ALP leadership hopefuls need to talk about Kevin

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

FANCY being Bill Shorten right now, or for that matter any other Labor leadership aspirant considering life at the top after the next election, albeit on the wrong side of the Treasury benches.

Fancy leading what will be left of Labor.

Because let's face it, unless this government mounts the greatest comeback in Australian political history, defeat next year is all but assured. Certainly if Julia Gillard remains leader.

It will be a Labor loss to rival the 1975 and 1996 results. Perhaps worse.

If Labor does lose the next election, Shorten is the man most likely to take charge of the smoking ruin that remains. Leading a freshly minted opposition is always hard. Just ask Brendan Nelson. Leading one that has been through what Labor has in recent years will be doubly difficult.

Just imagine trying to forge unity among one-time Kevin Rudd backers who saw their candidate treated so viciously. What loyalty would they owe Shorten, or any other members of the present cabinet who put their hand up for the leadership?

For all the public attacks against Rudd by members of his political generation back in February, the class of 2007 - the large swath of new MPs who entered the parliament when Rudd defeated John Howard - don't see him in nearly such derogatory terms.

But what will make leading Labor after a defeat at the next election even harder than anyone on the government's benches can possibly imagine is the continuing parliamentary service of one Kevin Rudd.

If Rudd doesn't return to the leadership before the next election he'll remain in the parliament after it (assuming he doesn't lose his seat), making life impossible for the next generation of Labor leaders. Who is going to dare take away his preselection?

Rudd's ongoing presence will suck the life out of any alternative leader's authority in opposition. The damage his parliamentary presence as a popular alternative to Gillard has done will be minor

Rudd may even regard himself as capable of emulating Howard's 1995 comeback to the Liberal leadership, six years after his first failed attempt leading the party.

If that's the case, Rudd's presence could be even more harmful to a new generation of Labor leaders. He wouldn't simply be a popular alternative as reflected in polling. He could be a deliberate destabiliser with his own agenda of a comeback.

Like Howard, Rudd's first stint as leader was marred by poor interpersonal skills. When Howard came back he was a changed man. Rudd - if he acknowledges that he has more to learn - may think he can do the same.

Just as Howard outlasted a new generation of failed leaders (John Hewson and Alexander Downer), Rudd might think that he can do the same (to Shorten and Greg Combet perhaps?).

What else is there that Rudd might leave parliament to do instead? His family is wealthy enough that a private sector career has little attraction. Tony Abbott is unlikely to appoint him to an ambassadorship, preferring instead to leave Rudd in parliament to cause Labor problems.

And Rudd knows that giving the next generation of Labor leaders clean air might be a goodwill gesture, but it would be unlikely to see a reciprocal appointment to a plum post once Labor did return to power. Besides, a Labor return to power could be so far off into the future that Rudd would already have hit retirement age.

So-called realists in Labor's ranks are already planning for political life (or what's left of it) after the disastrous Rudd/Gillard era. But planning for that eventuality neglects to take into account the likelihood that Rudd will remain in parliament, undermining the next generation of Labor leaders as they attempt to recast the party.

All it will take is a cheeky newspaper editor or two to ask the occasional polling question comparing the incumbent Labor leader's popularity to that of Rudd. No amount of draconian media regulation can restrict that. To be sure, Rudd will come out well in front on any such poll.

It will make the distraction of Peter Costello's Coalition caucus presence after the 2007 defeat look positively insignificant.

The only way to avoid this scenario after the next election is by returning Rudd to the prime ministership before it. That's hardly an inspiring reason to hand the job back to him (rewarding a terrorist, as one cabinet minister put it to me). But it may be the only way to finally finish him off (as ironic as that sounds).

And who knows, Rudd might do more than save seats. Given Abbott's unpopularity, Rudd just might pull off the unthinkable and win the next election. That, however, would be more scary to some Labor figures than the disaster of defeat.

But if you are a future Labor leader looking to be part of the post-2013 election rebuild, self-interest has to be a factor in how to manage Rudd. Planning for Labor's future in a post-Rudd/Gillard era requires deft thinking about how to handle the final days of Rome.

Rudd would save more seats than Gillard. And the redemption of returning to the prime ministership would probably ensure that Rudd didn't use the opposition years to stick around, assuming he lost the election. He would have had his chance, twice.

Also, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, it is doubtful that Rudd would seek an early election to cash in on popularity were he to return as PM. Rudd's political redemption requires proving that he can govern effectively after what so many of his colleagues said about his competency.

So MPs worried about losing the trappings of government a year earlier following a Rudd comeback should think again.

I have no doubt that Shorten has thought about all of this. But complicating Shorten's thinking must be the fact that he was intimately involved in removing Rudd and replacing him with Gillard halfway through 2010. The Industrial Relations Minister must worry that if he has a hand in another leadership coup his credibility as a leader could be overshadowed by his ruthlessness as a powerbroker.

Not to mention the credibility hit switching back to Rudd would have on Shorten's decision in removing the former PM in the first place.

This failure of process, when it comes to removing Gillard, is a key reason she just might survive. The latest Newspoll was a reprieve (a primary vote jump from 28 to 33 per cent), which says as much about how low she has taken the party as it does about any green shoots of recovery. The problem of Gillard's deep unpopularity in the electorate has not gone away.

While senior ministers with no intention of sticking around in opposition might be prepared to stand by Gillard and let dozens of their colleagues lose their jobs as the party implodes after a heavy defeat, that's not an outcome longer-term leadership aspirants should sign up to lightly.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.