Kevin Rudd should be in damage control for putting children before journalists - say journalists.

Kevin Rudd should be in damage control for putting children before journalists, say journalists.

Kevin Rudd’s first appearance of the election campaign bordered on ludicrous today as he snubbed the most important people in this election campaign, the travelling media pack.

Mr Rudd refused to answer questions of the journalists, who were most considerate when repeatedly yelling out the same question about his relationship with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as he tried to talk to a group of school children.

The man who was ousted as prime minister three and a half weeks ago spruiked something trivial about  the benefits of school spending to Year 3 and Year 4 students, totally oblivious to the needs of the journalists, some of whom invested in new clothes and opened Twitter accounts specially for this election campaign

Mr Rudd wanted media coverage – be there at 12:15pm, the hard-working, all-important reporters were told.

They obliged, some even had to catch taxis, and 45 minutes later the local member arrived at the school’s back entrance, then took the chatty principal with him to the front entrance where the waiting media cameras rolled.

The anxious media scrum, some with sore feet, encircled Mr Rudd as he spoke to principal Greg Kretschmann about facilities built with stimulus program funding.

But today, in Mr Rudd’s safe Labor seat of Griffith in Brisbane’s south, it seemed Cooparoo State School was the place where you are not supposed to ask questions, even in the unlikely event they were sensible ones.

“This is just great,” said one journalist sarcastically. “We’re not here to show him looking at schools and communicating with children from his electorate. He should be talking to us about what’s most important in this election campaign; his relationship with Julia Gillard. Doesn’t he know who we are?

“First they make us fly in a loud air force Hercules and now this.”

Mr Rudd finally spoke to journalists as he walked to his tax-payer funded Commonwealth car.

“I’ll just say one thing before I go… and that is throughout this election campaign I’ll be speaking only about local issues here in my community here in Griffith, such as this school building program, and the need to complete that program in each and every one of the 42 primary schools in my electorate,” he said, pretending to be oblivious as to what election campaigns are really about.

Apologies to the ABC’s Annie Guest

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