Mr Turnbull is disputing the letters’ contents and says their release to the media speaks to Mr Rudd’s character.
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The Australian Financial Review reported on Tuesday a slim majority of cabinet supported Mr Rudd’s bid, but Mr Turnbull and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce decided at the end of the meeting to quash it.
He said it was part of the “collective scar-tissue” of life.
After what hadn’t been the best of days, Kevin Rudd spoke with members of Gardens Point, the largest and most active youth branch of the Labor Party in Queensland.
“Sometimes it will turn to shit. sometimes it won’t work out perfectly. Just a little bit around the edges, including yesterday”.
Mr Rudd flew to Sydney this morning requesting a meeting with the Prime Minister, having sought such a meeting the previous evening.
Mr Rudd told Queensland Young Labor supporters the day after Mr Turnbull announced the government would not be nominating him that he had sought to represent Labor values of balancing individual and community rights on the global stage but then he hit a wall in the form of Mr Turnbull.
Sources say Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull overruled his cabinet colleagues to put an end to Kevin Rudd’s United Nations quest.
This is when the Prime Minister aborted the cabinet discussion and said he would make a “captain’s call” instead.
Late on Friday, Rudd’s office emailed journalists three letters he had written to Turnbull.
But Mr Turnbull hit back, saying they were all confidential, private conversations.
In the speech, Rudd said he had always endeavored to “make a huge difference” not only as prime minister, but as foreign minister and also on the global stage, until he was stopped in his tracks by a “brick wall”. “The answer is we do not and that is why we have not nominated him”, he said.
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“So there won’t be an Australian candidate for UN Sec Gen”.
