Fate of the outsider in parliament

MAXINE McKew unseated a hated PM, but then she disappeared in Canberra.

Maxine McKew

THE cult of Maxine is palpable. You can see it in the faces of women of a certain age and texture, and in the tactile keenness of much younger men; it's reflected in book sales and bums on seats at events; and, of course, in the poise and countenance of the one-time federal member for Bennelong, who believes in herself.

Maxine McKew is still big, as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard might say, it's politics that got small. John Howard is gone. Kevin Rudd is in suspended animation. The Gang of Four is no more.

And so, two years after she lost her northern Sydney seat, McKew is back with Tales From the Political Trenches, a book that will sell its tailored pants off to a sizeable group of women who adore "Max" but who, to this day, hate the former prime minister whose 33-year political career she ended in 2007.

Political operatives, especially those working for the election of Tony Abbott, will be tempted to take a plunge into McKew's tome; there is no index to thumb through but a fair few middle fingers.

Julia Gillard, and those once close to McKew, will find it difficult to recognise descriptions of the Prime Minister as controlling, condescending, impatient, opportunistic, disloyal and secretive. McKew suspects Gillard saw her as an "irritant"; she will now.

Certainly, McKew's impression of a minister she worked closely with in early childhood education and childcare changed over the course of Rudd's premiership - from admiration of her professionalism and work ethic to utter disdain for Gillard's cluelessness and deceit.

There's now a sprinkle of books by Labor insiders about the Rudd-Gillard years and the recent decline in the party's practice and purpose. McKew's take is different because it documents what happens to players in the political game when cults of personality (in this case Rudd and McKew) clash with those forged in Labor culture, people such as Gillard, Wayne Swan and the "faceless" blokes.

Unlike the 2007 campaign quickie by Margot Saville that appeared a month after McKew was elected, the former ABC presenter's book has been simmering since her 2010 defeat. McKew was out of the loop on the big policy decisions of that time to be considered an insider; she is too loyal to Rudd to attain a reporter's objectivity; perhaps, like all of us, too vain to see her own flaws; and she veers too easily to the self-serving explanation to make her case.

But the power of McKew's testimony at times shines through because she doesn't quite buckle under the immense institutional pressure and she has a strong sense of her own values; clearly, McKew is not suited to politics, as it is presently played, but is obviously someone who could thrive if the game were not so tribal, dysfunctional and brutish.

On the cusp of victory, the fellows from central Labor command "decided I was off the reservation" for speaking about her soon-to-be constituents as "smart, ambitious and innovative". When "a complete non-entity" tells McKew in her campaign office "Don't f . . k with the message, Max-INE!" she is unsettled. "If ever there was an early warning sign of the reductionist poison that would crimp our efforts in government, this was it," she writes.

Still, the uptake of Max Factor, the gentle love of all things McKew in the wake of her famous victory, may have gone to her head. "Everyone who has read Saville's book has told me they love it. I still hear this years later," McKew writes. "Of course I enjoyed the attention. Who wouldn't. I knew it would end soon enough and it did."

Although she was a Rudd acolyte, imbibing the spirit of the 2020 Summit for instance, McKew rebelled against the slogan "working families" and was marked as "not a team player". "My staff were told on numerous occasions that 'the trouble with your boss is that she still thinks like a journalist'. Too right I did."

McKew resisted the message merchants inside the Prime Minister's office and their attempts to subvert the concept of editorial freedom: "Rudd and Gillard have presided over a period when it has been done without any of the flair or finesse that might actually achieve the desired result," she writes of the command and control system "that assumed that a newsroom's editorial autonomy was a mere trifle".

Told to stick to regional radio after gaining front-page attention, McKew writes: "In the space of a year I went from having one of the highest profiles in the country to being one of the least visible members of the government."

Some of the people who worked with McKew in Canberra describe her as a "princess" with a "sense of entitlement"; "delusional" about her abilities; a "lightweight on policy" who was infatuated with Kevin07 and a person not up to the drudgery that is daily life for a marginal-seat MP.

Perhaps worse, in their eyes, McKew saw herself as "bigger than the party". For them, she is a true believer in the cult of Maxine and only has herself to blame for losing Bennelong. "She really rubbed up her colleagues the wrong way," says a former Labor adviser. "She didn't engage in the life of the party or the parliament."

"In a world with a unique set of rules, rituals and hierarchies, I was a bit of an odd creature," she writes of her early days in Canberra, refusing to be owned by a faction or trade union, while getting used to the capital's disciplines.

"If you enjoy the civilising rhythms of a more normal life - breakfast with your family, mixing with work colleagues and friends, dropping by your local coffee shop, walking the dog, ending the day with your head in a good book - then the restrictions and demands of parliamentary life can come as a bit of a shock," she writes.

Despite being close to the heart of Ruddland, McKew always felt like an outsider. As the 2010 election dawned, the hard nuts in the NSW party wanted to take control of the Bennelong campaign with a negative assault on her Liberal opponent, John Alexander.

The Sussex Street boys did not think McKew could win; they thought she was "hopeless on the stump", one operative recalls. Staff left and resources were pulled out for other battles.

The ALP machine never bought into the cult of Maxine except to claim the head of the vanquished Howard for itself.

Some voters yearn for her congeniality, but not many of them reside in McKew's former electorate. The traditional owners of Bennelong have returned to normal programming. As has McKew, still writing and talking, a casualty of Labor's warfare.