The Killing Season Uncut (2 page)

The Abbott government faltered early. Their first Budget was a disaster. Labor began to think the unthinkable, that Abbott might be a one-term Prime Minister. The prospect of a series laying out Labor's immediate ugly past became even less appealing. By mid 2014 the project had stalled.

 

I arrived at the cramped, airless office where the Labor doco was housed. Shelves along one wall were crammed with yellow boxes of taped archive material, and above them in rows, the first round of books, manifestations of the history war already underway.
Downfall
,
Shitstorm
,
Sideshow
,
Power Failure
,
The Stalking of Julia Gillard
—the tone of the period was loud and divisive. Greg Combet, Wayne Swan, Paul Kelly and Julia Gillard all had books to come.

How do you find a truthful history when almost every event is disputed? Do you look for a single truth or accept there are many? Most facts in political reporting are elusive, like apparitions that take flesh and then fade away.

I was sure of only one thing: the series had to be built around the Labor leadership change in 2010. Everything flowed towards and away from that cataclysmic event. Before it happened to
Tony Abbott in September 2015, it had seemed like a once-in-a-generation phenomenon—a bloody regicide according to Rudd's supporters which, unlike the Liberals' version, came without notice. How and when did it start? Was Gillard pushed or did she jump? Was it folly or a rational response to a dysfunctional government?

Setting out on the narrative, we trod a path through no-man's-land, talking to Rudd and Gillard's supporters: some messianic in their devotion, most convinced their version of the story was the only truth. Rudd and his supporters called the main event ‘the coup'. Gillard and her allies called it ‘the leadership change', which sounded more orderly, less brutal. We learnt to let go of certainties, sometimes swinging wildly between the different versions, usually determined by the last person we'd interviewed.

The division at the top of the party spread all the way down to the most junior backbenchers and most of the staffers. Kevin Rudd inspired intense loyalty and intense hatred. What was true about him and what was recollected in bitterness? Julia Gillard, on the other hand, was opaque. I had learnt how she slides off a question, giving an answer to something you have not asked. We had to start from the beginning with every event they were involved in.

We also shut the door on the opinions of the outside world. People seemed to be obsessed with trivia: did Rudd really have a tantrum over a hairdryer on an overseas trip? They were also fixed in their views. I wondered where they got their certainty from. In the worst cases, they urged me to look at Rudd and Gillard's private lives. I met those suggestions with a blank stare.

 

For the series to proceed, I needed to secure full cooperation from Rudd and Gillard. In this I had one advantage, shared with Deb Masters: I didn't work in the Canberra Press Gallery. Neither of us had reported on Rudd and Gillard. We were cleanskins.

The business of persuasion is a fraught one for journalists. Persuasiveness is one thing, bullshit is another. You have to
understand your subject intimately and what their purpose is in speaking on camera. I prefer candour but it's not enough by itself. And you are not friends, although it can appear that way. The line you shouldn't cross is usually only visible when it's behind you.

I barely knew Kevin Rudd. We had met once when he was Prime Minister. All I remembered was a lively argument about the political contest in Reformation England. It was an event at Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister's home in Sydney. On a sloping grass lawn overlooking the harbour, Rudd mimicked training a pair of binoculars on the home of then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, across the water in Point Piper. Rudd laughed at his joke.

I had two preliminary phone calls with Rudd before I joined the series, in my garden because the mobile reception inside my house is patchy. My dog followed me around, barking. The small pool in the yard had a broken pump: as it reached the surface, it made a gurgling noise like an animal being slaughtered. I pushed the pump underwater with my foot, trying not to drop the phone.

In these conversations, Rudd frequently returned to the theme of his mistreatment by the media, especially the ABC. He was wary of our intentions. I was careful, not promising much beyond an open mind. Where Gillard is reserved, Rudd is labile. The temptation is to adjust to his mood. It was safer to be blunt. I told him this was his best, maybe his only chance of getting a fair hearing and he should seize it.

Our third conversation was short. He agreed to the interviews. Afterwards I sent a short, hubristic email to my colleagues: ‘Rudd's in'. Our long on again, off again relationship had started.

At the time we were talking to Rudd, we were also talking to Gillard. Someone recently suggested that making
The Killing Season
was like being Switzerland during World War II.

We met Julia Gillard for the first time at the Hilton Sydney. A small bedroom had been booked for us, which would've been awkward, perched on the edge of the bed together. We found a meeting room and waited. Gillard arrived on time with her
right-hand man, amanuensis and bag carrier Bruce Wolpe. She walked into the room immaculate and hostile—‘bristling' was the word Deb Masters used later. We were taken aback. She sat opposite us, erect in her chair, hands crossed on the table. Young hands, I noticed, manicured and with bright-red nail polish.

I had seen Gillard in person once before, from a distance in the House of Representatives when she was Deputy Prime Minister and Rudd was overseas. She faced the new Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, across the dispatch box. I watched from the public gallery, impressed by how she dominated the vast space; she provoked Turnbull into making a mistake, and he left the chamber followed by laughter.

At the Hilton, Gillard's first question was how we proposed to examine the role of the media. She told us we couldn't make the series without an analysis of the Press Gallery during her prime ministership. She was contemptuous of the media's role in pushing Rudd's case, naming individuals whom she said had been coopted by Rudd.

We listened, using the time to scan her face, close up for the first time, with its astonishing creamy complexion. Her eyes are narrow and give little away, whereas Rudd's face is easier to read. Months later we watched the archive of a scene at the National Press Club where political journalist Laurie Oakes asked a bombshell question about Gillard's actions on the night of the leadership change. On the podium, Gillard's face was immobile but her eyes flickered. By that time we were expert at watching her and Rudd for small gestures that revealed truths; for now, we were novices.

Early on in the conversation Gillard raised the topic of Rudd's mental state, though her friends, she said, had told her not to. ‘I'm no medical person', she said, before questioning Rudd's mental capacity when he was Prime Minister. I thought it was a misjudgement, the act of someone trying to justify their actions. I wanted to lean over and say so.

Gillard's other focus was the book which she was bringing out later that year. She wanted to protect its exclusivity. Unlike Rudd,
she had already begun shaping the perception of her story. It seemed to me that in the contest to define the history of the era, she had the upper hand.

I was struck by how different Rudd and Gillard's approaches were in those early meetings. Their engagement with the series mirrored their styles in politics. Gillard was punctual, efficient, precise—the word most often used to describe her by her peers is transactional. Rudd was usually late, less efficient, but also given to more engagement. Gillard was private; Rudd wore his heart on his sleeve.

In one of the earliest interviews for the series, Kevin Rudd's press secretary, Lachlan Harris, reflected on how those different personalities had created such a successful combination in 2006.

Rudd was all energy and emotion and Gillard was all discipline and delivery, and together they were an incredibly formidable force … He was incredibly good in the media; he was likeable, he had the kind of big picture stuff. Gillard was much more straight down the line, much more disciplined, in the weeds of the hard draft of policy.

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The interviews with Rudd and Gillard had been agreed to in principle but were still many weeks away; the negotiation with Rudd over the location of his interview hadn't even begun.

On the day I began working on the series, I picked up the episode briefs and read a scathing assessment of Kevin Rudd, provided off the record by a backbencher. I knew we couldn't accept as final judgements the views of unknown backbenchers. They had a role, but we needed Rudd and Gillard's Cabinet peers to tell their stories, and many of them were still saying no. I was also uncomfortable about the number of off-the-record interviews. This series would have no unsourced material. Anyone who wanted to shape
the narrative had to appear in it, in full view where their colleagues could judge them and the truth of what they were saying.

We created detailed files on the ‘hold-outs'; we wrote new, more frank letters. I went from office to office in Parliament House. I got myself invited to book launches so I could bail up the recalcitrants. The pitch to everyone was the same. We had three episodes to tell the story of almost seven years. It would be told only by firsthand accounts, by people who were in the room. Tone was important too. This would be no hatchet job: if Labor had a good story to tell beyond the infighting, then they should tell it. (The pitch to Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib was more bespoke but I'll get to that later.) I also believed they owed the public an explanation; the audience was entitled to understand what happened to the government they elected in 2007—the pollsters had observed that the public's interest in politics had been reignited by the arrival of Kevin Rudd. Moving on might be politically desirable for Labor, but in my view, not before they had explained themselves. It seemed extraordinary to me that many of the key players thought the subject could be avoided.

Bill Shorten was in a category of his own. By the time we started filming, he'd become the leader of the Labor Party. Shorten told us he was reluctant to take part but agreed to a meeting. We went to dinner at a restaurant in Canberra. In a private dining room, a screen hid us from a curious public—a perfect metaphor for Shorten's desire to avoid scrutiny. Every time the conversation turned to the Rudd–Gillard period, he would pivot to asking me questions about myself, my childhood, anything but politics. The technique, while charming, was also transparent. I'm a journalist; that's what I do.

Shorten had been in federal Parliament for less than three years when he moved against the Prime Minister. He had never fully explained why he'd done it, perhaps in the hope there would be little trace of his involvement on the record. It seemed to me there was another layer to his reluctance. Because he'd never told the complete story on camera, with the exception of a few shots of
him in a restaurant on the night of the challenge, the archive was clean. He wanted to keep it that way.

Gillard and many of Shorten's colleagues chose to protect him, forming a phalanx around the leader. When his name came up, their memories suddenly became hazy. But there were enough exceptions to place Shorten at the heart of the drama.

 

And what truths were contained in the boxes of archive material that lined the shelves of our office? Led by Deb Masters, the team was on its way to logging, almost shot by shot, more than 1500 hours of archive—there are physiotherapy bills to prove the hours spent hunched over tape decks.

The Killing Season
was told as a drama. There were scenes, moments, tiny gestures in those pictures that we needed to tell the story visually. Our drama began in the first moments of the Rudd–Gillard partnership. The Labor story had turned so dark that revisiting those scenes surprised us. The archive shows a bright, energetic pair. We found a
Lateline
story about a fundraiser on the day Rudd asked Beazley for a leadership ballot; miraculously, the raw footage had been kept. At twilight in a vineyard outside Melbourne, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd step out of a white Comcar into the glare of the media spotlight, their freshness unmistakeable. Gillard is sweet, untutored even.

Gillard recalled the feeling that was so evident on the screen.

The media interest's so much more intense, the reaction if there was an error so much more profound, so you want to make sure everything's right. So yes, the whiteness, the brightness of the spotlight did strike me very, very strongly.

As series producer, Masters realised that the archive alone would not be enough to drive this story, and traditional reconstructions wouldn't produce the energy the drama required. She envisaged
a seamless combination of the two. So at the same vineyard near Melbourne, cinematographer Louie Eroglu, perched in a cherry picker, filmed sweeping shots of a white Holden with number plates made by the ABC props department, driving up in the late afternoon. These shots were edited in with the archive.

Rudd had his own recollection of the evening.

I think what we were both adjusting to was the fact that we were now a duo, the dynamic duo. That was kind of fun, because Julia had and has extraordinary attributes and she was out there going hard at it, full, strong.

I asked Julia Gillard if she liked Kevin Rudd then.

I was genuinely friendly with Kevin. Our friendship grew. I mean from 1998, coming into Parliament, I'd never met him, so off that start you did things together, a sense of connection grew. That sense of connection really moved into being a strong, personal friendship.

It was an obvious place to start: the moment in late 2006 the two came together on the leadership ticket. Simon Crean called the partnership ‘a marriage of convenience'. Kevin Rudd, a public servant and Christian, ostensibly from Queensland's Right, had teamed up with Julia Gillard, a Labor lawyer and professed atheist from the Left, a woman who had fought her way through Victoria's arcane factional system and survived.