The Execution of the Prime Minister
The piano coda of Layla played in my head as Kevin Rudd suffered his dramatic fall from grace last Wednesday evening. Just as it rang out in Goodfellas when Tommy took a bullet to the ear from one of the Gambino henchmen. Derek and the Dominoes. That will forever be the soundtrack to the fall of Kevin Rudd, at least in my mind.
Rudd was, of course, executed in the most humiliating manner. Joe Masseria would have been proud of the efficiency with which the hit was made. It was a quick, methodical and vicious coup. Only months after polls ranked him as Australia’s most popular ever Prime Minister, Rudd had his political career terminated by those within his own political family.
Never before has a sitting Prime Minister been disposed of so quickly. Never before have the knives been drawn so hastily. Such panic is rare. Few dreams have turned into such nightmares so suddenly.
Rudd’s demise was, however, inevitable. The only surprise in his execution was the timing. Few thought the credits he earned by bringing the ALP out of the political wilderness could be used up so quickly. At one stage it appeared as if Rudd was on the path to Labor folklore, a respected if not beloved figure the equal of Whitlam or Keating. Now, before even facing the polls again, he is nothing more than a glorified Mark Latham.
The Labor Party has never been a place for the weak-of-stomach, the fearful or those who fancy themselves intellectually superior. It is certainly not a place for those who don’t respect The Labor Way. Rudd certainly wasn’t born into the Labor tradition and, in fact, came to abhor it. He rose to power not through the party machine but around it through direct appeals to the public. He had no power base within the party, no faction to push his barrow. To achieve his dream of becoming Prime Minister, he would have to find a different path. That path was the Sunrise program where he appealed to the mindless, the ignorant soccer and the dead-headed fools who watch that fluff in a regular segment with Joe Hockey.
As his star rose, the apparatchik and party powerbrokers had little option but to throw their weight behind him. Rudd continued to circumvent the traditional Labor power structure. He weakened caucus power. He ignored senior party figures. Access became increasingly difficult. He was a control freak who micro-managed everything. The advice he took was not from the party machine or cabinet or long-serving members or senior party figures but from the group of ever-changing kids he surrounded himself with in his private office. He showed little regard for those who helped him rise to the top and even less for those within his party he considered enemies. He threatened to change the power structure of the party and for a period he did assume the power that once rested with Cabinet, caucus and the factional bosses. The power would be Rudd’s and Rudd’s alone. At least while he remained popular with the public.
The public was his powerbase and when he lost them then he would be mortally wounded. He has nobody to turn to within his party. Live by the polls and die by the polls. The Sunrise soccer mums could do nothing for him when the Labor warlords got together and agreed on the hit.
Relying solely on the polls is a dangerous way to do political business. When his public support spiralled into freefall as the general public, once mesmerised by his double-talk and self-styled schoolboy image, quickly fell out of his hypnotic spell after his abandonment of an ETS and his attempts to drive through the super mining tax, he was left vulnerable and alone. He was seen as the self-centred, arrogant, Machiavellian politician whose only end was power and who would do anything to achieve it both by the electorate and caucus.
Rudd’s biggest mistake was not weakening the factions or the union powerbase even more. He never would have killed them off but he rested on his laurels by not inflicting more damage when he had the opportunity. They were always going to strike once Rudd fell vulnerable. When the polls for Rudd fell, the factional warlords and party bosses moved to get their revenge
Rudd’s execution was less about electoral panic than it was about reprisal and the shifting of power. There was certainly an element of fright to polling suggesting the ALP would lose the next election. This was more than just an instinctive response to some bad numbers though. As many note, John Howard had worse numbers at similar stages of the electoral cycle. He went on to win election after election. This was more about revenge, a response driven by anger, personal enmity and professional hostility.
In Mafioso terms, Rudd wasn’t a made man. He wasn’t untouchable. He was not a revered and respected old school ALP figure. And he had hurt many immersed in the Labor tradition. He had ostracised, embarrassed, threatened, debased and dehumanised many within the ALP and the party machine could not let such behaviour go unpunished. He was not an insider, one of them. That was that. The party helped make Rudd yet Rudd did little to help the party and those who blessed his ascent to power. He took his quid but he gave no quo.
The moves to oust Rudd began months ago. They were led by the Victorian Right and the New South Wales Right, traditionally the kingmakers of the ALP. Bill Shorten was calling the shots on behalf of the Victorian Right while Mark Arbib was once again the Godfather of the New South Wales Right. Shorten is a former union boss with Prime Ministerial aspirations of his own while Arbib was instrumental in the falls of Bob Carr, Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees Kim Beazley and now Kevin Rudd. He has more blood on his hands and heads in his backyard than Jack the Ripper. The warlords convened, determined Rudd was weak enough and that the time for action was upon them. The wheels were put in motion, the numbers secured and the necessary people courted. They had only one alternative to Rudd so Julia Gillard it was. Two right-wing powerbrokers were installing a member of the left into the most powerful position in Australia.
Gillard has seemingly come out of this with her hands clean but there is no doubt that she was party to all the manoeuvrings. She may claim plausible deniability and she may just have been a pawn to the real power in the Labor Party but she played the role of the loyal deputy forced to act against a distrusting and unreasonable boss to a tee. Gillard has her share of Brutus in her.
When the deal went down on Wednesday evening, Rudd vowed to fight. By the next morning he conceded. So low was the support for Rudd in caucus, it would have been an embarrassment to contest the leadership ballot against Gillard. He may not have even won 25 of the 115 votes. Rudd had no factional powerbase. Few members who owed their political existence to the cult of Rudd’s crafted public personality exhibited any expression of loyalty towards him. The unions had come out against him. The winds of change were blowing. It was a humiliation of the highest order for Rudd, three years after his finest hour and only months after he looked unstoppable.
The coup may have been widely described as bloodless with Rudd and Gillard both praised for “doing the honourable thing” and the like. Only time will tell how damaging the execution of Kevin Rudd will be for the Labor Party. The factional warlords have bought down one Prime Minister and New South Wales Labor politics suggests Rudd will not be the last. Julia Gillard certainly shapes as a more challenging foe for Tony Abbott but she now leads a party perceived, rightly, as being controlled by self-interested factions and the union movement. The ALP is now viewed as being prone to panic and trachery. The role of a Labor Prime Minister has been weakened and undermined.
Interestingly, Kevin Rudd lurks in the reeds, refusing to go gentle into that good night. He has announced he will again contest the seat of Griffith and his emissaries suggest he wants a Cabinet position. Rudd is a political beast and he is positioning himself to once again return to the Prime Ministership. He may seem long odds but Rudd has no other ambition in life and he will start again, waiting for the right opportunity. He will be hoping for a Beazley-like second chance and he will be a destabilising factor until he gets it. The longer Kevin Rudd stays in Parliament, the more damage he will to do the ALP.
Make no mistake. This wasn’t a victory for Julia Gillard and it wasn’t a victory for the Australian Labor Party. Gillard has the top job before her time and won it in an unsavoury manner by selling out to the party bosses while, despite the market, the Coalition will benefit immensely from the leadership change. This was a victory for the factional heavyweights and union powerbrokers that reclaimed control of Federal Labor in the fiercest of manners. This is their government. Voters would do well to remember that at the next election when casting their ballots.