Kevin Rudd & Malcolm Turnbull: Party Thieves – The Real Story Behind the 2010 Election

Barrie Cassidy is a veteran political journalist. In a career spanning over 40 years, Cassidy has worked in print, radio and television, served as Bob Hawke’s press secretary and as The Australian’s Washington correspondent. He presents channel Ten’s Meet The Press and a number of ABC shows including The 7:30 Report and Insiders, which Cassidy currently hosts. On Wednesday 20 October 2010, Barrie Cassidy addressed The Sydney Institute on his book Party Thieves, which charts the party conflicts and dramas behind the unexpected 2010 election result.

KEVIN RUDD & MALCOLM TURNBULL: PARTY THIEVES – THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE 2010 ELECTION

BARRIE CASSIDY

We have just been through the most tumultuous and the most fascinating period since the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975. In fact, apart from the Whitlam years, there has been nothing like the extraordinary events of the last nine months, certainly not in my lifetime. It all started of course with that three way battle for the Liberal leadership last December, when no one was sure who would emerge the winner and in fact no one was sure until very late who would stand. Tony Abbott won by just one vote over Malcolm Turnbull – yet if Joe Hockey had picked up just two more votes in the first round, he would have gone on and won in the final ballot. That’s how close it was. Three candidates with enough support to bring them within two votes of the leadership.

Then we saw the rapid decline of one of Australia’s most popular prime ministers – eventually sacked by his party in his first term in office. And then replaced by the country’s first ever female prime minister, an atheist with a live-in boyfriend. And just when we were trying to get our heads around all that, she calls an election that finishes up with a hung parliament and the first minority government in 70 years.

How was it that Kevin Rudd went from the country’s most popular prime minister to a spent force in a matter of months?

Now that’s a helluva story. Yet the key to it all – the most significant event from all of that – was Kevin Rudd’s fall from grace. That was nothing short of amazing, and it underpins everything that happened since. Yet that’s the part of the whole equation, the critical link in the whole chain of events that, in my view, has never been properly explained to a gobsmacked public by anybody – not by the Labor party and not adequately by the media. The Labor party has been constrained because to do so would simply have opened up massive wounds. It would have meant casting Kevin Rudd adrift and taking all the consequences of that. It was damaging enough as it was, coming right on the eve of an election. But the party had to restrict the explanation for its ruthless and almost unprecedented actions, to weasel words about the government losing its way – and then let the media embellish the explanation with various interpretations of appalling opinion polling.

Very early on he started to believe his own bullshit, and developed this sense that it was all about him – his own popularity – his own judgements and his own unofficial coterie.

Of course, it went far deeper than that – much deeper – and that’s what I set out to try and do as I developed the book, The Party Thieves.  I tried to get behind the totally inadequate explanations and fully explain two things.

1. How was it that Kevin Rudd went from the country’s most popular prime minister to a spent force in a matter of months? And…
2. What was it that really drove the rank and file – the members of the parliament – to desert him in overwhelming numbers at the very first opportunity presented to them?

Firstly, Kevin Rudd did a lot right early on and undoubtedly his apology to the Stolen Generations was important in giving him record approval numbers. He put out a very ambitious agenda – as it turned out – a way too ambitious agenda with about 600 individual election promises. There was no way he could keep them all, especially when his style was to raise an issue and move on to the next one while the first one was still being digested. Very early on he started to believe his own bullshit, and developed this sense that it was all about him – his own popularity – his own judgements and his own unofficial coterie. It certainly had little to do with the Labor party that had given him the opportunity.

Satisfying the media’s insatiable appetite at that level makes no sense at all. Ministers are better informed, more credible and more focussed on what really matters when they restrict their comments to their own responsibilities.

He seemed to be under some sort of media spell, captivated by the smell of it, the allure of it all, convinced that once you harnessed and manipulated the power of the media, then political success was guaranteed. That meant adopting some of the same stunts that the popular media promotes to boost ratings – empty vacuous stunts like Grocery Watch and Fuel Watch.

It also meant putting in place a media strategy that treated every day as a separate political contest that had to be won. Once you do that, then medium and long term planning suffers. Every day is fought according to the short term agenda of that day. Ministers were given talking points by minders and told to go out and argue the case according to those dot points. That meant the Minister for Finance, or the Minister for Small Business, or the Minister for Agriculture, would be seconded on a given day to talk across all of the portfolios as necessary. They were no longer ministers dedicated to a particular portfolio responsibility but spruikers for whatever the media deemed relevant that day – lobbyists – propagandists – for every two bit issue that suited the media agenda. Satisfying the media’s insatiable appetite at that level makes no sense at all. Ministers are better informed, more credible and more focussed on what really matters when they restrict their comments to their own responsibilities. And they’re likely to get more done.

Then on top of that, the focus groups were back in fashion. Focus groups should be there to inform politicians of what the public is thinking, but not to drive policies and rhetoric. Rebecca Huntley from Ipsos Mackay was interviewed by Four Corners during the election campaign – she’s one of the country’s most experienced social researchers – and she said what people so often say is this: “This is what we think. But what do we know? We’re not running the country. We’re not experts. We’re not seeing all the information. We want people to convince us otherwise.”

In other words, if politicians are genuinely uncomfortable with what people are saying in focus groups, then their first challenge should be; How do I turn this perception, this opinion, around? What do I need to do and say to persuade them otherwise?

Instead political minders use the material they gather as the basis for policy frameworks – they use that material to frame speeches and influence interviews – and that’s why you get political parties that pander to those with an irrational fear of asylum seekers, and their numbers; they run away from difficult climate change policies at the first sign of a scare campaign; they don’t even bother to argue the case for immigration and bigger populations; and they push back any new and challenging debate on the republic on the flimsiest of excuses.

But as misguided as the media strategy was, it was the policy framework that contributed more to Kevin Rudd’s downfall. Perhaps the beginning of the end was his misguided attitude that not only would Copenhagen deliver for the world, but that he personally would lead the world in those negotiations and walk away with the credit. It all collapsed of course and he returned home badly exposed. He could have gone to a February election and cashed in before it all went pear shaped, but he didn’t. Instead he soldiered on with no new approach, nothing adjusted after Copenhagen, no narrative… until he simply abandoned the whole thing.

Many leaders have survived poor opinion polls … But it was different for Rudd because this was the excuse so many had been looking for to get rid of him. So many of them simply didn’t like him. Some straight out detested him.

Now undoubtedly, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan urged him to put the whole thing on hold until 2013 – and he thought he could deal with it all in the context of the budget. But when it leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, it ran right out of control. There was no attempt even then to explain the new policy; to explain the postponement; to reassure Australians that he still felt strongly about the greatest moral challenge facing the globe. There was nothing. One day, all those devotees who were marching with him on the great climate change crusade, looked around, and he was gone. And as a result, Labor lost a million votes in a fortnight. And to this day that remains politically the worst two weeks in Rudd’s prime ministership. The way that he walked away from climate change was as big a negative for him as the apology was a positive. And from that point onwards – indeed even earlier than that – nobody – not the ministers or the senior public servants – could get Rudd to focus on key agenda items. The whole operation of government became a joke.

And of course, the polls stayed bad for the government from then on. Externally, they were bad enough. Most of them indicated that Labor had a primary vote somewhere between 35 and 38 per cent, nowhere near good enough to win an election. Internally, the figures were even worse, especially the polling taken in NSW and Queensland.

In the end the polling was the excuse. Many leaders have survived poor opinion polls, and been given every chance to recover. Many others will in the future. But it was different for Rudd because this was the excuse so many had been looking for to get rid of him. So many of them simply didn’t like him. Some straight out detested him.

They hated the way they had been treated. And it wasn’t simply a question of thin skinned politicians who resented their irrelevance. And it wasn’t only that he either ignored them or abused them. It was the fact that Rudd was essentially scornful of the party that they represented. The party had become irrelevant to the political process.

The single decision that caused the whole show to go off the rails was that advocated by Gillard and adopted by Rudd – to allow the leader to choose his own ministry, rather than be elected by the caucus. From that decision, Rudd – as one Senator put it to me – became the sole source of authority in the party. Everybody depended on him for promotion and advancement. Many of the MPs became sycophants simply to prosper; others who once had considerable influence just wasted away.

No longer did ministers and aspiring ministers cultivate the backbench. They didn’t need to do that any longer. And so the backbench lost touch with the executive. Key staff members had far more power than backbenchers, parliamentary secretaries and even junior ministers. Staff openly abused ministers if they didn’t do what they were told. When the staff phoned them up, they came running. No one wanted to offend the one with power to hire and fire.

The book documents a case where a senior minister was abused by a staff member because he wouldn’t take on a series of radio interviews – on the designated issue of the day. The minister – Tony Burke – had laryngitis and could barely speak. Not only was he abused when he protested, but an e-mail was circulated telling the wider party how he had let the team down.

You have to ask yourself why is it that at the very first opportunity – the very first time when the caucus got a chance to pass judgement on Rudd – no arm twisting was required. The numbers fell Gillard’s way in an absolute torrent.

Gary Gray recalls a meeting between ministers and staff. After they had discussed the key issue he asked Rudd’s staff to leave the room so that the rest of them could have a political discussion. They refused. Then as he wandered off down the corridor he got a text message from one of them telling him he would never be invited to one of the meetings again.

It was the hierarchy put in place in Queensland when Kevin Rudd was a staffer to Wayne Foss. He assumed real power in those days, and he handed down similar powers to his own staff once he became prime minister. And suddenly elected politicians and ministers of the Crown were subservient to the unelected staff. But there were so many one off incidents – examples of abuse and mistreatment – that simply built up to intolerable levels.

You have to ask yourself why is it that at the very first opportunity – the very first time when the caucus got a chance to pass judgement on Rudd – no arm twisting was required. The numbers fell Gillard’s way in an absolute torrent. Never before had the numbers tumbled so quickly at merely the whiff of a challenge. That’s because the resentment was so deep seated.

At one stage – it was about 10.30 at night – and on the count of one parliamentary secretary, there were about 35 MPs in Gillard’s office working the phones. And he shouted out – who are you finding to call? – They almost had enough numbers just there in the room. Kevin Rudd wasn’t knifed in the back – he wasn’t assassinated. He was sacked. Sacked by his peers, comprehensively.

It was badly received because it rarely happens in government. But is does happen. Bob Hawke was cut down while prime minister; so was John Gorton. In both those cases, the numbers were much tighter than they were with Gillard and Rudd. It was a paradox in a way that seven months beforehand, Tony Abbott knocked over his leader – by one vote – and yet there was no carry on about Malcolm Turnbull being stabbed in the back. Julia Gillard in fact came to the table later than any other challenger in political history. Only on the day itself did she seriously contemplate the leadership. Yet for whatever reason, she was depicted as a ruthless assassin, plotting together with a bunch of faceless men. The faceless men were in fact well known members of parliament – with skin in the game – and they did their party a huge favour. They saved the day, however narrowly. And so did Gillard by agreeing to take up the challenge.

Of course to accept that – that they did save the day – you also need to accept that had Rudd remained as leader, he would have lost the election – and of that, I have no doubt. So many strategists told me in the immediate period after Gillard took over the leadership that that act in itself did not guarantee a victory. That in their minds it simply meant that certain defeat was averted, and the election was now a contest, no more and no less. And that’s the way it turned out.

Imagine then the advertisements against Rudd … the Liberals would have run over and over Rudd describing climate change as the greatest moral challenge facing the globe – then the question, so why did you walk away?

The published and the internal polling in the last days of Kevin Rudd was dreadful, because the primary vote was so low and because the research showed that at that stage Labor couldn’t hope to get anything like the 80 per cent of Greens preferences that they picked up in 2007. Judgments were made, and these can only ever be judgments, that the feeling of disillusionment with Rudd was permanent; that he could do and say nothing to turn it around. They were headed for the loss of ten seats in Queensland and as many as eight in NSW.

Strategists had looked ahead to how the Coalition’s campaign would run if Rudd was still the leader. The advertising campaign would have been devastating. The most damaging advertising is that which throws a leader’s words back at themselves. When a party can run a videotape of their opponent condemning themselves by their own words. Paul Keating was particularly vulnerable to that, even though some of his words were distorted. The Get a Job crack out the side of his mouth to some young protestors was one example. Another had him saying “we’ll bolt it in…we’ll bolt it in…” which implied he was arrogant and cocky about his election prospects.

Imagine then the advertisements against Rudd. With the country still trying to come to terms with his backdown on climate change, the Liberals would have run over and over Rudd describing climate change as the greatest moral challenge facing the globe – then the question, so why did you walk away? They would have run his statement on the 7.30 Report that he is a big supporter of a big Australia – no doubt overlaid with pictures of Sydney traffic jams. They would have given a run to that news conference when he solemnly pledged he would never run political advertising. We would have seen images of Rudd outside parliament house telling insulation workers over and over again “I get it. I get it”; when promising them he would look after them. Then four weeks later abandoning them. This was all pure gold; impossible to counter and denied to the Coalition when Labor changed leaders.

Of course what Labor strategists could never have predicted is how and why and the campaign went off the rails anyway. I argue that any analysis of that campaign has to start with the simple proposition: had it not been for the greatest act of political bastardry in a generation, Labor would have at least achieved a slim majority. I say bastardry because there is no doubt the Cabinet leaks that caused Labor so much grief could only have been leaked by an insider. Only an insider would have had the knowledge of the arguments that Gillard put to cabinet. Only one of a handful of people knew what she had argued about the parental leave scheme. Now that material could have been leaked directly by one of those present, or by somebody else close to that person and privy to the information. And of course we cannot say for sure whether the leaks were sanctioned or somebody upset with the leadership change was simply freelancing. It doesn’t matter. It was an inside job designed to cost Labor the election, and that’s why I call it an act of bastardry.

Those leaks destroyed weeks two and three of the campaign and put the focus firmly on Kevin Rudd. And in fact there was still an unpleasant odour all the way through until election day. In the final week, when all Labor needed was some clear air to just fall over the line, the media went into summary mode. They start summarising the campaign as a whole, and that inevitably led them back to the gigantic Rudd factor. So even without fresh leaks, the damage was still being felt.

Most campaigns are characterised by small variations in voter support for the major parties. As a general rule elections are not won by out-campaigning your opponent – they are won by outperforming your opponent in the years up to polling day. But 2010 was vastly different. Labor’s national secretary, Karl Bitar, judged that Labor was well placed to win the election after the first week. He told me as much at the time. He thought without being cocky that all things being equal, everything was on track.

But when those leaks happened and the conversation switched to Gillard’s defeat of Rudd, overnight tracking polls showed Labor lost six per cent of the two party preferred vote in NSW and Queensland in just 48 hours. That is a massive loss of support, but that’s what happens – election campaign or no election campaign – when the issue becomes party unity. Disunity is death is the greatest truism in politics. Nothing is more damaging. And yet it hit the government three weeks out from an election.

No senior player on the Labor side could adequately explain why Rudd had to go without first trashing his reputation.

The mood was suddenly so bad that Bitar suspended all research for a week. As he put it to me, why would he use valuable money – why would he pay for such hostile feedback?

Media Monitors confirmed that the Rudd factor was easily the most reported issue in the second and third weeks of the campaign. Nothing those in the field did mattered; nothing that strategists came up with was going to make a lick of difference. The campaign was being reported in a way that we have never seen before. Traditionally, most media outlets give equal time to the two major parties, and by and large that reporting is pretty straight. But because of the leaks, the campaign was reported almost like a police rounds story – the Rudd factor was overwhelmingly the story.

That of course reflected the conversation around the country. And no senior player on the Labor side could adequately explain why Rudd had to go without first trashing his reputation. Instead the public was fed a confusing and disingenuous cocktail of high praise for the man they sacked, and assurances that he would be a key player in the next government.

Strategists had no choice but to swallow hard and encourage Rudd to join the campaign, even if that meant humiliating Gillard. When the meeting between the two finally happened, headquarters staff were furious that Rudd – by avoiding eye contact and looking sullen, “didn’t keep his side of the bargain.” And of course he has looked sullen ever since, except on election night when he was positively beaming.

Contrary to so much interpretation in the media, the intention never was to use Rudd to boost the vote in Queensland. Any why would you? Even after the coup, a Newspoll remarkably showed than even though Rudd led Abbott as preferred prime minister in most states he actually trailed Abbott in his home state, he trailed Abbott in Queensland. And in the end he campaigned in eight seats – including Bennelong – and Labor lost seven of them. No, it was only ever brought about to try and construct a veneer of unity; a sense that Rudd had put his disappointment behind him and was now actively working for the re-election of a Labor Government.

And those behind the scenes had to encourage that even though many of them were deeply suspicious that it was him – or his former staff – who tried to destroy the campaign because if Labor was to lose, his sacking would be brought into question. One key strategist put it to me about a week out – “Isn’t it interesting, that when we finally paid homage, the leaks stopped.”

Had the undermining not happened, then Labor’s self inflicted mistakes – and there were many of them – but those self inflicted mistakes would not have mattered as much. The worst tactical error was to rush to an election. October would have been better. That would have allowed some time to shake the Rudd factor out of the system, get it out in the open and deal with it outside the hothouse atmosphere of an election campaign. The citizens assembly too was a shocker, reminding so many people of some of the cheap stunts that Rudd had promoted. More of the same.

And that sense was compounded when we got the “real Julia” routine – fakery and flakery under a new leader. And in NSW, the Parramatta to Epping rail link. Some strategists get worked up about this one. They point to the number of seats that Labor did pull back from the brink in NSW, even though they lost Bennelong. That’s true to an extent, but there is no doubt that funding decision reminded the electorate more broadly of broken promises and cynical vote buying. Until then, there was a fragile separation of federal and state issues. After that, the two converged. Suddenly federal Labor had linked itself with the rotting carcass of the NSW machine. And that’s why the Coalition rushed out the billboards linking Gillard with Kenneally – and just for good measure, repeated the strategy with Anna Bligh in Queensland.

And the Coalition of course was missing from much of the post election analysis because, well because to some extent they were mere spectators to the main game, the implosion going on on the other side. The question facing voters – as Hugh Mackay noted – the question was Gillard, yes or no. Labor erred by not challenging Abbott on some of the more controversial issues, allowing him to cruise through. They were happy to meet him halfway on asylum seekers, climate change and a big Australia. The Coalition was able to run a risk-averse campaign relying in the end on Labor Party disunity and the Rudd factor – not forgetting the bizarre Latham factor as well.

The Liberal and National parties are deluding themselves if they think that just falling short in all the circumstances was a great result simply because history says first term governments are rarely defeated.

The Coalition’s greatest achievement was keeping the unpredictable and erratic Tony Abbott focussed and disciplined for five weeks. Not once did we hear a dopey comment like the jetlag thing in Birmingham. And as a result he looked positively prime ministerial. He grew in confidence and stature the longer the campaign went on.

Abbott can lay claim to helping to see off Rudd through his well targeted scare campaign – the great big new tax on everything. That did scare the hell out of Rudd and threw him off course. And he gave his opponents another lesson in the perils of underestimating someone they dismiss as an ideological warrior – just as they did John Howard for many years.

But given the extraordinary upheaval in Labor ranks, the Coalition should have won with a majority. Any half decent Opposition should have won. And the Liberal and National parties are deluding themselves if they think that just falling short in all the circumstances was a great result simply because history says first term governments are rarely defeated. The Coalition did a superb job of prosecuting the argument against Gillard and Labor. But they fell short on the question of their own fitness for government. In the end, the electorate was disappointed with both of them. And it was probably then fitting that neither of them really won.

Surely it is high time that an independent commission of some sort was set up to decide all aspects of debates – how many, where and when, the rules of engagement, the whole process.

I just want to finish up by making a few observations about the media, and in particular their role in debates and now in the latest trend, these town hall forums. On debates, it has always staggered me how it is that when – invariably at the very last minute – arrangements have to be made about debates , the rules have to be set, the panels have to be chosen, the timing agreed, that so much of the decision making is handed to journalists and to organisations like the National Press Club.

I accept the party secretaries make a lot of the decisions, and they furiously argue the details back and forth. But so much of the format is decided by others. Why the media? The media is and should be the facilitator. But why the arbiter of the rules? I just don’t get that. Surely it is high time that an independent commission of some sort was set up to decide all aspects of debates – how many, where and when, the rules of engagement, the whole process. Of course the media should be represented on such a commission, but only as one voice in many.

But whatever the makeup, fix it, and fix it well ahead of time. The debates about a debate are becoming increasingly tedious. The Independents have made a great first start with parliamentary reform. Now they should get really serious about debates while they still can.

But I think the more vexed question is the future of town hall style forums. They got a big run in 2010 and I suspect they will become even more a part of the fixture. But real dangers lurk in the shadows. The forums are all very well in bringing ordinary people into the discussion; taking political leaders out of their comfort zones. And they can be very good television. But they can also be easily manipulated by the political parties and by the media.

The media already owns these events, media organisations own them, and that spells trouble.

Look at the wider media coverage of the two big forums this time around – one at Rooty Hill RSL and the other at the Broncos in Brisbane – what came across, what was widely reported was not so much the answer as the question. The question, the nature of the question, became the focus. Who got the most hostile questions? Abbott? Then Abbott lost. Who was willing to confront Gillard directly on knifing Kevin Rudd? You win. You get the run. The question is the key. And that encourages political parties to stack the event; to make sure that at least a handful of their more articulate supporters get through the net and do the damage. And it’s easy to do.

So if these forums are to thrive, then the audiences must be very carefully chosen; far more carefully than they are now. And the other concern – maybe an even more troubling one – is that the media already owns these events, media organisations own them, and that spells trouble.

It means that any leader can break the schedule of another as Tony Abbott did this time. It was already known that Gillard was flying to Perth. So Abbott declares he wants a second forum and dares Gillard to decline. He wants it in Brisbane on the night Gillard was planning to be in Perth. Within half an hour, media organisations were talking to both parties about the event. Venues were being discussed; audiences being arranged. It was a done deal in the minds of the media. More cheap television. Everybody wanted in. The point is, Gillard had no choice. She had to cancel half the WA program and fly back to Brisbane. Imagine if she had not. Imagine how the sponsoring newspaper would have used its front page to rip her apart for squibbing the event.

OK maybe there’s not a lot of sympathy for a politician being effectively blackmailed into submission on a campaign event. But that is not the way it should work. Media organisations and political parties should not control these things. They should be pre-ordained by the same committee that sets the debate guidelines. And they should be available to all of the broadcast media that wants to take them; not the exclusive property of any one organisation or network. Throw the forums into the same mix, set the rules independently and most importantly, set the rules well ahead of time so that the campaign can be set aside for the real debates.