Party Games: Kevin Rudd leaves a mixed legacy as he exits Parliament KEVIN Rudd cut a happy but singular figure in Parliament when the return to festivities and festilities began yesterday. He didn't look like someone who had the weight of any world on his shoulders. He chatted amiably to his once-was-deputy Anthony Albanese who dropped by the back row for a catch up. Hours later Rudd let slip his one more surprise. He announced his exit from elected politics, 15 and a half years after he arrived, and following a controversial and news making two stints as prime minister. Perhaps he'd always planned it this way, after his defeat at the September 7 election. His strategist and confidant, Bruce Hawker, was two suburbs away doing a book signing at a Manuka salon, clearly not in the Rudd loop. Possibly, he returned to Canberra and had a clear vision of his future and it wasn't from the first-class lounge. The key to this is going to be the now-certain announcement of his next appointment. After he almost gave up his comeback plans early this year, Rudd sounded out some Washington think tanks, including Brookings and Carnegie, for jobs but soon got the urge to again scratch his Julia Gillard itch. Rudd leaves behind one of the most interesting, infuriating and intriguing political careers Queensland has seen. After arriving as the wizened bureaucrat working for Wayne Goss, he launched an unlikely but eventually successful career as a federal MP. His ambition was overweening from the beginning in 1998. He cut down Labor's foreign spokesman at the time, Laurie Brereton, in the first few years and then stalked very leader he had. His prime ministership was full of promise and then disappointment. He lost the plot in early 2010 and then lost the leadership but managed to rebuild himself as the ultimate political victim - something he traded on until his colleagues and successor Gillard couldn't take it anymore. Rudd's legacy is good and bad. He delivered a career topping apology to the aboriginal people and he played a central role in keeping the country out of recession as the rest of the world was battered by a financial crisis. In the end he couldn't match his promise with his performance and he overreached in almost every way. He spent too much, he dithered on everything from asylum seekers to climate change and health and he became paranoid. Rudd will be remembered more as a destructive force than a legislative and governing giant. He probably disappointed himself. Kevin Rudd will always be a destabilising influence and should leave parliament, says Nicola Roxon.