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Kevin Rudd was a 'megalomaniac': Garrett dishes the dirt on Kevin Rudd

Peter Garrett has opened up about Labor party leaders in a tell-all interview, saying he feared what Rudd would do to the country.

Speaking with Melissa Doyle before the release of Big Blue Sky, Garrett said his treatment of Gillard was "unbelievably poor".

"I don't think Julia Gillard was ever given clear air as they say, a fair chance"

"I don't care what anybody says if you are a reasonable, dispassionate observer of Australian media and popular culture you would have to say that she got a lot of stick for being a woman"

At 62 years of age, he has had three distinct and powerful careers, but despite in the public eye for 40 years he hasn’t shared a lot about it.

It is his first time being completely open about Labor Party since he quit politics.

Peter Garrett was elected to the House of Representatives in 2004 and when Labor was swept to power under Kevin Rudd, Peter was appointed Environment Minister.

He remained at the post under Julia Gillard when she came to power.

Garrett said he was trying to 'change the world' through his music and subsequently politics.

"I knew I would miss people and I knew I would miss the life of a musician terribly, and that certainly proved to be the case I will say."

"I don't have the view that some people do that music by itself changes the world."

"It is people and it is governments who change the world and there are different ways to change the world.

"I had done a lot of changing, or trying to change it this way, now I was going to try and change it another way," he said about joining the Labor Party in 2007

But it was the Rudd-Gillard power shift that moved him to eventually quit in 2013.

"Rudd wasn't someone who was easy to work with in that way and his vanity and his exercise of power as prime minister and then subsequently was contrary to me, ultimately to what good leadership is."

"His treatment of Gillard was unbelievably poor"

"He was [a megalomaniac]. I am not the only one to think it either."

"So I am critical of him that's true, I am very critical but for good reason."

He said Rudd's habit of changing his stance on issues and policy was risky.

"His career is a series of passionate embraces of issues that he then walks away from of you know running government one way in a certain direction and then turning around and heading off in another direction a couple of days later

"There was a reason that the caucus decided to remove Kevin Rudd and make Julia Gillard therefore the prime minister and its because the business of government had become impossible with him

Garrett told Melissa Doyle the biggest failing in his own political career was the Government's Home Insulation Program which caused the death of four people.

"The fact that we had the death of four young kids in the insulation scheme that the Government established to deal with the Global Financial Crisis, and that was a low light in a lot of different ways,

"That is what being a minister in a government is about, you do take one for the team."

Garrett lost both his parents by the age of 23, but being married for 30 years with three daughters he calls himself 'extraordinarily lucky'.

"I haven't been there sometimes enough for them and I feel for that but they are still talking to me and that's good and it's been the most important thing in my life."

"I have been extraordinarily lucky to fall in love with someone who became my wife and we are still together and anyone who has a long term relationship knows how precious that becomes."

Read more about Peter Garrett's memoir, Bg Blue Sky, here.