Former Labor minister Peter Garrett says he stands by his tough criticism of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, including describing him as a megalomaniac.
Garrett makes the assessment of the former Labor leader in his biography Big Blue Sky, due for release on Wednesday.
“I’m not the only one to think it either,” he told the Seven Network’s Sunday Night program.
Rudd demoted Garrett as environment minister over the government’s controversial home insulation scheme. Four people died while installing the insulation as part of the Rudd government’s hurriedly introduced scheme to pump money into the economy to stave off the effects of the global financial crisis.
Garrett says in the book that supporting Rudd in light of his “trail of destruction and abandoned policy” was his biggest mistake in nearly 10 years in parliament.
“I’ve been particularly strong in this book about leadership and Rudd’s leadership and I think it needed to be said,” Garrett told the program.
“Rudd wasn’t someone who was easy to work with in that way, and his vanity and his exercise of power as prime minister was contrary ultimately, to me, to what good leadership is.”
A spokesman for Rudd’s office said Garrett was simply looking for publicity.
“Peter Garrett is trying to sell a book.
“If Mr Garrett were serious about these accusations he would have made them five years ago. Not try to rewrite history now.”
On the program Garrett also addressed his changing story about a donation from the clubs industry.
In the original draft of the book he said he was given an envelope full of cash by a representative of Clubs NSW when he was an MP.
Garrett repeated the claim in an interview for a forthcoming documentary on the poker machine interview, saying the envelope contained “hundreds, if not thousands of dollars”, the ABC reported. But he subsequently maintained the envelope contained a cheque, and the event occurred before he was elected.
“I’ve never said it was [a bribe] and I’m not saying I’m under any pressure,” Garrett told Sunday’s program. “I think the important thing is to correct the record.”
