I don’t know what made me change my opinion so dramatically on a certain matter of public interest that has been exercising my mind. Perhaps it is the new wave of love and understanding that has swept the nation since Malcolm Turnbull became our leader. Perhaps it is the powerhouse of innovation and the directive to be fresh and agile. Perhaps it is the prevailing zeitgeist that we should confront our demons, confess our shortcomings and apologise, in the hope that others might learn from our mistakes. But for whatever reason, I see now that I was wrong in my former conviction, and I want to plead guilty and apologise. I refer to Kevin Rudd’s candidature for the position of Secretary-General of the UN. For the last year I have been implacable in my opposition to this impending calamity for the UN. How, I asked myself, could I allow the UN to sleepwalk into disaster without alerting it to what lay ahead should it appoint him? Surely they must be told of the experiences of Rudd’s own colleagues when he was the Prime Minister of Australia, the broken men and women who suffered from his narcissism and dysfunctional decision-making; surely they should be told how he had elevated naked self-interest to an art form and practised his deeply demeaning attitude on everyone he came in contact with: cabinet ministers, members of parliament, his own staff and even humble public servants trying to do their job. Why, one of his parliamentary members had called him a ‘psychopath with a giant ego’. His Attorney-General has noted ‘how terribly he treated some brilliant staff and public servants’ and concluded he was a ‘bastard’. Others have noted his universal contempt for his colleagues and the people. We saw what he was really like when a public-spirited citizen leaked a tape of the intemperate battery of expletives that flowed from his mouth while struggling to record a message to an expectant world in bad Mandarin, hurling obscenities at innocent staff members as he went. Others spoke of his erratic temperament, his lizard-eyed slyness and cringe-making attempts to curry favour with the young by constructing his own deluded version of how he thought they spoke. Still others complained that nothing could be done by his Cabinet, while noting that the man himself pursued a manic pre-occupation with minutiae and imaginary wrongs done to his exalted ego. And, over all, there lurked the clinging creepiness of the sanctimonious hypocrite who lectured the nation with uplifting homilies at the church gate while clutching his Bible. Surely, I thought, the UN should be warned about these vices and told that appointing him would be clutching a viper to its bosom that would poison and paralyse the entire organisation. Surely in some third-world hell-hole there was a lunatic dictator or failed academic who could fill this position in keeping with the UN’s high ideals. But in recent times I have seen the error of my ways. I can see now that, far from being unqualified for the high post for which he yearns, Mr Rudd is in fact eminently suited to it. And I refer not just to his sunny disposition and conviction that problems can be solved by treaties and exhortations. Like the UN itself, he is a master of the pointless symbolism that keeps it going. Show him an issue of concern and he will throw himself at it body and soul. Complex and seemingly intractable problems simply dissolve under his magic touch. For instance he identified, long before anyone else, the root cause of the malaise facing the Australian aboriginal, namely that it was all our fault and could be remedied by an apology. His apology, replete with tears, smoking ceremonies, collective embraces and candles, wrought a veritable miracle overnight. Some sceptical observers have said that things have since got worse, but that is a superficial view. As anyone at the UN knows, it is absolutely vital to keep crises going, not to solve them. With Rudd in charge the UN will be right for crises into the foreseeable future. Moreover, Rudd’s proven skills will be invaluable as the UN faces up to the mounting challenges of the modern world. For instance, it has designated 2016 the Year of Pulses and you can imagine what a challenge that will be. It also has the unfinished work of the Year of Crystallography and the Year of Quinoa, not to mention the Year of Rapprochement of Cultures. A lesser man would wilt beneath those manifold challenges. Not Kevin Rudd. Just look at what he could have done with the International Year of Microcredit; under his stewardship Australia spent so much money and its credit was so micro that it almost vanished. Just look how he breathed new life into Australia’s refugee crisis and kept it going. The Zika virus could be defeated overnight with Kevin in the chair. Look how he threw a girdle round the earth with his visionary National Broadband Scheme and all devised on the back of an envelope with no irrelevancies like whether it would work or the cost. We think the North Koreans are intransigent, Isis and the Taliban brutal and inhumane, Syria stubborn, Russia and China aggressively expansionist. When the leaders of these formidable forces are faced with the prospect of a chat with Kevin Rudd, they will take the only alternative – surrender. The final objection to him, of course, is that he is not Eastern European and it is their turn to fill the job. But that, too, is no obstacle; he has got himself appointed as Roving Ambassador for Bulgaria and last week took an intensive course in Serbo-Croatian while waiting for a bus. If ever there were a Secretary-General waiting to be called, it must surely be Kevin Rudd.