Kevin Rudd: 'I wasn't really interested in whether we had won or lost'

By Kevin Rudd
Updated November 2 2017 - 9:48am, first published October 21 2017 - 6:24pm

I can remember very little of what happened in the last couple of days of the election campaign in 2004. The day before election day, 8 October, I went to the Channel Seven studios at Martin Place in Sydney for my regular weekly appearance on morning television with Joe Hockey. After each Friday's program, I rang my mother. She always watched, as any mother would, and invariably commented on my tie, my hair and how exhausted I looked. It had been our weekly ritual for years. But over the previous 12 months these calls had become particularly precious. In late 2003, Mum - who'd never smoked in her life - had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Cancer is cruel, whatever its form. For my mum, it was an additional cruelty; for some years, she had suffered from Parkinson's disease, its own form of hell on earth, and now this as well.