Our latest Ex-Prime Minister

So how will history remember Kevin Rudd?

Let's start out by stating that things weren't nearly as bad for Rudd in the electorate as the mainstream media made it seem. This week's Newspoll, Morgan and Essential Research surveys all had the ALP with a small two-party-preferred lead. The man on the other side of the house, Tony Abbott, while differentiating himself emphatically as the anti-Rudd, is prone to bouts of public utterances that can bring more harm than good. There was a good chance he may say something refreshingly honest but possibly offensive between now and polling day.

However, the media had the die cast. Once the polls started diving after Rudd's backdown over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, he was unsalvageable as far as they were concerned. Bored by the new found stability in Opposition ranks, they played up a contest on the government benches.

After all this, still nothing would have happened today if Rudd didn't get suspicious and send one of his staffers, instead of himself, to count the numbers. It was around this time that Julia finally decided enough was enough, and relented to the pressure being brought on her by factional heavyweights inside the Parliamentary ALP. Rudd blinked and called for a spill he eventually didn't even contest.

Rudd now, despite his somewhat ridiculous choice to stay in Parliament past this upcoming election, will be consigned to the annals of history.

Rudd's greatest achievement was the avoidance of a recession that enveloped the rest of the developed world. While the more begrudging of us may try to take this away from Rudd by claiming that China's demand for our natural resources mean Rudd's measures were only slightly contributory to the economy's resilience, the stimulus did get a massive amount of money into the market, which powered demand and kept the economy growing.

Rudd's real problem with his stimulus legacy is not just the rows of unneeded, unused solar hot water heaters littering the outside of sporting pavilions around the country, or the volume of school halls built over the last few years, but the incompetent handling of the insulation scheme.

In short, flooding an unregulated trade with tons of cash is asking for trouble, without serious regulation and bureaucracy in place before hand. The scheme was simply asking to not only be exploited by fly-by-nighters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of John and Jenny Q Taxpayer, but was also making the always possible safety problems that are associated with working in the roof space of residential homes more likely. In short, more tradespeople, not necessarily trained and certainly not regulated, in the roofs of homes all over the country, working in cramped spaces in close proximity to electrical wiring.

But, by admission, the Rudd Government didn't have "time to cross the 'i's and dot the 't's." It would have been better for everyone if they had made the time.

These were the most grandiose of Rudd's great schemes. He apologised to both the Stolen and Forgotten Generations, and signed the Kyoto Protocols, but these were all symbolic measures.

Rudd won't be remembered as well or as fondly as Gough Whitlam, who became a Labor hero by failing grandly and losing power incredibly. Some of Whitlam's measures still endure today, which is unlikely to be said of Rudd's.

Unfortunately for Rudd, the post-war Prime Minister he will most likely be coupled with will be William McMahon, in that, for many, the Rudd years will be completely forgettable. He will never be judged to be the equal of the man he defeated in 2007, or the great reformers Hawke and Keating. He will never be remembered as having the infamy of a Malcolm Fraser, the incredible circumstances of the Gorton premiership, the electoral success and demise of Harold Holt, the endurance of Menzies, the gumption of Chifley or the toughness of Curtin.

Rudd's greatest punishment may be, for someone whom it has been suggested longed for a legacy and a place in the collective memory of the nation, that he, and his time as Prime Minister, may be largely forgotten. For that, he can blame the media. He can blame the ALP factional heavyweights. He can blame the polls. But he should also keep a little bit of the blame for himself.