Bonfire of the enmities

Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd

THE great Labor tragedy is that Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd needed each other to form a viable government yet the irreconcilable political war between them dooms Labor as a permanently fractured party.

The lacerations are so massive that it is almost inconceivable to imagine a Labor recovery under either Gillard or Rudd. The longer this struggle endures the more they seem to complement each other -- Gillard is master of support within the broader Labor movement and Rudd is the master campaigner who can sway popular sentiment. Yet each is flawed and now torments the other to the point of destruction over those flaws.

As a team they were once brilliant. They needed each other to succeed. Yet each has large defects -- Gillard's broken trust with the Australian people seems beyond repair, while Rudd's broken trust within the higher levels of cabinet suggests he cannot form a successful government.

It is a modern Labor tragedy without solution. Gillard and Rudd are engaged in an exercise of mutual destruction. Rudd's popular appeal cannot function if he becomes leader of a broken party; and Gillard's "insider" political skills aren't enough if her relationship with the people cannot recover.

Rudd shouts from the rooftops that Gillard cannot beat Tony Abbott; indeed, that her cause is hopeless. Gillard declares that under Rudd the government became dysfunctional and unworkable. The reason this struggle is so bitter is because it originates in political character.

A dispute about policy has a tangible means of resolution. But a dispute about character is endless and irreconcilable. Gillard and Rudd now fight over how they treated each other; indeed, over how they believe they have betrayed each other.

It was Rudd's turn yesterday to make his case and his exposition was brilliant, reminiscent of his superb 2007 campaign against John Howard. Rudd must know he doesn't have the numbers. But he holds himself as Labor's only saviour in a seductive pitch to the caucus.

His audacity goes to the heart of Ruddism. He asks Labor to admit its switch to Gillard in June 2010 was wrong. "I want to finish the job the Australian people elected me to do," he said. He warned that Labor was heading to the despair of opposition unless it had the courage to change. He pitches to a strange mix of romanticism and hard-headed caucus self-survival.

Rudd presents himself as the natural leader, the legitimate leader believing the party made an incorrect and illegitimate decision to remove him in June 2010. His problem, however, is that history is rarely reversed. Rudd's pitch has a hubris that will tempt yet alienate many caucus members.

He made clear yesterday he wants a radical change to the carbon policy -- Rudd opposes the fixed three-year $23 a tonne price set in law and wants to move quickly to a flexible price. He has a point. Yet re-opening the carbon issue is a Pandora's box that releases vast new dangers.

Understand the ferocity of party feelings about Rudd. Senior ministers are threatening to return to the backbench. They contemplate even losing the next election under Gillard in preference to allowing Rudd back. Such is their personal and political rejection of him.

If Gillard wins, the caucus will have voted for unpopularity over popularity. That defies the laws of politics. It testifies to the manic sentiment that Rudd has generated, namely the belief he cannot unite the government. Destructive attacks by the Gillard camp are designed to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Gillard camp, in effect, seeks to veto Rudd on the grounds he is not fit to lead Labor again. Gillard said Labor entered the 2010 campaign "after months of paralysis and chaos under Mr Rudd's leadership" and that Labor was "in a winning position in that campaign until the sabotage that knocked that campaign very, very solidly" (she means Rudd's sabotage).

Yet the most damaging revelation yesterday came when the Attorney-General and former health minister, Nicola Roxon, explained why she had no confidence in Rudd and would resign to the backbench if he returned.

Rudd nominates health as one of his policy strengths, yet Roxon says this policy revealed his untenable style.

She said on one occasion with four days' notice Rudd had wanted "to take over the entire health system" without cabinet materials or legal advice, a "ludicrous way" to run a government.

On another, Rudd wanted a referendum on health at the 2010 election "knowing full well" it would be lost but saying it would help Labor win the election.

"That would have been a disaster," Roxon said. "If Kevin succeeds, I won't want to serve in his ministry."

It is inconceivable that Wayne Swan would serve under Rudd. He said Rudd tried to "tear down the 2010 (election) campaign," that he was "deliberately risking" an Abbott victory, that he has undermined Gillard "at every turn" and, incredibly, that he "does not hold any Labor values".

Such sentiments constitute a strategy to destroy Rudd forever. The purpose is to deny him Paul Keating's 1991 tactic of winning on the second ballot. Gillard wants to damage Rudd so much he cannot stage a second strike.

Did Swan and other ministers engage in nasty overkill? Of course they did. But overkill works in this situation. This has become a "no holds barred" contest. The message from the Gillard camp is that re-electing Rudd will come only at the price of a serious internal convulsion with a series of ministers following Gillard to the backbench.

If Rudd wins, Abbott is gifted his campaign. He will merely quote ALP ministers, chapter and verse, against Rudd. The idea that Rudd could unify Labor sufficiently to threaten Abbott is remote. Rudd has invoked people power against Gillard but that plays into Abbott's hands.

Abbott says if you believe in people power you call an election. It's that simple. He will say Rudd has no mandate to be prime minister and the independents, having backed Gillard in the name of stability, have no moral basis to merely sign up to Rudd.

If Rudd wins, the pressure on the independents will become intense. Having backed one failed Labor PM, what would be their justification for backing another Labor PM and denying the people an election?

The real problem for Rudd is the risk of a fixed, immovable anti-Rudd caucus majority, the product of an explicit sentiment to stay with Gillard now and an implicit sentiment that if Labor must change leaders down the track it will change to a third candidate, somebody else apart from Rudd. That is, if Gillard is to be terminated then Rudd will be terminated with her, not resurrected.

At her media conference yesterday, Gillard radiated a steely resolve born of confidence she will prevail on Monday. She has support from a majority of cabinet, most trade unions (sensibly staying quiet) and, at this point, a caucus majority.

Gillard's risk is that the caucus, ultimately, may buckle to public opinion. How will caucus react to the inevitable polls over the next 48 hours suggesting what Rudd says is correct: that only Rudd can save Labor? How will it react to scenes of Rudd being mobbed in the streets? Will MPs keep their nerve when taunted that they are showing contempt for the people?

The caucus, moreover, knows that Rudd was right to argue yesterday that most of Labor's problems are Gillard's responsibility, not Rudd's. His campaign has damaged Gillard and, if he loses, Rudd's ongoing presence on the backbench will keep hurting her. The Rudd campaign is about trust, the fatal Gillard weakness.

At his press conference yesterday morning Rudd said: "The core question for the Australian people right now is whether they believe that the Prime Minister continues to have the trust and confidence of the Australian people. Because if you don't have that, you know something? You can't do anything else."

By yesterday afternoon Rudd was saying: "Julia has lost the confidence of the Australian people." Place your bets for such Rudd grabs to feature in the Liberal Party election television ads. Nothing better captures the destruction of the Rudd-Gillard era.

A re-elected Gillard will preside over a fractured cabinet. The senior ministers who wanted to liquidate Gillard for Rudd are documented: Martin Ferguson, Chris Bowen, Kim Carr, Robert McClelland. They will be branded by the Coalition and media.

The Gillard optimists can only hope that if she crushes Rudd, then sooner or later, as her victories mount, Gillard is grudgingly seen through the fog as a figure of Thatcherite strength. It is a remote prospect.

The tragedy for Gillard and Rudd is that neither seems capable of winning so convincingly that their rivalry is settled. It will endure and Labor will keep bleeding. The further Rudd-Gillard tragedy is that their partnership was crippled in Labor's first term of office. This is unlike the Hawke-Keating or Howard-Costello stories, where the partnership fell apart only after several terms of successful government.

For Labor, all roads lead back to the events of June 23, 2010, when Gillard, on a tide of support, decided to challenge and replace Rudd. Gillard is yet to establish her acceptance with the public while Rudd has never accepted the caucus decision to replace him. They will never serve together again and their mutual hostility probably defines this Labor era.