When Bob Carr challenged Julia Gillard's authority to decide how Australia would cast its vote in the United Nations last November, it was a moment of potential crisis for her prime ministership.
She took advice from her inner circle. Some saw the danger and advised her to accept a compromise. But Stephen Conroy urged her to fight on. It would have been a big mistake.
Ultimately, the Prime Minister rejected Conroy's advice, compromised on her support for Israel in the UN, and lived to fight another day. If she had accepted his advice, she would have had her policy overturned in the Labor caucus, been humiliated, and quite likely lost her leadership as a result.
This week, Gillard accepted Conroy's advice on another matter - media regulation. It was a big mistake.
In the case of the UN vote, the question was whether to give Palestinians observer status in the UN. Gillard wanted Australia to stand with Israel, the US and a handful of others in voting ''no.'' Most countries were ready to vote ''yes''.
Carr wanted Australia to abstain. As he told Gillard in her office at the time, ''I would find it very hard to vote against the Palestinians.''
Carr had already talked to backbenchers and ministers. He knew he had the support of the majority of the caucus and the majority of the cabinet. Gillard was able to assert her authority to overrule her cabinet, and she did. Cabinet ministers are prime ministerial appointees; they serve at the PM's pleasure. All prime ministers overrule their cabinets occasionally.
But the caucus, comprising all Labor's federal MPs and senators totalling 102 members, is big, unwieldy and a different matter entirely. It's not bound to obey the leader. In fact, theoretically, the caucus decides policy and the executive is supposed to obey it.
Many in the caucus were passionate on this matter. The majority was ready to overturn her decision.
On Conroy's advice, Gillard made a short-lived effort to force her will on the caucus - by privately asking the Right faction to ''bind'' its members in a bloc vote in support of her position. The Right has a small majority in caucus.
''Prime Minister,'' replied the Right's convenor and chief government whip, Joel Fitzgibbon, ''I've been here 17 years and I've never seen that happen, and it won't happen this time.''
Conroy wanted Gillard to test her authority in the caucus room and fight on. But Gillard decided a quixotic tilt at the Palestinians was not worth her prime ministership. There was an awkward moment as she accepted defeat. Australia abstained in the UN and the political caravan moved on.
But on Tuesday this week, Gillard backed the combative Conroy to the hilt on the vexed question of media regulation. Conroy, the Minister for Broadband and Communications, is one of the ministers considered most loyal to Gillard. Or as another cabinet minister put it: ''There are three of them in the bunker - the PM, Swan and Conroy.''
She did her best to cut everyone else out of the decision to ensure Conroy got exactly what he wanted.
First, she and Conroy privately struck agreement on a policy decision.
Second, she made a pre-emptive strike on her cabinet. Without listing the matter on the cabinet agenda, and without circulating the cabinet submission in advance, Gillard presented the decision as her position and told the meeting that it would be announced in two hours. It was a fait accompli. ''We asked ourselves, 'why are we here?''' one minister later remarked. ''It was obviously pointless to debate it.''
When the caucus met later in the day to consider parliamentary business, the briefing papers on the media policy arrived late, halfway through the meeting, allowing scant reading time. It appeared to be an attempt to railroad the caucus.
The caucus secretary, Victoria's Gavin Marshall, suggested it was so late the minister, Conroy, might not be allowed to present the proposal to the meeting. But when it was pointed out the matter was listed on the caucus agenda, Marshall relented. There was a brief debate.
Conroy announced to the world he wanted the Parliament to accept the package as it was, without compromise or barter. And he wanted it passed into law by the end of next week's parliamentary session, extraordinary urgency.
Conroy was spoiling for a fight. He got one. His proposals have drawn near-universal criticism from the media sector as an unwarranted interference with media freedom. He has won near-zero support from any of the parties or independents he will need to get them into law.
As his legislation stands, he has little chance of getting it through the house. His plan doesn't even have the support of the former Labor MP Craig Thomson, who sits as a crossbencher but generally votes with Labor.
''This is horrendous mismanagement,'' fumed one MP after watching Thomson go on TV to denounce the proposals. ''How can she take the show into another fight without having the numbers lined up? We can't even line up our own people to vote for our legislation.''
By Friday, the government had antagonised the media, yet faced likely failure in the parliament. It was a major loss for no gain, just as the government prepares for an election. By the end of the week the government was considering amending the proposals in order to get them through the house.
Conroy has left his colleagues astounded. More importantly, Gillard's judgment to back him so forcefully has left her colleagues in despair. The Labor members who want the media changes to succeed, and those who oppose them, are united in their incredulity at the sheer incompetence on the matter.
The question hanging over the entire enterprise - why? And, more specifically, why now?
Senior members of the government say privately that Gillard and Conroy wanted to punish their enemy, and that means Rupert Murdoch's News group.
Murdoch's titles - notably its broadsheet The Australian and its tabloid The Daily Telegraph - have been unrelenting and often rabid in attack on Labor from the moment it took power in 2007. Illustrating the point, The Telegraph festooned its front page on Wednesday with a juxtaposition of Conroy with six dictators, including the rulers responsible for the two bloodiest regimes of the 20th century, Mao and Stalin.
The proposed changes would affect newspapers in two ways. First is the so-called public interest test. A government-appointed but statutorily independent person - the public interest media advocate - would have the power to interfere in any industry merger or acquisition that might lessen diversity of media voices.
Conroy says that this power is purely to ensure that as many titles, viewpoints or ''voices'' are kept in the market as possible. His critics say it's really designed to stop News Ltd from buying any other media assets. The entire newspaper industry says it's an unjustified restraint at a time when there has never been so much diversity in the number of media voices.
Second, if the newspaper self-regulation by the Press Council were held to be inadequate, a government-appointed but statutorily-independent person could impose sterner measures. Conroy calls it ''strong self-regulation''. The newspaper companies consider it government interference. Malcolm Turnbull calls both measures an attack on liberty and democracy.
Accepting they are likely to lose the election, Labor's leaders wanted to punish enemies - the Murdoch empire - and reward friends - the trade unions - as they head for the exit, runs the theory held by some senior ministers.
But there is another explanation, too. ''Conroy's view has been that the media stuff isn't the worst thing in the world, and it'll distract from leadership speculation and get us through to the end of next week,'' says a senior Labor figure. ''Gillard's entire world is an inside game,'' of how to hold the leadership against any Kevin Rudd recrudescence.
The end of next week? That's the last time Parliament sits before the budget, the last time the caucus will be together in one place, the last time there will be a venue and opportunity for any leadership challenge before the budget.
But Rudd is resolutely sticking to his pledge that he will not challenge again. This is frustrating some of his more determined supporters, but he is proving immovable.
Without any challenge, the onus for change rests with the senior Labor members who, until now, have been Gillard supporters. A delegation to tell her to resign, like the one that gave the same message to Bob Hawke in 1991, is widely mooted. Messy, unpleasant, and, so far, no volunteers.
''I think there's a clear majority of people who want it to happen but want someone else to do it,'' says a member of the Gillard cabinet who is not counted among her detractors.
This syndrome has a name. It's a called the ''bystander effect.'' Psychologists came up with the idea to explain a 1964 murder in New York. A 28-year-old woman, Kitty Genovese, was raped and murdered outside her apartment building in an attack that went on for half an hour and was witnessed by dozens of passers-by. No one acted to help, no one called the police.
Why would no one act? The incident inspired psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane to conduct experiments that led to two explanations. As psychologist Dr Melissa Burkley explained in a 2009 article, one is ''pluralistic ignorance … the bystander must realise that they are witnessing an emergency situation'', not just a domestic dispute or lesser contingency.
The other is ''diffusion of responsibility,'' where the more bystanders there are, the less responsible each individual feels. ''People may assume that someone else will help or that someone else is better qualified to provide assistance,'' Burkley says. ''But if everyone assumes this, then no one will intervene.''
The bystander effect is Gillard's best chance of making it to the budget.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor.
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