Why Julia Gillard always gets it wrong

SHE promised to get Labor back on track but has delivered the opposite.

Julia Gillard

HOW did it come to this? That is the question nervous Labor MPs must be asking themselves as the government's political fortunes continue to spiral downwards just 4 1/2 years after a resounding election victory against John Howard.

Emblematic of Julia Gillard's inability to communicate her political decision-making to the public was the way she declared on Sunday that "a line had been crossed" in respect to the Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson scandals, prompting her to insist the pair stand down indefinitely from the speakership and the Labor Party respectively.

The obvious question was: what line? What event or moment in time had led her to come to that decision after previously opposite intimations by both her and a number of her senior ministers. Surely she and her advisers had thought about the answer?

It appeared not. The PM had no tangible answer at the press conference when asked, only offering up the following: "I don't think this is a chemical formula about one molecule plus another molecule gives you an answer. I actually think it's a judgment call about what is the right thing to do in a complicated set of circumstances." The same reasoning was put forward the following day.

A primary vote of just 27 per cent, according to yesterday's Newspoll, puts federal Labor's support at an equivalent level to the showing by Labor in Queensland at the recent state election. Conversely, the Coalition's primary support is at an 11-year high of 51 per cent, a result not matched since the heady days of 2001.

State Labor's woeful showing in Queensland, winning just seven seats, has sharpened the minds of some inside the federal Labor caucus.

Were an election held last weekend, Tony Abbott would have won without even needing to rely on preferences. The final Newspoll with Kevin Rudd as prime minister had Labor ahead 52 to 48 per cent on the two-party preferred vote. Yesterday it was 41 to 59 per cent.

"I don't think enough of my colleagues, or journalists for that matter, truly appreciate how bad our position is," one Labor elder told The Australian yesterday. "There will hardly be anyone left after the next election if we don't do something," he added, unwilling however to canvass what "doing something" might actually entail.

Mounting speculation suggests it will involve a change of leader, most likely a return to Rudd, with hopes in some quarters that any change can be managed as a handover rather than involve more bloodletting. The Australian has learned that an increasing number of senior factional players previously opposed to a Rudd comeback will no longer seek to block moves to reinstall him in the prime ministership, if a bid to do so builds momentum. This represents a significant shift in just a matter of months.

But two questions persist: would Gillard hand over quietly and would Rudd even accept the offer under the current circumstances? The latter is more likely than the former, if Gillard's public rhetoric is anything to go by.

Returning to the past would spell out in no uncertain terms how disastrous Labor's political fortunes have become since Gillard took over the prime ministership, given the treatment of Rudd both in June of 2010 and particularly in February this year when his challenge was resoundingly snuffed out by 71 to 31 votes.

When Gillard replaced Rudd as prime minister on June 24, 2010 she said the government had "lost its way". "I formed the view that the best way of making sure that this government was back on track . . . was to take the course that I took last night and this morning." That course was to challenge a first-term prime minister, unprecedented in modern Australian politics.

By June 2010, Rudd's popularity had waned since the highs from when he was first elected, but he continued to lead Abbott as the preferred PM. Yesterday Gillard fell further behind Abbott on the preferred PM stakes, 36 to 41 per cent, despite Abbott's personal satisfaction numbers registering him as the most unpopular opposition leader since Newspoll began.

Gillard challenged Rudd, promising to help Labor find its way. She managed to scrap out an election victory, albeit as a minority government, and Gillard's supporters continue to insist Rudd would not have been able to win the 2010 election. But it is the poor judgment calls Gillard has made since being elevated to the leadership that have caused her so much trouble.

Prior to the 2010 election campaign, Gillard announced plans for an East Timor solution to house asylum-seekers seeking passage to Australia. However, she did so without first speaking with the Prime Minister of East Timor, whose support she would need to make such an idea happen. The plan collapsed. The replacement option after the election -- the so-called Malaysian solution -- was pursued despite Labor's long-held opposition to asylum-seekers being processed in nations that are not signatories to the relevant UN conventions. And it included deporting children. The party's factional Left was not amused.

During the campaign, Gillard declared that she would be changing her strategy to reveal "the real Julia", a line that had not been run past the campaign unit before it was delivered. It immediately invited the suggestion that she had previously been less than honest when engaging with the Australian people. Then there was the infamous citizen's assembly to achieve consensus on climate change action, announced without consultation and widely ridiculed.

"We really shouldn't have been surprised that Julia lacked political nous looking back on it," one Labor source says, admitting that he nevertheless was surprised. "She came up with Medicare Gold when (Mark) Latham was leader, don't forget (as opposition health spokeswoman), and she talked Kevin (Rudd) out of sticking with the ETS."

Labor MPs and most of the commentariat had elevated expectations about the job Gillard would do as PM. She had been an effective deputy to Rudd, carving out respect for the way she dismantled Work Choices and went about reforming education policy, including the My Schools website. She was far and away the government's best performer in question time.

However, judgment errors have dogged Gillard's prime ministership since the 2010 election. The alliance with the Greens -- designed to woo the independents -- has made it difficult for Labor to counter Abbott's attacks that it no longer looks after mainstream Australians. The kneejerk reaction to the ABC Four Corners report suspending the live cattle trade left the industry on the brink. The decision not to mention Rudd in her speech to Labor's national conference when she made reference to numerous other former Labor prime ministers increased tensions unnecessarily. And, of course, the broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax, and backing out of her agreement with independent Andrew Wilkie on poker machine reforms, increased distrust of her in the wider electorate.

These decisions have undoubtedly contributed to internal tensions within the government and the ongoing slide in Labor's polling numbers. Simply put, if Gillard's pledge on becoming PM was to help the government find its way she has failed in the task she set for herself. The Prime Minister now tells voters and journalists to "look at the scoreboard", referring to legislation passed to price carbon and tax mining profits. But those achievements, worthwhile as they may be, have been achieved in such a way that their delivery has damaged the government's reputation.

And if the poor polling does deliver an Abbott government when voters next go to the polls, the Coalition leader plans to undo both taxes, leaving Gillard without a legislative legacy in these twin areas of importance.

Initially, Labor underestimated the difficulty voters would have with the removal of a first-term prime minister, whatever the likelihood was of Rudd winning the last election. The coup immediately tainted Gillard's leadership, but it was poor judgment call after poor judgment call that cemented her failure to build public support in Labor's second term.

While the decision to move against Rudd's leadership was driven by nervousness about the southerly direction of his polling numbers (notwithstanding that Labor, in fact, trailed the Coalition only once, according to Newspoll during Rudd's entire prime ministership), the confidence to act happened because of two factors: a dislike of Rudd and a view that Gillard would make a good fist of the top job were she to replace him.

Rudd was never seen as a creature of the Labor Party by many inside the parliamentary caucus. This point was painfully illustrated in Wayne Swan's spiteful press release reacting to Rudd's resignation as foreign minister in February. The Treasurer accused the former prime minister (whom he had served for two and a half years) as "somebody who does not hold any Labor values".

In contrast, Gillard is a creature of the labour movement. A former industrial relations lawyer, she has always operated inside the political beltway. And unlike Rudd, she is naturally personable in the way she deals with her colleagues. The belief that Gillard would rise to the challenge of being PM, however, turned out to be a mirage.

Since Rudd moved to the backbench just over two months ago he and his supporters have remained silent, avoiding the temptation to white-ant Gillard. Such discipline has been an important precursor to the growing view that Gillard cannot recover Labor's fortunes ahead of the next election.

Previously the Gillard camp had blamed internal destabilisation against her for the problems she was having in the polls. But recent missteps -- such as the decision to install Slipper as Speaker, despite well-known reservations about his parliamentary conduct, which backfired badly this past fortnight -- have highlighted that Gillard has only herself to blame for the terrible standing of her government.

On repeated occasions since the last election the Prime Minister and her supporters have sought to reassure the caucus that the political winds were about to turn. On May 9 last year, Swan suggested that once the details of the carbon tax were released, Labor's fortunes would improve.

Now we are told that the budget and the introduction of carbon tax compensation will help the government recover its standing, but few inside the Labor caucus remain hopeful that will be the case. Even the recent announcements of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the aged care package -- again, worthwhile schemes -- failed to register improvement in the government's standing with voters.

Earlier this year, immediately following the Gillard/Rudd leadership showdown, powerbroker Mark Arbib retired from politics, saying that doing so "takes the faceless men out of the equation. She deserves clean air. I've been at the forefront of so many of the deals and it takes away some of the enmity". But Arbib's departure has not been a circuit-breaker to lift Labor's fortunes.

Labor's problems won't be solved by skirting around the leadership issue.

Gillard has not delivered the restored order she promised and that was so important to the justification for removing a first-term PM, certainly not politically. And the caucus is finally running out of patience.