Miranda DevineWednesday, July 10, 2013 (7:42am) WHAT a droll...

Miranda Devine
Wednesday, July 10, 2013 (7:42am)

WHAT a droll idea from the ABC’s preferred prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull: let Kevin Rudd debate himself tomorrow.

The Prime Minister doesn’t need Tony Abbott to show up to his stunt event at the National Press Club. He’s had so many personas and so many different policy positions that he could easily spend an entertaining hour arguing with himself.

“Take immigration,” said Turnbull on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.

“Kevin ‘07 can say, ‘Stop the boats.’ And then he can duck around to the other side of the platform and Kevin ‘13 can say, ‘Oh, you can’t stop the boats. You can’t tow those boats back.’”

And on economics: “Kevin has had so many positions on economics, he doesn’t need to have a debate. He can be a panel. Kevin could be the whole panel.

“He’s had ‘07 fiscal Conservative; ‘08, the government should be at the centre of the economy; ‘09 spend, spend, spend: ‘13, we’ve got to cuddle up to the business community.”

It’s a delicious image. Angry Kevin on one side of the stage. Sunny Kevin on the other. Church-going, nerdy Kevin could debate sweary Kevin, the Scores patron. Posh, intellectual Kevin, the one who shows up in broadsheet newspaper offices, could debate ocker beer-swilling tabloid Kevin, who puts his feet on coffee tables.

That’s the thing about Kevin ‘13. At some point all those other Kevins are going to show up and embarrass him.

But perhaps all the political dysfunction the country has suffered for so long was actually a strategic stroke of genius by the Labor party.

If the positive poll ratings our new PM has been basking in this week are any indication, the faceless men did him a favour in 2010, removing Rudd, the governing liability, before the policy disasters he set in train caught up with him.

They let Julia Gillard cop the full force of his karma train over the next three years, and then, when she was all burned up, they parachuted in Rudd, the campaigning cleanskin, in time for the next election. If they win, Labor might even be shameless enough to claim it was their cunning plan all along.

But no matter how many Kevins there are, in the end, the Australian people always seem to get the election result right

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