long doing the bidding of the victor, Paul Keating. Australian FM Kevin Rudd resigns Never before had the Labor Party dumped a serving Prime Minister, yet Hawke's equanimity -- outwardly at least -- was striking. You might have said he seemed both resigned and liberated about the loss of the job he 'd held for nearly nine years. Of course, the long contest with Keating had been aggravating to Hawke and sapping for his Government; Keating had effectively launched his challenge late the year before, in 1990, when he contended, in his Plà ¡ cido Domingo speech, that Australia had never had a great Prime Minister. Then he challenged Hawke in mid-1991, lost and went to the back bench until his second -- and successful challenge -- at the end of that year. Hawke, the Labor Party and most Australians knew that Keating had Hawke lined up for the kill. Not so Kevin Rudd. It has been an undeclared, subterranean campaign to reinstall Rudd in the Prime Minister's office -- one from which the candidate has, until now, been able to stay aloof. Rudd has portrayed himself as busy and contented within the Cabinet under Julia Gillard. As he described it last week, he has been a happy little Vegemite being Australia's foreign minister. Invariably for Rudd, questions about the quality of the Labor Party leadership, the propriety of those who removed him from the Prime Minister's office or of