A few weeks later, a highly experienced Labor figure with deep knowledge of public attitudes to the Gillard government and how to harness voter support shared his assessment. An avowed agnostic on the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard question, he averred that the only way Labor could re-enter serious consideration would be if the Liberal-National Coalition made a series of major public blunders.
Both encounters came after the introduction of the carbon tax, which Gillard had consistently told her MPs would be the moment when the dark electoral clouds would part for the government, and only a few months after Gillard had thrashed Rudd in a caucus ballot and declared that the leadership question had been settled for all time. And yet, Gillard managed to hang on as Labor leader for almost another year, right up until Wednesday of this week.
Or maybe not. The truth is that the Australian Labor Party nationally has in the past three years experienced its most rancorous divisions since the split of the s. Unlike the period of the split, which occurred in opposition and guaranteed many more years of it, the party has endured these divisions while holding office, and the enmities have, for the most part, grown from ego rather than ideology.
If the events of the past few days are to have any meaning, they need to be seen in the context of what has happened to the Government since early There was no acknowledgement that she had lost the confidence of most of her colleagues because of her own performance. Notably, it was the advisers who had made the big mistakes. Her mistake had been to follow their advice. Gillard had been a brilliant deputy to Rudd, an earthy foil to his high-flown nerdishness. Sign in. Accessibility help Skip to navigation Skip to content Skip to footer.
Choose your subscription. Trial Try full digital access and see why over 1 million readers subscribe to the FT. For 4 weeks receive unlimited Premium digital access to the FT's trusted, award-winning business news. Digital Be informed with the essential news and opinion. It has not been an easy parliament to operate in.
Gillard also reflected on her role as the country's first female prime minister. With tears in her eyes, she talked about what her term as prime minister might mean for other female leaders: "What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman, and the woman after that, and the woman after that, and I'm proud of that. After her press conference, she went to tender her resignation to the head of state and the Queen's representative in Australia, the governor general.
Conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, whose party is well ahead in the polls, criticised the revolving door of Labor leadership, saying Australians deserved better. If you vote for the Labor party in who knows who you will end up with. He called on Rudd to hold to an election immediately, rather than wait until September.
The day of high drama began when supporters of Rudd, who had advocated his return to the leadership for the past three years of the hung parliament, began circulating a petition to try to force a contest in this, the last sitting week of parliament before the September election. Within hours, Gillard went on the attack and made the decision to hold a snap vote on her position. For a long period I stepped in behind the scenes as much as I could to try to make up for the deficits—even things like diary management, political communications, intermingling with his staff.
Whilst the workload was intense, it would have been sustainable provided there was a strong bond of trust between Kevin and me. But one fateful day some newspaper coverage indicated that even that had fallen away on his side. So there has to be change.
You stayed quiet for so long about those pressures and your reasons for challenging Rudd. Well, when I became prime minister, we needed to get ready to fight an election, and I wanted it to be about the big things we believed in and would do as a Labor Party, not about internal matters. Unfortunately, there were several big leaks during the campaign—distorted versions of internal discussions—which kept hijacking the agenda.
There was some shock about how I emerged, and all sorts of static around being the first woman prime minister. But I wanted to form a government and get on with governing. Why did you back away from it? My underlying beliefs never changed. Climate change is real, we have to address it, and the best way to do that is through market-based mechanisms.
And what prevented Kevin Rudd from succeeding with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was the inability to get it through the Senate. The Conservatives were opposed to it; the Greens refused to support it. In the days of our minority government there was a window to get an emissions trading scheme instead, and we went for it.
After you lost the leadership challenge, why did you leave politics? I said that if I lost, I would. I thought it should be a clean decision. It was kind of an act of loyalty to the Labor Party.
I was suspended in time for a period. After I came through that, I started to think about what in life I wanted to take with me or discard. So I structured my new engagements around those, a number of them at a global level.
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