The Killing Season Uncut (21 page)

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.

Tony said to me that his view was I had two choices: I should either run for the leadership or I would need to take myself to the backbench.

Burke offered to test Gillard's support in the Caucus.

I'd said to Julia, at the end of that conversation, ‘Do you want me to start making some phone calls, discreetly' and she said, ‘Yes'.

I asked Gillard why she chose Tony Burke for the task.

JG: I did that because we had a relationship of trust.

SF: Does that mean that you trusted Tony Burke more than David Feeney, Arbib and Shorten?

JG: I was very close to Mark. Obviously I've known Bill and David Feeney a lifetime. But in terms of the people that I wanted to talk to in that moment, I wanted to talk to Tony Burke.

Gillard chose not to call any of her senior Cabinet colleagues.

JG: I did talk to a number of colleagues, of course, during those very compressed hours. It was not possible to talk to everyone.

SF: But you could've spoken to the Cabinet and you chose not to. Why was that?

…

JG: Look, I made a selection about who I'd talk to, yes.

The most obvious omission was Wayne Swan. Despite the strong relationship they had formed in government, she did not ask him for his advice.

JG: I'm not sure that there's a good answer to that actually. I didn't speak to Wayne and obviously with the benefit of hindsight, I most certainly should have.

SF: Were you concerned that Wayne Swan was going to say don't do it?

JG: No, no, that's not the explanation.

On the other side of Parliament House, in the Senate chamber, the day began as usual with prayers. South Australian Senator Don Farrell listened to the Lord's Prayer before returning to his office.

Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.

Farrell said when he was back in his office, David Feeney burst through his door.

He shuts the door and says, ‘Look, we've got to replace Kevin. We're going to lose the election, and we need to support Julia Gillard … Let's go and chat to Mark Arbib about it'. Mark was very strongly of the view that Kevin was unelectable as Prime Minister at the next election, and that without a change we were going to lose government.

Brendan O'Connor also went to see her.

I knew that this was not something that she had seriously engaged in because, without trying to have tickets on myself, I would've been engaged earlier if she had been seriously considering challenging Kevin. Things clearly were changing as a result of the article. It might've been a combination of other matters, but certainly that seemed to be the trigger at least for that morning, for her to start to think seriously about challenging Kevin.

He recalled one piece of advice that he gave Gillard that morning.

I said to her she would most likely have to get the Caucus back together because there is no way that a sitting Labor prime minister who's returned us from opposition, within a day could lose the confidence of the Caucus. Well, I was entirely wrong. By midnight she had 80 per cent of the support.

At Gillard's request, Gerry Kitchener went to see Victorian Senator Kim Carr.

GK: She asked me to speak to a couple of her supporters so I went and spoke to Kim Carr up in his office and then he, out of his own volition, organised a meeting after Question Time, which Julia agreed to attend.

SF: How did Kim Carr respond when you went to see him?

GK: He was, I wouldn't say shocked but a trifle surprised.

 

The business of government continued in the Prime Minister's office, but Rudd's press secretary, Lachlan Harris, noticed that communications with the Deputy PM and the Treasurer's offices had ceased.

That's a very bad sign. You know the distance between the offices is 50 metres. You can look into each other's windows. If you can't raise each other, that's a conscious act of [a] kind of separation, and that's when we knew something was really, really wrong.

According to Mark Bishop, meetings were going on through the morning and into the afternoon. Numbers were being counted.

Mark Bishop (MB): I was always surprised that there were so many people hovering around Don's [Farrell] office, that other people didn't pick up on the significance. And then around about Question Time, I came to the view, this is done.

…

SF: Why did you come to the conclusion then?

MB: Because a very large group of people had been involved in a very delicate operation and no-one had leaked. And secondly, I just did a count of the numbers and came to the view that there was a majority to change the leadership.

Gillard had asked Tony Burke to make the calls to gauge her support.

As people started to be called—and it was Mark [Arbib] and others who were making the calls, not me—we kept working on the basis that you only had to tell one person who didn't think it was a good idea, Kevin would know, and it might be all off. So I put my office into lockdown.

The report Gillard received from Burke was unequivocal.

Tony Burke certainly took soundings and his view back to me was that I would be very solidly supported if I put myself forward for leader.

Burke expected news of the phone calls to break.

We got to Question Time and it hadn't broken, and then we got out of Question Time and I said to Mark [Arbib], ‘It still hasn't broken; are you not calling people?' He said, ‘No, the calls are happening. We're not going crazy'. But it was still holding, so everyone who they had spoken to was onboard.

 

Question Time starts at 2 p.m. There's a brief lull in the rhythm of the parliamentary day as MPs and Senators go to their respective chambers for an hour of political theatrics.

Sam Dastyari answered a phone call just before Question Time on 23 June.

I get a call from Mark [Arbib]. And he goes, ‘Mate, I think they're going to move on him', and I was just kind of floored. He goes, ‘Mate, it's going to have to happen. The Victorians are onboard. You know we can't lose an election. We can't throw things out. We can't allow this to happen'.

Not long into Question Time, Dastyari said he took another call, this time from New South Wales Senator Ursula Stephens.

She goes to me, ‘Mark just came up to me in Question Time and said, “We're going to have to do something about Kevin.” Dasher, are we moving on Kevin?' And I said, ‘Ursula, I don't know'. And she goes, ‘I'm not in on this. You realise that you're talking about removing an elected, sitting Prime Minister of Australia. You realise what the consequences are, Sam? I've seen this before. When they start talking about it, they start talking themselves into it. This is going to end badly'.

Arbib was making the case that the upcoming election was lost with Rudd as leader, yet the Newspoll published two days earlier had shown the government leading the Coalition on the two-party-preferred measure. When Malcolm Turnbull challenged sitting Prime Minister Tony Abbott in September 2015, the Coalition had been behind Labor for thirty consecutive polls.

Rudd media adviser Sean Kelly went up to the Press Gallery. It appeared to be business as usual.

After Question Time I walked through the Press Gallery. Halfway through I got a call from Lachlan Harris. Lachlan said, ‘Just go back to the senior journalists and see if any of them are talking about leadership'. So I did. Not a word. None of them had any idea. Everything was completely dead. So I went back down.

Question Time was the calm before the storm.

 

Julia Gillard's discussions with the factional leaders continued. Greg Combet described them as the ‘urgers', those who were whispering in her ear.

She would have had a group of people saying to her, like the urgers, ‘Yeah yeah yeah, you know, you're the one, you're the one, you're the one, you know he's finished, he's finished, it's you, it's you'. And that's how they talk, some of them. So she'd have had that going on. She's ambitious, and probably got a sizeable ego too, like the rest of us. An opportunity's presenting itself. Plus all the frustrations that are there. And you know maybe she might have handled it differently if she'd been a bit more experienced.

Later that afternoon, Gerry Kitchener accompanied Gillard to a meeting in Kim Carr's office.

Kim had been delayed in Question Time, and so he came afterwards and then Bill Shorten arrived and David Feeney. And at that point Mark Arbib got up and was looking down the quadrangle down towards the Prime Minister's office and he became quite agitated that the Prime Minister's office could actually see the meeting. He madly started pulling the curtains across in the office.