The former head-kicking, number-crunching senator has taken his no-holds-barred approach to his former career with him to his new one as a political commentator, which makes him interesting to hear. He is, of course, still recovering from massive cancer surgery, which saw surgeons remove several healthy organs, but it just wouldn’t be election night without Richo, so there he was And the reason election night isn’t the same without him?

There’s just not enough honesty in political commentary because many of those making the comments still need to watch their Ps and Qs because they remain too closely connected to the game.

Remember how many of his former colleagues came out in the midst of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd fiasco to sledge Kevin Rudd?

“Psychopathic narcissist” was one description. “Rude” and “a bastard” were others.

Yet now that Mr Rudd is seeking the government’s formal support for his nomination to the role of secretary-general of the United Nations, we voters are supposed to believe that his former Labor colleagues think he’s a great bloke and worthy of backing?

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who helped knife Mr Rudd and later return him to The Lodge, said this week the government should back an Australian for the position.

“I think Mr Turnbull should put the national interest first and support an Australian. The Turnbull government has to decide if it’s an Australian government or a Liberal government,” he said

Is that a whiff of political opportunism we smell? 

So many of Mr Rudd’s former colleagues – many of them still in Parliament – lined up to give fairly damning assessments of his character when he was accused of white-anting his successor Julia Gillard, yet we are now supposed to believe the people who trashed his performance as PM think he’d make a great UN secretary-general?

Holy hypocrites, Batman! Contrast then, the apparent late realisation by Mr Shorten and his colleagues of the virtues of their former boss with the views of ex-NSW premier Kristina Keneally. Ms Keneally is no longer in politics and is a regular commentator on the Sky News channel and seems to have adopted the same brutal honesty as Richo. She told viewers Mr Rudd was a “psychopathic narcissist” and not fit to be the UN secretary-general.

“That's not just my opinion, that's the opinion of a whole range of people who are currently sitting in the parliament. I can think of 12 Australians off the top of my head who would be a better secretary-general, and one of them is my labrador,” she said.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with commentators like Richo or Ms Keneally. What matters is that they are willing to stick their necks out and call it as they see it.

Too often self-interest gags our politicians and stifles the debate we should be entitled to have as a community. Given the trashing they gave his reputation when he was their boss, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to ask why Labor MPs are suddenly convinced Mr Rudd is leadership material after all.

They wouldn’t want us to think there’s some cheap political point-scoring going on, would they?