What Australia got wrong about former Prime Minister Julia Gillard

She’s one of the most infamous prime ministers in recent history – but did we actually get it wrong when it came to Julia Gillard?

Politics is like reverse alchemy. Instead of turning lead to gold it turns gold to lead.

Or, as the late great Neville Wran once observed: “You get nothing in the Labor Party without getting up to your armpits in blood and shit”.

And nothing sums up this whole scatological transubstantiation more perfectly than the revelation this week that Julia Gillard’s former partner — one-time “First Bloke” Tim Mathieson — was pleading guilty to an oddly gross charge of sexual assault upon another woman.

I won’t detail the particulars here because they aren’t the point. The point is that it is perhaps the ultimate indignity heaped upon the only former prime minister of the many in the last 15 years who has conducted herself with any dignity at all.

Tim Mathieson is seen leaving his lawyer’s office in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Luis Enrique Ascui

And herein lies the ultimate paradox of Australian politics in the killing fields of the past decade and a half – is Julia Gillard the best prime minister we never had?

Yes, I know what you’re now screaming. Of course Gillard was the prime minister and some diehard delusionists will still insist she was powerful and pure.

But the truth is the opposite.

Gillard came to power in the most morally illegitimate way. While there were plenty of influential and perhaps unstoppable forces around her, she was nonetheless the first MP to knife a first-term prime minister in the post-war two-party history of Australian politics.

That is a heavy leaden crown and something that cannot be forgotten. So much for purity.

And despite an early sugar hit in the polls, this too smart by half move by Labor powerbrokers turned the massive 2007 Ruddslide into minority government within a single term.

This was an awful enough result on its own but the added insult was the infamous reversal of the “no carbon tax under a government I lead” pledge into … Well, a carbon tax.

And of course, as a result of all of this, she was relentlessly sabotaged and ultimately replaced — or is that re-replaced? — by Rudd before she even got a chance to stand for re-election.

So much for power.

But since losing the prime ministership Gillard has exhibited more grace than all her fellow ex-PMs of the era combined.

Former PM Julia Gillard pictured with ex-partner Tim Mathieson in 2010. Picture: AFP Photo/William West

While others have carped and undermined and pursued often delusional grudges with unrestrained fervour — Rudd and Turnbull’s obsession with News Corp instead of their own colleagues is surely a psychological test case for the ages — Gillard has humbly devoted herself to such eternal causes as education and mental health.

It is an exquisite irony – the one politician who, be it as instigator or instrument, introduced the so-called “NSW disease” into Canberra and started the domino effect of leadership coups has become the one politician not embittered or scarred by its devastating ramifications.

Indeed, she has returned to the person of integrity and loyalty she was right up until she stared across the desk at a broken Rudd and told him she was going to go him for the leadership.

And so in many ways that Julia — the infamous “Real Julia” — was never prime minister at all.

Forever tainted by treason — a deputy leader’s primary role is to warn the leader of potential threats, not be one — she has only become her true self in her political afterlife.

Julia Gillard’ knifing of Kevin Rudd shocked Aussies. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

And this is yet another of Australian politics’ great shames. The original plan, when the mythological “dream team” of Kevin and Julia rolled Kim Beazley — the last best prime minister we never had — was that Rudd would win a couple of elections and then pass the baton to Gillard for the next two.

But, as they say, if you want to give God a good belly-laugh tell him your plans.

Rudd never even got one and neither did his usurper.

Ironically, if they had’ve stuck to the plan it might have worked out. The internal polling used as a pretence to roll Rudd was bollocks and the Newspoll used to justify it bounced back immediately. But by then it was too late.

The political assassination of Kevin Rudd in the dark winter night of June 2010 was bad enough for Australian politics. What’s worse is that it killed off not one potentially good prime minister but two.

Rudd’s behaviour since he lost the prime ministership is an insight into why he did.

Gillard’s behaviour, by contrast, is an insight into what we might have missed out on had she come to power in a more decent and democratic way.