Rudd led Labor to a landslide victory at the 2007 election; his government's earliest acts included ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and delivering the first national apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples for the Stolen Generations.

By 2010, Rudd's leadership had faltered due to a loss of support among the Labor caucus and failure to pass key legislation like the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Well, what Secretary Powell and the US seems to have said is that he now has grave doubts about the accuracy of the case he put to the United Nations about the claim that Iraq possessed biological weapons laboratories – the so-called mobile trailers.

Rudd maintained a high media profile with major announcements on an "education revolution",[40] federalism,[41] climate change,[42] a National Broadband Network,[43] and the domestic car industry.

[63] By 2010, however, Rudd's approval ratings had begun to drop significantly, with controversies arising over the management of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, the Senate refusal to pass the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, policies on asylum seekers and a debate over a proposed "super profits" tax on the mining industry.

[68] Prior to the election, Paul Kelly wrote that Rudd had "enshrined climate change as the new moral passion for the Labor Party in a way that recalled Ben Chifley's invocation of the Light on the Hill".

[78] On 1 December 2009, Turnbull was replaced in a leadership spill called over the issue, by ETS opponent Tony Abbott, and the following day, the Senate voted against the revised package of bills.

[92] The Rudd government's economic policy response to the 2007–2008 financial crisis has been cited as an effective international model and described by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz as "one of the strongest Keynesian stimulus packages in the world" that "helped Australia avoid recession and saved up to 200,000 jobs".

[101] The first was worth $10.4 billion and announced in late 2008, and included measures such as lump sum payments for low to middle income earners, increasing the first homebuyers' bonus, doubling training places and fast-tracking a national infrastructure program.

Stating that his Government would "move heaven and earth to reduce the impact of the global recession", Rudd delivered a spending program for infrastructure, schools and housing worth $28.8 billion as part of this package.

However, Hawke found the department was not up to the task of monitoring thousands of independent contractors around Australia on a tight timeframe and that demand was higher than anticipated, which led to safety and quality risks that "cannot be fully abated".

[110] Greg Combet, who had been appointed Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, announced upon the report's release on 22 April that the scheme would not resume, and that he would work to restore public confidence in the home insulation industry.

[113] In a 2014 Royal Commission investigation into the scheme, Rudd accepted his Government's responsibility for systems failures that led to the deaths, describing them as a "deep tragedy" and acknowledged the pain of the families involved.

[115] However, claims of overpricing and poor value for money in some projects resulted in a taskforce being established to examine the implementation of the scheme, led by Brad Orgill, the former CEO of UBS Australasia.

[135] In April 2007, he announced Labor's "Forward with Fairness" plan to take to the election, which included a phased abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) over five years, a safety net consisting of 10 National Employment Standards, an independent umpire and simplified industrial awards.

[151] In April 2010, the Rudd government suspended processing new claims by Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, who comprised 80 per cent of all boat arrivals, for three and six months respectively.

[154] In May 2008, Rudd committed to a "root and branch" review of all aspects of the Australian taxation system, led by the secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry, and taking evidence from a wide range of sources.

[172] In Afghanistan, the Australian presence not only trained the 4th Brigade of the Afghan National Army, but also undertook large scale programs in the education of women and girls, the building of mosques with schools attached, basic healthcare and the extension of the road network.

[193] Rudd backs the road map for peace plan and defended Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, condemning Hezbollah and Hamas for violating Israeli territory.

[201] In May 2013, however, Rudd announced he had changed his position based on personal experience and the fact that his children had long thought him "an unreconstructed dinosaur" for not supporting marriage equality legislation.

Bill Shorten, the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services and a key member of the Labor Party's right faction, speculated that it was the Government's handling of the insulation program, the sudden announcement of change of policy on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and the way in which they had "introduced the debate" about the Resource Super Profits Tax as the main reasons which had led to a collapse in support for Rudd's leadership.

Many were willing to overlook this due to his immense popularity, but when Rudd's poll numbers began to drop in late 2009 and 2010, they wanted to install a leader more able to establish consensus and involve the party caucus as a whole.

[247] Following the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Rudd announced after talking with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto, he had offered Australian field hospitals and disaster victim identification teams to help with recovery.

[248] Rudd announced his resignation as foreign minister on 22 February 2012, citing Gillard's failure to counter character attacks launched by Simon Crean and "other faceless men" as his reasons.

[257] Amidst the controversy, an expletive-laden video of out-takes of an intemperate Kevin Rudd attempting to record a Chinese language message during his time as prime minister was released anonymously on YouTube, apparently aimed at discrediting his push for the leadership.

[271] The political editor of the Australian newspaper, Dennis Shanahan, reported on 10 June 2013 that Rudd had been "mobbed" by supporters in the Victorian city of Geelong days earlier and that he was "expected to be returned to the ALP leadership".

After seeking legal advice from the acting Solicitor-General, Robert Orr, the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, invited Rudd to be sworn in as prime minister for the second time on 27 June.

[286] In early 2014, Rudd left Australia to work in the United States, where he was appointed a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he completed a major research effort on the future of US-China relations.

[339] Rudd has defended church representatives engaging with policy debates, particularly with respect to WorkChoices legislation, climate change, global poverty, therapeutic cloning, and asylum seekers.

If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed.He cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a personal inspiration in this regard.