1. Last night on the ABC’s 7.30 Kevin Rudd gave his first extended television interview since becoming Prime Minister (again).
During the interview with the ABC’s Leigh Sales, the Prime Minister called on Tony Abbott to prove that he had the “ticker” to take him on in a policy debate.
Mr Rudd posed a direct challenge to the Opposition Leader saying: “So what I would say to Mr Abbott – you’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s time we had a properly moderated debate … on his chosen subjects.”
The new Prime Minister continued, “He’s the boxing blue. I’m the glasses-wearing kid in the library. Come on, let’s have the Australian people form a view about whether his policies actually have substance, whether they actually work, or whether they are just slogans.”
Rudd also explained his reasoning behind challenging Julia Gillard for the position of leader of the Labor Party, saying that “The Australian Labor Party and the government was on track towards a catastrophic defeat and I wasn’t about to stand idly by and see everything we worked for for the last five or six years go down the gurgler as Mr Abbott set about ripping it apart.”
2. Crowds in Egypt are celebrating after the military ousted President Mohammed Morsi. It comes after days of protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square where protestors gathered to demand the president’s removal. The head of Egypt’s army, Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi made the announcement, saying that Morsi had “failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people”.