Misha Schubert July 10, 2011
Illustration: Matt Davidson.
IN THE past few months, Kevin Rudd has begun, ever so quietly, to step up his domestic duties. Despite a packed schedule of overseas travel, the Foreign Minister is offering himself to Labor backbenchers as a drawcard for local electorate briefings on the foreign aid budget - hosting forums where MPs can connect with left and church voters.
Nothing necessarily suspicious in that, but to some it instantly evoked the challenger who worked the backbench so vigorously on his path to the Labor leadership in 2006.
As one MP who recently felt the love from Rudd puts it: ''The shingle is out. Kevin07 is about. He's letting people know that Good Kevin the Nice is happy to help.''
There is no doubt that Rudd is once again interested in making friends in caucus, after a long period of retreat since his leadership defeat last year. And his colleagues think it is no coincidence that the activity has coincided with Julia Gillard hitting diabolical territory in the polls.
If Gillard is to hold off a second coming of Kevin, she needs one of her own.
It's extraordinary how much Julia Gillard's personal brand has been trashed in the course of just a year. As deputy prime minister, she was feted as one of the sharpest intellects in the government, and one of its best communicators. Conservative columnists from Andrew Bolt to Miranda Devine lauded her charm, her talent and her political instincts.
She did regular cosy interviews with Sydney radio king Alan Jones, who anointed her in March of last year as one ''smart lady'' who should be ''running the country'' and complained he could sum up Australia's problems with two words: ''Kevin and Rudd''.
When I went on maternity leave last July, Gillard was still basking in the glow of public affirmation. Her first press conference as Prime Minister had been a triumph, hitting all the right notes in telling her personal story, luring mining executives back to the negotiating table with a truce on the mining tax, and eschewing a move into The Lodge until she had won an election. The public lapped it up.
This week I returned to pick over a charred political landscape. Labor's troops are battered and weary. Its leader is on the nose with the public. Its senior figures cannot seem to sell anything. And the government has the opposite of the Midas touch.
How did it come to this? And so rapidly?
The trashing of Gillard's political brand will be a case study for the ages, as compelling an analysis as that of Rudd's demise, although more unpredictable because her people skills have always outstripped his.
Of course, Julia Gillard must take responsibility for her own predicament. But fate has not been kind to her either.
Who could have scripted the series of events that helped her to squander so much political capital in so short a time?
The lacklustre campaign by a jaded party machine? The campaign leaks over Gillard arguing against paid parental leave and pension rises, stoking doubts over what she stood for? Mistake after mistake with policy on the run? And the hung Parliament that forced Labor into collaboration with the Greens on carbon, breaking her promise on a carbon tax and leaving the indelible impression of a Prime Minister captive to minorities on the left?
To be fair, the very process of minority government has also sapped precious time and energy that past prime ministers could take for granted. It's harder to be strategic when you need to run to every vote and meet constantly with a disparate crossbench.
Policy stumbles on asylum seekers and live exports have hurt her badly, giving credibility to the charge of incompetence.
And then there is the decision Gillard took not to tell the public bluntly why Rudd was deposed. Damned if she did and damned if she didn't, she opted against candour. But it has left Rudd free to reinvent himself in the public mind as an alternative leader once again. More potently, it was the very first moment voters questioned who she was. After all, nice people - and that she is - don't knife their bosses.
Allies talk about that moment as a discrepant event, jolting voters out of their assumed knowledge and making them question everything about her. For many voters, that sense has only grown, not lessened, with the passage of time. Gillard has given them plenty to puzzle over.
There is understandable bewilderment and scepticism over her post-election conviction of the need to act urgently on climate change. It's not just that she explicitly ruled out a carbon tax. It is also that she insisted action should await a deep and lasting community consensus.
Her stance on gay marriage also didn't ring true. ''I find myself on the conservative side because of the way our society is and how we got here,'' she said this year. Far from satisfying conservatives, it gave rise to more scepticism. Why on earth would an unmarried atheist from the left of politics give two hoots if a couple of blokes wanted to smooch before a celebrant?
The vehemence in the electorate towards Gillard personally has been fascinating to watch from outside this past year. Sentiment has hardened against her, potently among the non-partisan. That makes it doubly hard to sell an unpopular tax. If voters aren't listening, minds won't be changed.
The Prime Minister can console herself with this at least: the carbon price may ultimately claim her political scalp, but it will be her lasting reform legacy. One that has eluded so many blokes.
Misha Schubert is The Sunday Age's national political editor.
