Oz snub for Rudd helps Clark

What's bad for Rudd is good for Helen Clark and New Zealand.

Of course New Zealand is chuffed that the Australian Government has decided not to back Kevin Rudd for the job of United Nations Secretary-General. That means Rudd, the former Labor leader and Australian prime minister, can’t stand at all, because he needs his own government’s endorsement.

And this in turn means there’s one fewer competitor for New Zealand’s own Helen Clark. What’s bad for Rudd is good for New Zealand.

But there is another reason to applaud the ‘‘captain’s call’’ made by Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. It sets the excellent precedent that a government won’t back its own citizen just because he’s an Aussie.

It’s a slap in the face for the ‘‘My country right or wrong’’ brigade. In this case the argument was ‘‘our guy, no matter what a jerk he is’’, and the Aussie Cabinet demurred.

Of course it might not have been as enlightened a decision as it looked. There are lots of low political reasons why the Right of the ruling coalition has got it in for Rudd.

The Cabinet was badly split, which means that many of the ministers were prepared to support Rudd, and this was clearly regrettable. Still, the right decision was reached even if the motives were mixed.

It’s still not certain either that the Australian Government will officially support Helen Clark. Turnbull said on Friday that that was still to be considered.

The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, had committed to a joint plan with New Zealand to back Ms Clark. But this became moot when Abbott was removed as prime minister and Kevin Rudd asked the Australian Government to back him.

The plain fact is that Rudd was not a good candidate for the post. Even his friends and admirers will concede that he isn’t, to put it politely, ‘‘a team player’’.

He was so highhanded, in fact, that the Labor caucus replaced him as prime minister during his first term, the first Aussie PM to suffer this fate.

Nobody ever doubted Rudd’s intelligence or his ability. It was his bossiness and rudeness that they couldn’t stand. Why would the Security Council of the United Nations, that select band of the world’s most powerful leaders, put up with a little Ocker dictator?

But the lessons from the Aussie decision over Rudd actually go even wider. If countries refuse the ‘‘my countryman right or wrong’’ argument, all kinds of unpredictable rationality could break out.

New Zealanders, for instance, might be forced to concede that Helen Clark isn’t necessarily the best candidate for the UN job either. True, she seems to have done a good job as head of the United Nations Development Programme.

But there are plenty of other contenders with a good record of service at the highest political levels.

And it might even be, though John Key is unlikely to say so, that some of her rivals have as many political skills as she does.

Maybe some other candidate might be even better than the Kiwi one.