How much zzzzzzz do you need?

3 hours' sleep is all he needs

Annabel Crabb

July 18, 2009

THE mystery of Kevin Rudd's impressive work rate has been solved — by his wife, Therese Rein, who reports that the Prime Minister can get by on as little as three hours' sleep a night.

In her first extended interview since the Federal Government's election, Ms Rein — herself a weekly intercity commuter, charity worker, fitness fanatic and global business owner — has described to the The Age how one of the most driven partnerships in politics has adapted to life at the Lodge.

"If he wants to come home and put his tracky daks on and sit in front of the fire and have a chat, that's up to him," she says good-humouredly of her husband.

"I have my own things that I'm doing. I am both continuing to lead the company with the fabulous team of people that I work with, and then I'm doing things like going down to Whittlesea Secondary College, or hosting a UNICEF lunch on women's health. I don't need him to distract me on the ins and outs."

Ms Rein's working schedule involves three days a week spent running her business from Brisbane, with four trips a year to Britain to oversee her company's operations there.

But it is Ms Rein's revelation about her husband's working day that will provoke comment; particularly the news that the Australian Prime Minister's sleep patterns are more Spartan even than those of Napoleon Bonaparte or Margaret Thatcher, both of whom needed only four hours of sleep a night.

Mrs Thatcher trained herself to sleep for only four hours a night, in order to cope with the demands of the British prime ministership.

But Ms Rein says that Mr Rudd has only ever needed short periods of repose — three hours at a minimum — and was like that when she met him at university. "He doesn't need a lot of sleep," she says.

"It's just different."