If you thought the bloodletting and betrayals of Game of
Thrones were shocking, they are possibly trumped by the real- life drama in the
ABC’s doco on the political assassination of Kevin Rudd. This series tracks
the trajectory of Kevin Rudd from the lofty ascent of his victory over John
Howard to his ignominious fall from grace and replacement before his first term was even over. It
is a portrait of delusion, panic, mistrust, frustrated ambitions and naked
self-interest that rivals anything going on in King’s Landing.
In fact, Rudd’s story is not that unusual. Every so often
political parties find themselves in a position of not having a candidate who
is sufficiently “presidential” to lead them into the next election. In this
situation it is not unknown to field a charismatic rookie, someone who might
seem breath of fresh air, someone not tarnished by association with the
old brigade. The Labor Party did this in 1983 when, after deciding that Bill
Haydn was unelectable, they brought in Bob Hawke, perhaps the most famous Labor
personality in Australia but not actually an MP. More recently the LNP in
Queensland parachuted Campbell Newman, a former Lord Mayor of Brisbane into the
party as leader.
There are however problems with importing a dynamic,
fresh face cleanskin from either the backbench or outside the
parliamentary wing to be party leader.
The first one is that choosing someone who has had little or no parliamentary experience puts a lot of noses out of
joint, particularly those who have served the party over a long period and are expecting at least an chance to go for the top job. It is clear, for
example, that Paul Keating, a powerful and ambitious young politician in
the NSW branch, resented the Victorian Bob Hawke being brought in as leader ahead
of him and only supported the move on the understanding that he would be up next in the not-too-distant future.
The second is that, while the fact that the candidate is
seen as beholden to traditional factions and power-blocs is a positive to the
voters, it is a handicap in the daily practice of government. The imported
candidate either ends up governing virtually on their own, or has to
select a small team of other “neutral” advisors and ministers with whom to work. That entire group will then,
itself, be seen as a threat to the existing factions and powerbrokers. Rudd was
seen as operating a little “gang of four” and Newman was seen as creating his
own little coterie of “outsiders” to run the government.
The third, which was most conspicuous in Rudd’s case is
that, if you market someone as a messiah, you shouldn’t be surprised if they start
thinking that they are one. Rudd, in particular, regarded his victory in 2007
as a mandate to pursue a number of crusades – most notably on climate change –
rather than running a consensus cabinet.
The root of the problem is that Australian politics,
particularly at the Federal level, has become an uneasy mixture of British and American
politics. In the Westminster system, the Prime Minister is the head of
party which has won a majority in the House of Representative and only governs with the support of that party. In contrast, the US President cannot be removed by a vote from within his or her party (and technically does not even need a party) and has quite considerable executive power even though constrained legislatively by the Congress. Australian Federal elections are increasingly
presidential with the preference for Prime Minister now arguably equal to or
even overtaking allegiance to a party as the main factor in the polls. Surveys now
quote statistics for “preferred PM” more frequently than "preferred party."
This puts our parties in a bind. On the one
hand they need to field dynamic, charismatic, inspirational, trustworthy
candidates as future PMs. At the same time, if those candidates win office,
the party power brokers have to find a way to make them do as they’re told.
Clearly, judging from The
Killing Season, many members of the Labor party thought they had created a
monster in Rudd, and they possible had. The problem is that Rudd was, and
continues to be, a very strange man. Characteristics that seemed quaint and almost endearing
early in the piece gradually started to become worrying later on. The blank
expression which would suddenly erupt into crinkly smile; the mono-tonal voice that
seemed to over-intellectualise everything. The oddly pedantic manner. Underneath the floppy boyish fringe
and pink Billy Bunter cheeks there seemed to be a strangely detached academic. He seemed to be a man who had colleagues, but no friends.
Gillard on the other hand was as common as a pie and chips.
She was a sheila you could take to the footie. (Carn’ the Doggies.). Underneath, however, there was Thatcher-like steel.
Clearly, some people saw her as a better bet for leader because she seemed to
be everything Rudd was not. Though intelligent, she was not an intellectual.
Her accent and language were naturally Australian while Rudd always seemed like an middle class nerd throwing in a few Australianisms ("Fair suck of the sauce bottle") to try and be one of the blokes. While clearly ambitious, Gillard was not messianic but had some talent as a speaker in the House. In fact, Gillard’s
debating style suggested that she might at some stage have wished to be a
barrister. Her debating style was unreservedly adversarial and she approached debate in the House very much like a it was a trial, relying on clever turns of phrases, personal attacks, considerable sarcasm and generally playing to the
gallery.
What The Killing
Season confirms is that Gillard’s tactical ruthlessness was not confined to her debating style. Her path to leadership was executed with careful determination, cloaked right up until literally the last minutes by “plausible
deniability.” She still sticks to the story that she didn’t want to
challenge Rudd but in the end everyone insisted that she had to and, for the
sake of the party, she just couldn’t refuse. At the same time she makes it
clear that she thought Rudd couldn’t govern and of course, by implication, she could.
In contrast to Gillard’s protestations of innocence, however, several
other Labor politicians seem only too willing reveal themselves as
conspirators, betrayers, assassins and fools. Tony Burke, for example, cheerfully relates details
of his involvement in the fiasco as if somehow dissociated from his own actions. Most amazing
is the man, whom Rudd most relied on, who turned against him in order to maintain
his own position as Treasurer. The perpetually surprised looking Wayne Swan denies any part in the whole affair, almost to the point of denying any knowledge
of the matter. At one point he offers a staggering self-contradiction. When asked why he didn’t warn Rudd that people were talking about
challenging him for the leadership he answers to the effect “Because I didn’t think such a challenge was
likely” then adding “And besides, I took steps to head it off.” It was a moment
that begged for a lawyer like Tom Cruise in A
Few Good Men to “But if you felt there was no likelihood of a challenge,
why was there the need to head it off?”
At least, unlike Game of Thrones, we don’t have wait a year
for the next nail-biting instalment.
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