An insightful look at the lengths Rudd went to to destroy Gillard. This is the man who is asking Australia to vote him into the PM's office for 3 years & forget all about his machinations & vengeful war he waged against The PM Gillard from the moment he was removed because he was incompetent.
The Stalking of Julia Gillard Kerry-Anne Walsh
Wherever you go in Australia, it's hard to find people who mourn the fall of Julia Gillard. There are people who say she's a nice person, that she was good at government, that she lacked the megalomaniac qualities that go with leadership (especially Kevin Rudd's), but there seems to be a consensus on all sides that now Tony Abbott has a contest, and that it's nice to have Rudd back, at least in the sense that he sounds like a prime minister.
Yes, but there is a significant fraction of the community - are they mostly women? - who think the woman with the wooden voice who could project no political vision, and who stabbed in the back the man who defeated John Howard, was robbed. They will take comfort in Kerry-Anne Walsh's inconsolable and angry book about how Rudd destabilised Gillard at every turn..
Although the publishers have rushed out The Stalking of Julia Gillard ahead of schedule because of the first female PM's demise, they have not, alas, made any effort to get the veteran Canberra insider and former Daily Telegraph correspondent to bring the book up to date on Rudd's successful counter-coup of June 26.
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What we get are essentially Walsh's rants about what a creep Rudd is for lurking about, ruining Gillard's chances at the last election and colluding with the media to destabilise the responsible Labor government - rendered lame by its minority nature - which is nonetheless a monument to Gillard's capacity for negotiation, compromise and infinite willingness to take pains to get legislation up in the face of all but insuperable odds.
The loyalty is impressive and represents the most detailed and articulate evidence we have of the kind of fealty Gillard commanded. There are plenty of testimonials from the independents, especially from Andrew Wilkie, although there's also a telling anecdote after Wilkie denounces Gillard when she has refused to honour her agreement with him over the pokies and he emphasises in his public response that her word is not her bond. Anthony Albanese rings him and says he's known her since they were students and he's never seen her so white with rage.
On another occasion, Walsh sneers a bit when Paul Bongiorno of Channel Ten says to Albo (who has just come out for Rudd) that he's never been so proud to bear a name that ends with a vowel.
One thing Walsh needs to come to terms with is that figures as impressive as Albanese and (at the time of the replacement) Lindsay Tanner and John Faulkner were always Rudd loyalists.
Her thesis - which is carried beyond the point of credibility - is that figures of the fourth estate, including Peter Hartcher, Laurie Oakes, Paul Kelly and Michelle Grattan, were always too willing to collude with the gang of Ruddsters who talked up their dysfunctional, malingering despot. And that in the process the media forgot about covering the news of government in order to report the shadow play, and that some of them were actually reporting what they must have known were Chinese whispers and lies and treacherous phantom figures.
This seems inordinately harsh. Every leadership bid - Margaret Thatcher's, say, against Ted Heath, as reported in the superb new Charles Moore biography - involves smoke and mirrors and games of suggestion and deception with figures.
Besides, Rudd won. When Bill Shorten finally backed him, he might have looked like Clarence at the end of Henry VI finally declaring for York in the grandest gesture of betrayal, but still the die was cast.
Walsh is at her best emphasising the difficulties of minority government, but she never comes to terms with the Peter principle, of which Gillard made herself such a victim.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/a-loyalists-rage-against-the-rudd-conspiracy-20130719-2q7u...
