Parallel Life

As Kevin Rudd’s press gallery romance sours, Turnbull sharpens his knife

Mr Rudd pursed. Mr Rudd rearranged his pencils, first by height, second by colour, third by the order in which they displeased him. Mr Rudd was out of sorts.

His sermon to the UN, on the world’s crises, as they related to Mr Rudd, was not the pinnacle entered in his BlackBerry planner.

If he held the General Assembly in the palm of his hand, it was because the audience could have fitted equally comfortably into a departing cab, which, during the course of his remarks, it did. To be fair, his triumph was programmed for the UN equivalent of Try Out Night. He was preceded by the president of Burkina Faso, who spoke urgently of the moral challenge posed by climate change, and of a local epidemic of goat mange, both demanding UN funds. Mr Rudd was followed by the Sultan of Something, who equally declared a moral commitment to climate change (whether for or against was unclear) and the pressing need to obliterate Israel (less ambiguous).