Paul Kelly on Labor’s demise a triumph
PAUL John Kelly was a stern-faced, exacting editor-in-chief of this journal between 1991 and 1996.
PAUL John Kelly was a stern-faced, exacting editor-in-chief of this journal between 1991 and 1996. Some have argued Kelly was a bit polarising. Some of his reporters would have walked through a brick wall for him. This group approved of his priorities. Kelly’s idea of a good story was their idea of a good story.
Others thought him distant. They believed his lieutenants, first Chris Mitchell, then Malcolm Schmidtke, were easier to talk to. Maybe they were right. Kelly, 66, is laconic, compendious and professorial.
The real story is that Kelly, now this journal’s editor-at-large, is basically a good bloke. And he has every reason to be professorial.
As well as having been arguably Australia’s best-informed federal political commentator for about four decades, he’s also one of its best-regarded historians. He produced The Unmaking Of Gough (Whitlam) in 1976, with The Hawke Ascendancy coming along eight years later. Then came The End Of Certainty in 1992 and November 1975 in 1995. Paradise Divided came along in 2000 and a year later Kelly published 100 Years, The Australian Story.
Five years ago it was The March Of Patriots. His latest, as of a few days ago, is Triumph And Demise. There’s a temptation to suggest his latest is also his best.
That may be unfair on its predecessors. It may also just be the attraction of the new or a reflection on the tumultuous times Kelly charts within its 560 pages. There’s Kevin Rudd’s 2007 triumph over John Howard. There’s Tony Abbott’s rise through the Liberal Party to seize its leadership from Malcolm Turnbull in December 2009. There’s Julia Gillard’s deposition of Rudd in 2010 and, with Australians returning a hung parliament, her tenuous, minority grip on government.
Then there was Rudd’s return to the prime ministership as Labor vainly attempted to stall Abbott just before the September 2013 election. So, Kelly had plenty to chart. And he has charted it with the exhaustive, meticulous thoroughness he demanded from his staff when he was at the helm.
Kelly has interviewed the political protagonists, their allies, enemies, advisers and press secretaries. And he has spoken with the journalists, the editorial executives and editors the politicians tried so hard to enlist.
Kelly’s pages are fairly littered with household journalistic names, from The Australian’s pivotal editor-in-chief, the abovementioned Chris Mitchell, to the managing director of The Herald And Weekly Times, Peter Blunden, via such as Denis Shanahan, Barrie Cassidy, Laurie Oakes, David Speers, Laura Tingle, Tom Switzer, Tony Jones, Chris Kenny, Andrew Bolt, Judith Sloan, Mark Simkin, Piers Akerman, Stuart Rintoul, John Lyons, Heather Ewart, Jon Faine, Lenore Taylor, Nick Cater, Brian Toohey and others we’ve inadvertently managed to miss.
Kelly obviously didn’t interview each and every one of them but he’s certainly aware of who asked what of whom. The Melbourne University Press flyleaf tells us he drew on about 60 interviews, a claim that could well be a little modest.
It’s an exhaustive, admirably-compiled saga and, sadly, we must ignore most of it. We’ll have space only to visit some of the more obvious media aspects. In the main Kelly lets the book read like an absorbing feature article, every so often injecting a snippet of opinion, or summary.
Kelly writes: “Gillard blamed the media for undermining her government. Rudd used the media relentlessly to undermine Gillard’s leadership. He had recruited the media brilliantly in his earlier campaign against (Kim) Beazley (for the Labor leadership). In office, however, Rudd got confused between projecting spin and delivering substance.’’
Rudd was, of course, routinely referred to as a media junkie. Yet, in truth, many — perhaps everyone outside the Canberra press gallery — needs to read Triumph And Demise to realise just how crucial the media was to Rudd; how he effectively tried to govern via media and how early he developed his media obsession.
This is Kelly: “By the time of Rudd’s second parliament, 2001-4, it was obvious to the journalists who dined with him that Kevin was chasing the leadership. He was a media junkie. There was tabloid Kevin and broadsheet Kevin. He thrived on elitist Lateline and became a hit on Channel Seven’s Sunrise tabloid television ... (The Australian’s) cartoonist, Bill Leak, drew him as the comic-strip adventurer Tintin, ‘a little nerd who prevails in the end’.’’
Fast forward to prime minister Rudd, and Kelly notes: “Channelling and controlling media coverage of his government was a preoccupation. In office, the job of Rudd’s staff was to control the daily media message in a whole-of-government project on a scale no prime minister had attempted before.’’
A Rudd press secretary, Sean Kelly, tells Kelly: ‘’I think we did fall into the trap of having the media process become the issue. There’s always the risk the media strategy is what counts, not the outcome.’’
The funny — if funny be the right word — thing was that Rudd and Gillard both had as a parliamentary colleague one of the country’s foremost television presenters prior to her spectacular entry into politics, Maxine McKew (a former Lateline host), from whom to comb media advice.
Clearly, neither prime minister availed themselves too much of McKew’s vast experience. Kelly writes that “McKew soon concluded Gillard’s office was far more effective even than Rudd’s office in courting support or freezing out alternative voices.’’
Kelly goes on: “McKew found the daily (compulsory Labor) talking-points from Rudd’s office were a moronic way for Labor to communicate. She felt the repetition of the nonsensical phrase ‘working families’ had become counterproductive and she junked it from her material. McKew was disgusted at the dumbing down of politics ...”
Anyway, we’ll have to leave it there. Hopefully you’d know your ancient correspondent by now and are aware he wouldn’t knowingly tell you an untruth. The fact is that, provided you have an interest in the detail of federal politics, Triumph And Demise is very good indeed.