On Friday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Australia will not nominate ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a candidate for the next U.N. secretary-general. The international consequence is an end to Rudd's ambition to lead the United Nations and a projection of Australia as small-minded, mean-spirited and petty. The domestic fallout is it will embolden the right-wing fringe of the governing coalition, betrays Turnbull's shrunken political space for stamping his authority on government policy and agenda, and undermines the prospects of bipartisan cooperation for a government with a one-seat majority in the House and no majority in the Senate.
The long Australian election campaign had already sabotaged Rudd's possibility of participating in the public sessions already held with the twelve secretary-general candidates. Turnbull's reduced majority after the election further constricted his political space: The party's base has never forgiven him for deposing Tony Abbott, do not trust him, are incandescent at the retrospective changes to superannuation tax that break trust with citizens and, contrary to core conservative values, will confiscate the savings of the prudent and the thrifty, and detests Rudd with venom.
This is especially galling to Labor because Rudd had displeased many within his party in appointing Liberal politicians to international posts, for example former Defense Minister Brendan Nelson as ambassador to the European Union and special representative to NATO. In the petulant refusal to nominate Rudd, Turnbull is parting from the civil ways of New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key and sliding down the partisan pathway of the U.S. Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark has been nominated and her campaign backed by Key's conservative government.
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