Kevin Rudd behavioural and personality related controversies

During his political career, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd regularly attracted criticism for his autocratic leadership style, as well as accusations of a contemptuous manner in which he treated parliamentary colleagues and others he came into contact with in a working capacity, while out of the public eye.
Accusations of bullying
* 16 staff left Kevin Rudd's office in his first year as PM due to his "short fuse and unreasonable demands". Rudd's chief spin doctor Lachlan Harris initially tried to cover up the incident with a flat denial that it had even occurred.
Criticism from ALP parliamentary colleagues
After Mr Rudd was ousted from the Labor leadership in 2010, senior colleagues attacked Mr Rudd's legacy as Prime Minister.
* Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan criticised Rudd as "dysfunctional".
* Former Labor Minister Tony Burke said of Rudd's term in office that "the stories that were around of the chaos, of the temperament, of the inability to have decisions made, they are not stories".
* Former Labor Minister Nicola Roxon declared she could not work with Rudd again.
* In February 2012, Federal Labor MP Steve Gibbons publicly described his parliamentary colleague as a being "a psychopath with a giant ego". When later asked to elaborate by the ABC, Gibbons defended his description of Mr Rudd as a psychopath, saying that the (labor) party is bigger than Kevin Rudd, and that Rudd's leadership style was chaotic and deeply offensive.
* These include former Labor ministers Stephen Smith and Greg Combet calling for Mr Rudd to leave parliament. Dr Emerson said that Rudd had committed "treachery" against every Labor leader he has worked with and should leave. A document provided to the Liberal’s strategy team on an informal basis by a psychiatrist friendly to the Liberals, assessed Rudd as suffering a personality disorder known as “grandiose narcissism”.<ref name="autogenerated5"/> The document also proposed tactics to leverage Mr Rudd's own personality against him.<ref name="autogenerated5"/>
Rudd, the document stated, was vulnerable to any challenge to his self-belief that he was more widely-read, smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone else “on the planet”.<ref name="autogenerated5"/> If undermined in front of an audience, with his intellect undermined, Rudd could be prone to “narcissistic rage”.<ref name="autogenerated5"/>

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