How we played a game of numbers

JULIA Gillard’s hands were often tied, by kingmakers and her own court.

Rob Oakeshott in Port Macquarie.

WITH  Australia Day 2012 ­approaching and it being a big deal to be in Sydney, my children wanted to be togged out in some truly Aussie clothes. We were, after all, going to the prime minister’s house. So we dropped into a $2 shop to see what we could find.

Arriving at the gates of Kirribilli House (where my wife Sara-Jane changed a nappy under the stern eye of a security camera), we looked like the local version of the Griswolds, with our kids dressed in cork hats, Aussie T-shirts and flags, and even Aussie-flag sunglasses. All “Made in China”. I also bought a bunch of flowers, but having carried them from the train station with dirty nappies and hungry kids dropping milkshakes, they looked a bit forlorn. I couldn’t help but think of the serenity on the other side of the Kirribilli gates.

For what it is worth, Julia Gillard and Tim Mathieson could not have been better hosts, nor could they have done a better job in ­entertaining our four young children. They more than tolerated the noise, mess and inconvenience. Through my observations, the personal attacks on Gillard that she did not understand children were wildly misplaced.

It was obvious to me that she was comfortable around children, and that she was equally comfortable talking about “parent stuff” with us. (You don’t get a parenting manual when you have kids, and there are no licensing requirements, so the ­assumed superiority of some parents always astounds me. The ­assumption that non-­parents “just don’t get it” would ­really annoy me if I didn’t have kids. In fact, it ­annoys me and I do have kids.)

The prime minister’s inter­action with my children, particularly my two older daughters, was easy and personal. She took them over to the governor-general’s pool for a swim in the best pool in Australia. They loved it. She let them run her dog, the cavoodle Reuben, off his feet. They loved it. She had the ice-cream cones ready when they got tired and hungry. They definitely loved it! And because our kids were learning the card game Uno, we even initiated the World Uno Championships right there on the prime minister’s balcony.

It was all good Australian summer fun, and very normal. But we had work to do. The PM and I retired to the lounge room and talked through our work for the year ahead and the Andrew Wilkie package in detail. I let her know my doubts about the strategy and the agreement she had reached with the independent MP and anti-pokie campaigner Wilkie. I also let her know that I thought she was going to have all sorts of implementation problems, and ­expressed my frustration that ­neither she nor Jenny Macklin, minister for families, community services and indigenous affairs, seemed interested in fixing the broader issues, but seemed more driven by honouring the deal made.

They would be walking into a minefield if they took on poker machines and nothing else. The package should have been three-pronged — dealing with problem gambling, criminality in gaming, and consumer protection.

Her front-on assault on poker ­machines was doomed because of its lack of strategic underpinning.

A few days later the deal with Wilkie was off. The prime minister said publicly that she had tried to get the numbers, that she had tried to honour the Wilkie agreement, but she couldn’t deliver. When Wilkie then attacked her personally, she was “white-hot”. When he tore up his agreement, she wiped him behind the scenes.

It is because of her reaction to the Wilkie falling out, as well as my close observations of her personal style over the three years, that I believe she didn’t have the numbers within her own party.

Her problem wasn’t on the crossbench. Her problem was ­internal. I can only guess what threats were made from within the Labor ranks against her bringing formal legislation into the ­parliament, but the nature of the debate had got to a point where it would not surprise me at all if several Labor MPs had threatened to not even turn up for a vote on the issue.

The pressure on some Labor MPs from the club and pub movement was immense. Members from western Sydney, in particular, were copping it hard. While some held the line with a strength that was impressive to watch, ­others showed themselves to be wholly owned subsidiaries of the vested interests involved.

So when Gillard kept saying she didn’t have the numbers, I ­believed her. If the Labor Party hadn’t been chasing political ­donations instead of following its leader, then we’d probably have landmark poker machine reform in Australia today. It wouldn’t have been the comprehensive reform that is needed, but it would have been a step along the way. ­Instead, parliament ultimately passed the watered-down National Gaming Bill 2012, which put in place a trial in the ACT, and a few other measures.

In one of the first acts of Tony Abbott’s parliament, Labor joined with the Coalition to vote down these light-touch reforms. They lasted less than 18 months. Democracy by dollar signs was back again.

Disappointingly, Gillard was bitten by her own party and its long history of dumb decisions on gambling and poker machines, particularly in NSW. It was then premier Bob Carr’s decision to give poker machines to pubs in the 1990s that haunted her most on gaming. Yet, ironically, here she was about to shortly reward him as her new star recruit, with a seat in the Senate and the plum job as minister for foreign affairs.

After 15 years of debate, after two Productivity Commission reports, and after three years of intense fighting over the Wilkie deal, problem gambling continues to be a significant cost to the community. Criminality remains alive in the industry. And legitimate consumers of gambling remain exposed. Like former PM John Howard and his treasurer Peter Costello before, like state governments of all political leanings, in recent times we have achieved bugger all in gambling reform. The lobbyists have won hands down.

Thursday June 20, 2013

I KISSED Tim Mathieson that night. Relax, it was just a peck on the cheek, nothing more.

The week before, the prime minister had been asked on Perth talkback radio whether her partner was gay. It was a cheap, loaded, grubby question that rightly cost the peanut talk-show host some time off air. It also became nationwide news and played to the prejudices of many.

Fellow independent Tony Windsor and I had been invited to The Lodge for dinner with Gillard, Mathieson, and our two main contacts in the prime minister’s office over the years — Kate Harrison (who these days is providing legal support for the royal commission into child sex abuse) and Jo Haylen (now the Mayor of Sydney’s Marrickville Council). This dinner was a final thank you to each other before parliament rose for the last time the following week.

It was to be a quiet celebration that we’d all defied political gravity and had completed a full three-year term, doing some good work along the way. We might have all been battered and bruised, but we’d achieved what we set out to do. And we all seemed to still be friends at the end of it.

Mathieson wasn’t present when Windsor, his wonderful wife, Lyn, and I arrived. I was worried that Mathieson was feeling a bit uncomfortable about the controversy in Perth.

The PM said he was walking their dog, Reuben. To me, it seemed like an awfully long walk for a small dog. When he finally walked in, in an effort to leave no doubts about where I stood on all the public slander he’d been through in the previous week, I shook his hand, said g’day, pulled him in and planted a kiss on his cheek. It was an ­attempt to just break the ice — nothing more.

It was done because of more than just one comment. In my 17 years in public life, I had never heard as many bizarre fantasies woven about MPs and their partners as I had in this parliament. Most MPs lead very normal, very boring lives. They are too busy working to do anything too exciting, but that doesn’t stop the gossip grapevine.

Over the years, I was forever surprised to be told of the things I had supposedly done or said, or hadn’t done but was going to do. And my experience was nothing compared to the insanely wild, untrue and hurtful stories about Gillard and Mathieson.

Unfortunately, a lot of Aus­tralians just swallowed it up, and formed judgments based solely on nasty gossip. Which, in partisan politics, was probably the point.

This final dinner at The Lodge was the most enjoyable of all we’d had. We laughed a lot and ­swapped stories. It was the first time I had heard the prime minister ­reflect on the viciousness of some of the attacks on her. A “perfect storm’’ was her description: the way she was perceived to have taken office, the closeness of the election, the reality of working with the Greens, having to operate with such a narrow majority, the ongoing white-anting by her predecessor Kevin Rudd and his supporters, and the fact she was a woman. It was a long list. No single issue was totally to blame, but each had contributed a bit to a storm no ship could stay afloat in.

None of this, of course, had anything to do with her ability to do the job. I had seen her up close, and had always been impressed by her organisational and administrative skills. Her staff were always full of praise for her.

Over dinner, I mentioned that I was reading a proof copy of Kerry-Anne Walsh’s book The Stalking of Julia Gillard, which I had been asked to launch in a fortnight’s time. I explained its basic thesis, that Rudd had run a deliberate and vicious campaign using his well-worked media contacts for the political purpose of destroying the prime ministership of Julia Gillard.

“So is it coming out next week?” she asked.

“No, and I know what you are thinking, but it comes out the week after,” I replied.

She knew the final week of parliament was called the “killing ­season” for a reason, and it sounded as if she was expecting another challenge from Rudd.

And she proved to be right.

This is an edited extract from The Independent Member For Lyne by Rob Oakeshott. Published on Wednesday by Allen & Unwin.