Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night gave an interview to Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.

This morning, Brisbane’s sole metropolitan newspaper characterised his successor Julia Gillard’s response as an apology to Queenslanders for hurting their feelings.

It’s a funny way to characterise the reception of the Labor leadership change.

Rudd’s interview was dignified, self-deprecating and displayed a lot of character and humanity. The initial media response that his remarks would prove a “distraction” for the Labor campaign is surely a mischaracterisation, proving only that the bizarre script that has dominated much of this election continues to write itself in the face of changed facts.

Contrary to what the Niki Savvas and Janet Albrechtsens of this world might have us believe, Rudd’s not the sort of bloke to let himself be consumed by bitterness and regret. He’s no Mark Latham.

I said last night on ABC News 24’s The Drum that I didn’t think Rudd’s deposition was the sole source of Queensland Labor’s undoubted woes.

Labor has lots of problems here — the toxicity of an ALP brand contaminated by perceptions of Anna Bligh’s reversal on privatisation combining with a feeling that federal Labor had gone the same way as the state mob, obsessed with “announcables” and machinations. Queenslanders are also preparing to reverse our record of being one of the Greens’ worst states.

The ALP has also been able to contain the swing against it in some of its marginals, if what I’m hearing is right. Particularly in regional Queensland and on Brisbane’s northern outskirts, a formidable marginal seat campaign is under way, aided by the quality of many of the members elected in the Kevin07 surge. My best guess is that, at the moment, Labor is looking at losing more like 4-5 seats rather than 8-10 seats.

Kevin Rudd’s words won’t hurt Labor’s chances. Far from it. But it’s about more than hurt feelings.

The ALP still has to demonstrate to Queenslanders that it’s capable of transcending the sound bite politics of a state administration. It’s doing a good job of addressing parish pump issues, in a campaign that feels very much like Fred Daly’s picture of concurrent local by-elections.

As I wrote in 2007, one of Rudd’s big virtues was that he was able to appeal to cosmopolitan Queenslanders sick of being dismissed as country cousins and to the still very real state parochialism that suffuses the place.

If he can now revive some of that spirit, and infuse Julia Gillard’s campaign with it, there will be an electoral dividend in Queensland.

Dr Mark Bahnisch is a sociologist and a life-long Brisbane resident. He founded leading public affairs blog Larvatus Prodeo.