Kevin Rudd

Biography

Kevin Rudd was born in Nambour, Queensland, in 1957 and grew up on a dairy farm at Eumundi. His father's early death left the family in hardship; he joined the Labor Party at fifteen, was dux of Nambour State High School and graduated from the Australian National University with first-class honours in Chinese studies, learning Mandarin and studying in Taiwan.

He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1981 and served in Stockholm and Beijing. From 1988 he was chief of staff to the Queensland Labor leader Wayne Goss and, after Goss became premier, head of the state's Office of the Cabinet. He won the federal seat of Griffith in 1998, became shadow foreign minister in 2001 and ousted Kim Beazley as Labor leader in December 2006.

Rudd led Labor to a landslide in November 2007. As prime minister he ratified the Kyoto Protocol, delivered the national apology to the Stolen Generations in February 2008, answered the global financial crisis with stimulus spending that helped Australia avoid recession, and began the National Broadband Network. Falling support and the failure of his emissions trading scheme led to his replacement by Julia Gillard in June 2010.

He served as Gillard's foreign minister until 2012, lost a leadership challenge that year, and in June 2013 regained the leadership and the prime ministership, only to lose the September election. He left parliament in November 2013 for posts at Harvard and the Asia Society Policy Institute, completed an Oxford doctorate on Xi Jinping in 2022, and was ambassador to the United States from March 2023 to March 2026.