IN early January 2015, reporter Sarah Ferguson met former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney for two days of interviews. Throughout this process the former PM revealed details that exposed his softer side and confirmed his complex character.

When I took my seat opposite Rudd, he made a joke about my jacket, the same one I’d worn for the first interviews: “I see you’ve got your Star Trek jacket on.”

Not every female reporter would appreciate the feedback, but he had a point so I didn’t mind. In the makeup chair half an hour earlier, Rudd had described with great tenderness a scene from his childhood.

The makeup artist, Chris Sall, is a gentle man who listens well. This was Rudd in a vulnerable mood, sitting in the otherwise empty makeup room swathed in a purple cape as Chris applied powder to his cheeks.

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Rudd talked about horse-riding as a kid in Queensland, and how he liked to ride as an adult in the Snowy Mountains, but he would never let the media film him on a horse because he knew they would ridicule him. It was true of course.

How do you balance that Rudd with the other one, the one described as a bully who mistreated staff and colleagues?

Jenny Macklin’s answer to a similar question was: “People are complex”.

I would add that few are more complex than Kevin Rudd.

The secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, was well placed to have a view on this issue.

“Many have said that Kevin’s approach to government was dysfunctional, and it was in some respects, but in other respects a number of myths have built up around his time as Prime Minister. He was never personally rude to me, and I can recall a dinner with the most senior figures in the national security community where I said: ‘Look, has anybody actually found that Kevin Rudd has been rude to them?’, and they all said: ‘Well, no, not to us’.”

Moran went on to suggest there were other culprits. “There were ministers in his Cabinet who were far more ill-mannered and rude in their handlings of public servants than Kevin … Some people who, on the TV screen, appeared mild-mannered and charming were, inside a Cabinet committee room, foul-mouthed and abusive. And that does not include Kevin Rudd.”

Lachlan Harris worked closely with Rudd as his press secretary for four years until Rudd’s removal as leader. He is loyal, but his interview was also one of the most considered of the series.

“The reality is the prime ministership is like a pressure cooker, and what it does is it exaggerates your strengths and it exaggerates your weaknesses. People who think that Rudd is this wonderful person who’s on Sunrise and is always smiling, they’re exaggerating Rudd’s strengths. And this school of thought that says Rudd was horrible and you couldn’t work with him, they’re exaggerating his weaknesses as well. He was much more in the middle of the scale, just as all the rest of us were.”

This is an edited extract from The Killing Season, by Sarah Ferguson with Patricia Drum, MUP Books, RRP $32.99