The Killing Season Uncut (20 page)

In Brisbane at the end of that week, the Treasurer's chief of staff, Jim Chalmers, was on his way home from Wayne Swan's house when he received a call from his boss.

He'd had a call from someone he considered highly credible [saying] that there was a strong possibility that there would be a move on Kevin Rudd the following week. He said that it was in his view too difficult a change to make. It wasn't desirable or explainable to make that change at that point in the electoral cycle. He asked me to stay in contact with the Prime Minister's office.

Swan didn't speak directly to Rudd. The Prime Minister's two most senior colleagues chose not to have a direct conversation with him about the impending challenge.

Rudd said Swan should have informed him of the political machinations.

Wayne Swan didn't tell me a thing. And Wayne Swan had an obligation as a very senior minister in the government, the next most senior after Julia Gillard, if he was aware of an impending leadership coup, to tell his Prime Minister. He failed to do so.

Swan maintained he did all he could to prevent a challenge.

WS: I was dousing this sort of talk. I let it be known that I didn't think it was a good idea.

SF: Did you try to speak to Mark Arbib at any time to hose him down …

WS: I wasn't in contact with Mark Arbib but Mark Arbib would have been under no illusions about what my views were … because I'd expressed them very strongly to a couple of people in the course of that weekend and I know they would have been passed on.

According to Swan, AWU leader Paul Howes was part of those conversations.

SF: A number of people called you, including Paul Howes. What were they telling you exactly?

WS: Well, basically that they wanted to make a move, and I was telling them that I didn't think this was wise: ‘It's not going to play out well if you do it'.

In his answers to my questions about the challenge, Wayne Swan avoided naming names. His voice grew quieter and he shifted away from me in his chair. I didn't draw a particular conclusion, but the lack of detail was unsatisfying.

 

As the interview with Gillard moved to the final days before the challenge, her answers became precise and limited. I hesitate to say it, but she sounded like a lawyer.

SF: By that stage phone calls were going back and forward. Do you remember who you did call over that weekend?

JG: I don't particularly recall making calls over the weekend … I don't recall individual telephone conversations, no.

SF: Did you talk to anybody over that weekend about leadership?

JG: About leadership, no.

Gillard acknowledged how puzzling it appears.

I understand how odd that looks from the outside. I genuinely do. In politics with the media glare, for me to risk making telephone calls with the possibility that they would be reported would be me personally starting a crisis for Labor and I wasn't going to do that.

The blunt frankness from Gillard and Swan, so evident in their assessment of Rudd's failings, was absent in their account of those few days.

Kevin Rudd's account of his final days as leader focused on the business of government.

We have a major visit by the incoming President of China, with whom I met probably half-a-dozen times during the several days that he was in Canberra. We also had a state visit from our nearest neighbour, the President of East Timor. We also had a G20 Summit looming within days in Canada. And on top of that, I'm in the midst of trying to resolve and conclude
the mining tax agreement with Fortescue Metals. This is a big week! It is policy focused. All my energies are going into what the people have elected me to do, but it seems that other folks, pursuing some Shakespearean ambitions, were equally busy doing other things.

 

On Monday 21 June 2010, the fortnightly Newspoll showed the Rudd government's lead over the opposition had increased. On the two-party-preferred measure, the government was ahead by 4 points, 52 to 48. Labor's primary vote sat at 35 per cent, but on the preferred PM rating Rudd outdid Tony Abbott by 46 to 37.

Lindsay Tanner thought the government was in a good position.

I actually felt that we were just now back in situation normal. So what in effect had happened is that we'd had a rapid decline from what was always an unrealistically high position. We were still in a highly competitive position.

One of Julia Gillard's closest friends in Parliament was Victorian MP and Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor. He understood what the agitators were doing, but without Gillard, he said it couldn't proceed.

Whilst it was clear that Bill Shorten, Mark Arbib and David Feeney agitated early, it really needed a critical mass of support from the Caucus and it needed her acquiescence or her support, and until she agreed, nothing was going to happen.

Victorian state secretary Nicholas Reece described the intensity of feeling amongst his colleagues.

The New South Wales' leadership had had recent experience of leadership change. They had been blooded. Some of the
Victorian leadership during that period, this was something that was quite new to them, but what they lacked in experience they certainly made up for in the depth of their visceral dislike of Kevin Rudd.

Gillard's week began with a 7.30 a.m. meeting with Mark Arbib. After that meeting Gillard emailed Kevin Rudd and his chief of staff on the issue of asylum seekers, going on to detail process problems within the government. According to Rudd, it was an unusual thing to do.

If Julia wanted me to read something she would've texted me, 'cause she knows that I respond to text messages. She would've known that I don't respond to emails 'cause I don't read them.

What Rudd didn't know was that Gillard had BCCed (blind-copied) Mark Arbib. Gillard explained it like this.

I viewed him as an ally in trying to get this sorted out.

Bruce Hawker had a different view.

Gillard was building a case against Kevin, probably a case that she didn't really need to make with Mark Arbib because I think he was already firming in his views.

Simon Crean said that on Monday night, Arbib continued the asylum seeker theme with him.

I had dinner with Mark Arbib and he was urging me to talk to Julia about the asylum seeker problem because we were doing badly in the polls. I said, ‘But why should I talk to Julia? Why not talk to Kevin? I'll go and talk to Kevin'. And I actually asked the question, ‘You're not suggesting we change the leader, Mark, are you?' And he said, ‘No'.

Arbib also talked to Anthony Albanese at Parliament House. Albanese was not infected by the panic; unlike so many of his colleagues, he never lost sight of the voters' perspective.

I did have a chat with Mark Arbib. He came to see me in my office and said that some people were thinking about a challenge. And I was dismissive of that option, for the reason that people would wonder how that had occurred. They'd voted for Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. We'd run the most presidential campaign in Australian political history. The slogan was Kevin 07.

Bruce Hawker said Arbib told him conversations were taking place across the party.

There was clearly discussion going on between the Victorians and the New South Wales Right and that was concerning for me. When I pushed him [Arbib] about the level of unhappiness that existed inside the Right about Kevin's leadership, he said that it was mainly emanating from the Victorian Right: Bill Shorten, David Feeney in particular.

In Rudd's office that Monday night, after the regular political strategy phone hook-up, Sean Kelly and press secretary Lachlan Harris both thought something was amiss. Kelly described the scene.

I remember Lachlan Harris turning to me once that phone call had ended and saying, ‘Something's up'. Julia's staff had gone silent. Karl and Mark had stopped contributing. When things go silent, that's when you know something's happening in politics.

The following morning saw the last meeting of the Caucus before the long winter break, most likely the last before the election. Chris Bowen recalled the mood in the room that day.

There was a nervousness around. Not everybody was convinced we would win and Kevin was a bit off his game, there's no question about that.

Albanese said the Caucus meeting concluded without the leadership being raised.

I then thought, ‘Oh well, we're getting on with things'.

I think it had a feeling of uprising about it.

Julia Gillard

W
EDNESDAY
23 June 2010. Page 1 of
The Sydney Morning Herald
.

When Kevin Rudd talked confidently on Monday about the strength of Labor support for his leadership it was not based solely on bravado—he has been discreetly checking that his party is still behind him.

The Herald
has learnt from a number of MPs that the Prime Minister's most trusted lieutenant, his chief of staff, Alister Jordan, has been talking privately to almost half the caucus to gauge whether Mr Rudd has the support of his party …

Mr Jordan is understood to have sounded out the bulk of cabinet ministers and some members of the outer ministry.

The Herald
understands he has also tested sentiment with up to three dozen backbenchers, chiefly factional operatives from the Right and Left, and some of the more seasoned rank and filers.

Early that morning in Julia Gillard's office at Parliament House, staffer Gerry Kitchener saw her reaction to the story by Peter Hartcher and Phillip Coorey.

She was in her private bathroom and came out of there and just started going on about the article that was in the paper. She had a spray about it and was really genuinely pissed off about it.

Gillard had used the word ‘crystallise' before to describe how she felt about the article.

That article seemed to crystallise for me the voice in the back of my head that was saying the bonds of trust are frayed here.

Leader of the House Anthony Albanese saw the article too.

I didn't think that much of it. I thought it was a bit strange, frankly, that it had been written that the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff was ringing Caucus members about anything. I saw that as much ado about nothing.

The story prompted New South Wales Labor secretary Sam Dastyari to contact Mark Arbib.

I text Mark. I go, ‘Is there anything in this?' And he calls me straight up and he goes, ‘Mate, it's bad'. And I go, ‘Okay, how bad?' He goes, ‘Bad, bad, and I go, ‘What does that mean?' And he goes, ‘Mate, I think I'll be in a better position to tell you what it means later today. Let me give you a call in a few hours'.

 

Leadership challenges require a trigger: sometimes they're spontaneous, sometimes they're planned. The
Herald
story has been widely regarded as the ‘trigger' for the 2010 challenge against Kevin
Rudd—though to describe it that way is part of a black-and-white approach to explaining the complicated events that followed.

The idea that the
Herald
piece was a legitimate reason for a challenge was met with blunt scepticism by some, including Anthony Albanese.

You don't make a decision to challenge for the leadership of the Labor Party against a first-term sitting Prime Minister because an article suggests that the chief of staff is supporting his boss to remain as Prime Minister.

Gillard said she asked for a meeting with party elder John Faulkner.

JG: I'm not someone who dissolves into tears very often, [but I] surprised myself by ending up crying as John Faulkner sort of comforted me.

SF: How were you feeling?

JG: I was feeling incredibly betrayed. I mean I could've at any point immersed myself right in the middle of destabilising Kevin. I could've said yes to all these people when they came pounding into my office to talk about leadership: let's have a long conversation about leadership and let's leak it to the media. Could've done that at any time. I did the complete reverse of that to keep supporting Kevin, and you know despite all of that, these huge efforts to support him, I was being viewed with suspicion.

Gerry Kitchener didn't make much of it.

Gerry Kitchener (GK): I didn't disagree with her. [It] wasn't a personal attack on me so it was easier for me to be ambivalent about it, but I thought that it was probably not all that surprising if it was true that the PM's chief of staff was speaking to people.

SF: Who leaked it do you think?

GK: I don't know who leaked it, obviously, but I'd be surprised if it was Rudd's office who leaked it.

SF: What about your office?

GK: I don't know whether anyone in our office would've leaked it. I would've thought that if someone who was supportive of Julia leaked it, it would be someone in the New South Wales Right.

Kevin Rudd's chief of staff, Alister Jordan, had developed a close relationship with Julia Gillard. They used to walk together on Sundays when Parliament was sitting. Alister Jordan would not give an interview for the series: he was one of the few whose claim to want to move on was convincing. It was Gillard who told me that Jordan went to her office to tell her the story in the
Herald
was untrue.

JG: Alister obviously came in to see me and try and reassure me. My memory of that was a very awkward conversation, not one where I ended up feeling particularly reassured.

SF: But you had a good relationship with Alister?

JG: Very.

SF: And he was telling you it was untrue?

JG: Yes, and look I appreciate that. I also appreciated that Alister's loyalty to Kevin knew no bounds.

SF: So you're suggesting he was lying to you?

JG: Look, I'm suggesting he was trying to deal with a political problem.

Kevin Rudd also took the few steps over to Gillard's office.

JG: His opening words coming in the door were, ‘You're obviously very concerned about
The Sydney Morning Herald
article. It's not true'.