Former Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd’s biggest fan, Kevin Rudd, announced his retirement from Parliament late last night, turning the knob down on the gas he’s been cooking with since he started serving as the Member for Griffith in 1998 and concluding that he will leave Parliament by the end of this week as “it really is time for me to zip”. Oh, Kevin.
“This has been the product of much soul-searching for us as a family over the last few months,” said Mr Rudd, PM of Quiche Selfies, fighting back tears.
“The decision that I have made has not been taken lightly… But for me, my family is everything, always has been, always will be, which is why I will not be continuing as a member of this Parliament beyond this week.”
It’s the end of a tumultuous chapter in public life for Rudd, who, as you may remember, served as Prime Minister – “a great honour afforded to very few” – between 2007 and 2010, before resurfacing again earlier this year before soon after conceding defeat to incumbent Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to whom he wished “well” with “hardest job in the land” and the “rigours of high office that inevitably lie ahead”.
Speaking toward his future in private life, Rudd announced he was planning to establish a “national apology foundation” to commemorate “and keep alive the spirit of” his historic apology to Indigenous Australians, something he considered a signature achievement of his time as PM and something that will surely come to be remembered as a high point in his legacy, alongside the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the establishment of a National Curriculum and the establishment of the G20 Summit.
“I am passionately Australian and passionately a citizen of the world. I intend to be active in the international community in areas where I can make a genuine contribution to peace and stability, global economic governance and sustainable development, including climate change,” he said.
“I bear no one in this place any malice… Be gentle to each other… For these remarkable opportunities I will always be grateful, so thank you, Australia,” he concluded.
“On this final occasion in the Parliament, and as is now officially recorded in the classics for occasions such as this, it really is time for me to zip.”
via The ABC
