events of 1975, which happened 50 years ago today.

"Kerr was an American spy. A British agent. He deserved to die," said Rudd.

"And I think he was let off the hook. It was the Cold War. We had a leader who was, in that respect, being more isolationist than a team player. The Americans needed our minerals and our strategic location. The British wanted to preserve the authority of the Crown. Gough was doing too much reforming so they both hatched this plan,"

"The nationalisation of our mineral wealth, our shared wealth, was the tipping point. It scared the multinational resource companies like Rio, BHP and Shell. The London and New York finance houses. The CIA and MI6 were antsy about what happened in Chile and the nationalisation of Allende. They had to move quickly."

Rudd then paused for a long period, just his breathing was audible.

"You know what, I think I would've done it myself. Fuck it, if Mr Inbetween has taught me anything, it's that questions and bad and you only know for sure if someone's dead is if you do it yourself," he said.

"I would've made Albo, Bill, Tanya and Julia watch, as well."

More to come.