Novices at the wheel of state

KEVIN Rudd's callow aides are in stark contrast to the three wise men John Howard relied on.

Kevin Rudd chose to surround himself with clever young men who have been revealed to be out of their depth, writes Peter Van Onselen.

THE upper echelons of the Labor Party are coming to the view that the triumvirate of young bucks with whom Kevin Rudd has surrounded himself are a big factor in his waning popularity, largely because they don't have the experience or the means to steer him in the right direction when under pressure.

Chief of staff Alister Jordan, 30, press secretary Lachlan Harris, 30, and senior economics adviser Andrew Charlton, 31, are three of the most powerful players in the Rudd government because they are listened to and trusted by the Prime Minister in a way cabinet is not. But they are all relative political novices with no experience in the labour movement and next to none in industry or business.

When Rudd was riding high in the polls, they were hailed as trailblazers in a new era of political communication, ensuring Rudd had the policies and approach to engage with a new generation of less interested voters.

However, now that Rudd appears out of his depth, caught up in poorly constructed defences of policy positions and backdowns over challenges he had previously described as too important to walk away from (think emissions trading), the trio is being blamed for bad advice that could culminate in Rudd becoming the first Prime Minister in nearly 80 years to lose office after one term.

Whether Rudd survives until the election unscathed from internal challenges, gets defeated on polling day or is removed as leader in a second term of government, one thing is guaranteed: he won't be a long-term Prime Minister in the way John Howard was.

Jordan is Rudd's most trusted lieutenant. He has been with him since Rudd became a shadow minister. As a team of two they prosecuted the case against the Howard government over the AWB scandal with forensic questioning of what it knew about corruption. They never found the proverbial smoking gun but they did enormous damage to the Coalition's brand.

Jordan was part policy adviser, part media spin doctor and part right-hand man. Labor MPs have seen Rudd speak appallingly to Jordan, but it has never diminished the closeness of their relationship, which is one of the reasons Rudd promoted Jordan beyond his station to chief of staff not long after becoming Prime Minister.

"At just 30 years of age, Alister just isn't experienced enough to run the PM's office," one Labor frontbencher notes.

"He isn't a creature of the Labor Party, he doesn't have a bundle-load of policy experience and he has never worked outside of a political office. He has never managed people before, yet now he is effectively co-running the country. It's a joke."

Harris moved across from Wayne Swan's shadow ministerial office to work for Rudd as his press secretary after Rudd became opposition leader in late 2006.

Without any journalistic experience, Harris soon found himself clashing with senior members of the Canberra press gallery unaccustomed to his bullish ways. At a National Press Club talk while still in opposition, Rudd felt the need in answering a question from Laurie Oakes to apologise for the way his office had been handling itself and pledged to do better.

One senior gallery journalist tells The Australian: "[Harris] wants any questions in writing, his responses are invariably shorter than the questions. He thinks that's clever but it is dumb, it just means that getting input from the [Prime Minister's office] into a story is no longer your chief concern. That might not bother them in the good times but it sure as hell should bother them now."

Harris came up with the Kevin07 slogan at the previous election and was instrumental in directing Rudd towards infotainment media such as FM radio, which helped give Rudd a cult-like status.

But his inexperience came through when he advised Rudd to shun AM radio as Prime Minister, taking the view its audiences were not worth courting.

Since Rudd's popularity has started to fall he has frantically begun doing AM radio interviews once again, but he is out of practice and the audiences and presenters are more hostile than they otherwise might have been.

Earlier this year, Sydney's highest rating radio presenter, Alan Jones, said he was too busy to accommodate a prime ministerial appearance one morning when Rudd was offered up. The PM had shunned Jones's program since winning office, so Jones decided to repay the favour.

Charlton is a relative latecomer to Rudd's office, having turned down an opportunity to work for him in opposition. But Rudd, because of his limited understanding of economics, wanted the "economic whiz-kid" - as Charlton is sometimes called - on his staff and offered him a job on becoming Prime Minister. However, Charlton is an economic theoretician with next to no experience in the business world. "In a sense he is an inexperienced Ken Henry, not a great filter for advice coming out of Treasury," according to one Labor source.

Charlton rose to prominence during the OzCar affair when he was falsely accused of sending an email to Treasury bureaucrat Godwin Grech. Rudd gave Charlton his full support after an exhaustive check proved no email had been sent. From that point they grew closer and Rudd started to rely on Charlton for not just economic but political advice, even though Charlton has no previous experience in party politics.

Psychologists would almost certainly have something to say about a leader who surrounds himself with young, inexperienced operators to the exclusion of more mature people who could constructively challenge his policies and arguments.

If David Marr's Quarterly Essay analysis that Rudd has rage at his core is accurate, it could be that he simply can't handle critical advice.

The contrast between Rudd's inner circle and that surrounding Howard when he was prime minister could not be greater.

The three most trusted advisers in Howard's office, all of whom stayed with him for most of his time in power, were chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos, principal private secretary Tony Nutt and press secretary Tony O'Leary. They were wiser and more experienced than Rudd's entourage: at the beginning of Howard's first term, they were all more than a decade older than Rudd's inner circle in 2007. They told Howard what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear.

Before moving into the prime minister's ground-floor office at Parliament House, Sinodinos was a senior public servant who had worked as an economics adviser to Howard when he was opposition leader in the late 1980s.

Nutt had worked as a state director of the Liberal Party, a role he is again filling.

O'Leary, who is now Tony Abbott's communications director, had spent a lifetime in the Canberra press gallery as a journalist before joining Howard in opposition in 1995.

The great strength of Howard's office during most of his time in power was the way it could manage the balance between policy, media and party political pressures. Sinodinos was a highly respected operative, Nutt was the political svengali charged with maintaining relations (and discipline) in the party ranks, and O'Leary knew how to get stories up with journalists, as well as manage a crisis.

In Howard's first term, crises came thick and fast, but the experienced men in the office were up to managing the situation. From ministerial resignations and the waterfront dispute with the Maritime Union of Australia to the election sale of the GST, Howard's office had a greater capacity to support its leader than Rudd's office seems capable of. The differences were the respect his team had from the Liberal Party and its parliamentarians, the policy experience it brought to bear when implementing a difficult agenda and its capacity to draw on the strengths of the wider government team. Under Rudd Labor, hardheads are being shut out of developing political strategy. Experienced ministers are being shut out of policy-making. Public consultation before embarking on policy has been cut back.

And the government's media campaign is wholly being run out of Rudd's office.

In particular, the NSW right-wing powerbroker who once had Rudd's ear, Mark Arbib, is being ignored. National secretary Karl Bitar is also on the outer.

Rudd has become untrusting of their counsel because he fears they will move to replace him if necessary, knowing that they would be dispassionately guided by what the research says about the PM's fading standing in the eyes of the public.

Ministers with experience from the Hawke-Keating years, such as John Faulkner and Simon Crean, are not being consulted by Rudd and his staff.

A big part of the problems Rudd faces go back to the high expectations he set when he was opposition leader, as well as in his first year in power. He put so many issues on the agenda, setting almost impossible targets.

A member of Rudd's inner circle told me just over a year after Labor was elected that while the government was travelling well in the polls, the risk was that it might fall short of its goals.

The comment shows that there was an understanding that too much was being promised and that delivery would be difficult.

But the inner circle pressed on anyway, with the view that it could deliver the undeliverable or it would find a way to spin itself out of trouble.

Senior Labor sources believe arrogance is a key reason Rudd and his entourage don't seem able to turn around their fortunes. Says one: "The advisers around him work on the idea that 'we are smart; the punters are dumb; they won't recognise that we are running a scam'."

While Rudd's young advisers may have been given too much responsibility too early in their careers, their failings are ultimately the Prime Minister's. It is he who appointed them and chose their counsel to the exclusion of advice from others.

If that doesn't change, starting this parliamentary week, Rudd may find himself under more pressure than he already is.