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’.
CHAPTER 10
THE CHALLENGE (PART I)
I think it had a feeling of uprising about it.
Julia Gillard
WEDNESDAY 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 S
taff 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’.
SF: And when he said it wasn’t true, you ignored him?
JG: Well, I continued to be concerned not only about the contents of the article but this broader issue of where we were in terms of being able to function together. And whilst there were the reassuring words, there was nothing in his demeanour that I found particularly reassuring.
Rudd and Gillard agreed to continue their conversation later. There was no sign that Rudd perceived the danger he was in.
The Herald story said that Jordan had sounded out ‘the bulk of cabinet ministers and some members of the outer ministry’. It also claimed he’d spoken to ‘up to’ thirty-six backbenchers. The chief of staff is the prime minister’s eyes and ears in the Caucus. It is part of their job to be in regular contact with MPs, to test the mood and find out if there are any problems likely to affect the Prime Minister’s support. Swan’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Chalmers, didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about the claims.
In the days leading up to the leadership challenge, the Prime Minister’s office was making inquiries around the building to make sure that people were, you know, okay and solid, or to hear what their views were, to give people the opportunity to voice any concerns. That was entirely understandable and not in any way surprising.
But The Sydney Morning Herald article was suggesting more-pointed conversations that went further than normal staff work.
We checked the claims reported in the story, for the series and for this book. We contacted Rudd’s Cabinet, members of the outer ministry and a large number of backbenchers. Only two out of seventy-two Caucus members we contacted described having a conversation with Jordan in the weeks before the challenge in which he might have been testing support for Rudd. Fifteen of the eighteen-member Cabinet said they had not been sounded out—three declined to answer: Penny Wong, Stephen Smith and Joe Ludwig.
On the day of the challenge, John Faulkner was the person Gillard and Rudd sought out for advice. We asked Faulkner about the article.
I can’t help you. He [Jordan] didn’t canvas me about such matters and I am completely unaware of anybody else being canvassed.
I put our findings to Gillard, who had forgotten what the article claimed.
SF: There is nobody amongst your Cabinet colleagues who has a recollection as described in the article.
JG: Well I certainly wouldn’t have expected any of those calls to be made to Cabinet colleagues, by definition.
SF: Sorry, the article said that it was Cabinet colleagues as well.
JG: My assumption would be that someone ringing around would be focusing on the backbench. I can’t give you numbers of people contacted, obviously. You’ve done your own research. But it speaks to this question and climate of suspicion and that’s the important thing.
…
SF: But it matters whether or not it was true doesn’t it?
JG: Let me just, I just want to order my thoughts about this. It wasn’t the only thing. The very fact that someone was feeding to The Sydney Morning Herald issues about my loyalty, that had to be concerning, and that wouldn’t be written about unless someone had raised it with them.
That morning, Gillard stayed in her office and had a round of discussions with factional operatives and confidants. I asked her a number of times about the key players that day. She required prompting on the role of Bill Shorten.
SF: How important was Bill Shorten’s role?
JG: Look I think Bill played a role. He didn’t play the role. The person who played the role was me. A number of people played a role and Bill was one of them. I think Mark Arbib and a number of others probably played a bigger role.
It suits the contemporary Labor narrative to say the challenge was driven by Mark Arbib. Unlike Shorten, Arbib is out of politics.
JG: Of course I was keen to hear the political intelligence and analysis of people like Mark Arbib and Kim Carr, particularly Mark, whose savvy I admired.
…
SF: And Shorten, would you include him in that group?
JG: Yes, Bill I think is a very sophisticated political person. Good policy brain, good political brain.
SF: And he thought it was crucial, you had to do it?
JG:
Yes, he did.
Victorian Senator David Feeney and Mark Arbib went to see Gillard together. Gerry Kitchener noted the significance.
It was almost a sign that the Right of the Labor Party had solidified around backing Julia, because my understanding is that for a lengthy period, the Victorian Right and the New South Wales Right had been meeting and caucusing separately.
Gillard said at that point she had not yet made up her mind about challenging Rudd.
My recollection is when they first came to see me I was still thinking and I said I would do some more thinking and I would get back to them later on.
Tony Burke said that Gillard sent a message asking him to come and see her.
Julia had The Sydney Morning Herald in front of her, asked whether I’d read the article. She said that having read it after all the loyalty that she had been showing in trying to fix the government, she felt she only had two choices, either to stand down as Deputy Prime Minister and go to the backbench, or to challenge.
In Gillard’s version, the suggestion came from Burke.
The Killing Season Uncut Page 16