Friends With (Political) Benefits?

So it seems that Kevin Rudd’s settling in nicely to his new role as Foreign Minister. He’s done pretty well out of all this really – Julia Gillard may have unceremoniously kicked him out the back door but he’s having the last laugh. She gets to deal with all the headaches of being Prime Minister which, at the moment is centred around the controversial and deeply divisive issues of the mining super-tax, asylum seekers and climate change measures, while he gets to jet off around the globe, meeting foreign dignitaries and having a lovely time. Most recently, he visited the United States where he met with both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Tony Blair may have had a ‘special relationship’ with George Bush but Kevin Rudd seems to have a very special relationship with Hilary Clinton.


Hil and Kev bantered like a couple of flirtatious teenagers at the press conference they held. After gushing that “I feel very much as if I am here among old friends, we’ve known each other for a long time and I look forward very much to working with you,” Rudd revealed, with a twinkle in his eye, that when Clinton visits Australia in November, “we intend to make it a very good time”. Clinton gave one of the dirtiest laughs I’ve ever heard, Rudd smiled knowingly and insisted that he meant it, “not in the sense that you all think.” Clinton was then quick to reply, “Oh I’m not so sure about that.” Wait, so he did mean that they’re going to have a good time in that way?! It sounds like Hilary’s going to give her husband a taste of his own medicine! “We’re a hospitable people,” Rudd explained. Very hospitable apparently. Good on him, he deserves a bit of fun after the year he’s had!