Vic: Rudd under fire again over account of childhood

AAP General News (Australia)
04-15-2007
Vic: Rudd under fire again over account of childhood

MELBOURNE, April 15 AAP - Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has again come under fire over
his account of his childhood in Queensland - from his own family.

Mr Rudd's first cousin Chris de Vere told Fairfax newspapers he disputed the story
that the Labor Party leader and his mother were evicted from their home and forced to
sleep in their car.

At the time of the reported incident, Mr Rudd was 11.

Mr de Vere, who is Mr Rudd's cousin on his mother's side, said no-one in the family
knew about the Labor Party leader's story of being evicted from his childhood home.

He said he was only enlightened about the chain of events when it was revealed in the media.

Mr Rudd has said that following his father's death, he and his mother Margaret were
forced off a share farm at Eumundi in Queensland where they had lived and worked.

Mr Rudd's story was challenged last month by the five children of the farm's owner, Aubrey Low.

They told Fairfax newspapers that Mr Rudd had "dragged our father's proud reputation
through the mud time and time again".

Mr de Vere said he "didn't know a thing about it until it broke in the paper and I
saw it on television".

"You would have thought there would have been something said about it somewhere," he said.

"That's not to say that it didn't happen, but I have no knowledge of it, and my father
has no knowledge of it."

But Mr Rudd hit back.

"I stand 100 per cent behind my version of events of what happened to me and my mother
back in 1969," Mr Rudd said.

"Other members of my close family have already made statements supporting my mother's
recollection of these events when she was alive and the clear recollections of my childhood
some 37 years ago."

AAP jat/ao

KEYWORD: RUDD COUSIN

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