Michael Gordon Political editor, The Age
March 18, 2013
Resolve: Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer
The TV cameras on both sides of the corridor that leads from the Prime Minister's suite to the House of Representatives were the dead give-away. They told Julia Gillard something was up as she made her way to the chamber, and were still there when she returned for a series of back-to-back meetings more than an hour later.
By mid-afternoon on Thursday, the Twitterverse and talkback radio were abuzz with rumours that Simon Crean had led a delegation of ministers to tell Gillard her time was up, and that Bill Shorten was poised to replace Wayne Swan as Treasurer. In fact, Crean was not even in Canberra.
Rather than being symptomatic of a Prime Minister under siege, Gillard saw the ''madcap rumours'' as the cunning work of a Liberal Party that wanted to distract attention from a healthy set of employment figures. Rather than be alarmed or spooked by the episode, she says she was amused.
''It was one of those times when the press gallery, full of intelligent people, from time to time has these herd-like characteristics and all the herd starts running,'' she says. ''And if you ask any member of the herd why they are running, their answer would be: 'Because the rest of the herd is running, so I better start running, too'.''
The Prime Minister is sitting in a hotel suite in Melbourne, on the eve of what looms as another tumultuous week in Parliament - the last chance for her to be rolled before the budget in May - and reflecting on something Tony Blair told her a couple of years ago - that politics was afflicted by a ''new brutality''.
Conventional wisdom has it Gillard's problems are of her own making, and began with the decision to challenge Kevin Rudd in 2010. She begs to differ, arguing the contest has become even more brutal since her conversation with Blair - and that the brutality is reflected in the rapid demise of leaders across the political spectrum here and overseas. Leaders such as Ted Baillieu and Terry Mills.
''It's harder than it used to be,'' she says, adding that this is the case for the journalists who cover the contest, as it is for those who take part. ''You've just got to be a pretty hard bastard to get it done,'' is how she expresses it.
One of the things that makes it harder is the way changing technology has transformed the media and, in Gillard's view, encouraged ''more drama, more shlock, more horror'', and less depth, because everyone has less time to think.
''I think, ultimately, where it will get to is quite the reverse of that. In an environment where you can get all sorts of commentary for free on the internet, what will end up being the future of paid media will be strong, authoritative, trusted voices,'' she says. ''But we're not there yet.''
Another factor is the influence of polls, like Monday's Herald/Nielsen Poll, which shows Labor still trailing the Coalition 44-56 in two-party preferred terms - and will harden the resolve of those who see a change back to Rudd as Labor's only hope. Gillard accepts the polls as a fact of political life, but describes them as ''froth and bubble stuff'' that fails to discern the underlying trends in the community. ''Societies are shaped not by what is happening on the surface, but the great tidal movements underneath,'' she says.
''I get it [with polls], and I get why it happens and why it eats so much media attention, but when the history of this time is written, just like when we write the history of times before, it's only the political aficionados who remember what the opinion polls were doing at that time.
''People don't write the story of Hawke opening up the modern economy against the backdrop of the opinion polls. They write about policy measures.''
A third factor making the task of politicians more difficult is that voters identify with parties far less today than they did 30 years ago. A fourth is peculiar to Julia Gillard's predicament - a hung parliament and an opposition that has been very effective in projecting a picture of chaos and carnage.
What is beyond question, however, is that Gillard's - and Labor's - problems transcend any discussion about the state of politics in democracies more generally.
Rather, they go to the Prime Minister's apparent strategy of picking fights with everyone from big business, miners, state governments, media barons and even those who support temporary visas for foreign workers. It's a strategy seemingly at odds with the Hawke-Keating consensus model of governing.
Here, Gillard is unabashed. ''One, I think there has been a lot of re-interpreting of history,'' she says. ''I don't recall Paul Keating in the 1993 campaign, in the fight of his life against the GST, looking for the consensus moment. Two, government in my view isn't about looking at the powerful stake-holders and saying, how many can I get in my corner? Government is about serving the national interest and doing what the nation requires.''
While the government's handling of media reforms is cited by critics as evidence of the kind of dysfunction that helped destroy Kevin Rudd's prime ministership, Gillard defends the reforms as in the public interest and the process as utterly unremarkable, given that the likely direction had been clear for two years.
''Ultimately, you've got to make a judgment call about what serves the national interest, and I never expected people in the media to applaud any reform agenda because their agenda is looking at it through their eyes and what meets their needs rather than doing what I've got to do - stand back and say what meets the national interest.''
Then there is the case of 457 visas and the Prime Minister's stated view that the system for dealing with temporary skills shortages is being abused to put ''foreign workers'' at the front of the jobs queue. It is not so much the need for a tightening of the scheme that is controversial - this is widely supported - but the Prime Minister's use of emotive language that has caused alarm.
Here, again, Gillard is unbowed. ''I'm a Labor prime minister talking about jobs, and the truth is, as everybody knows, we have always calibrated our immigration settings against our best understanding of the economy and our needs - and I won't be deterred by third party critiques about this.''
Asked whether she has made foreign workers feel less welcome and Australian workers more hostile to those from overseas, her response is emphatic. ''Not at all. Australians are more sophisticated than that and, frankly, I think foreign workers are more sophisticated than that, too.
''I actually think it is the over-reading of it [her position] that's odd and distorting to the debate - and of the things that are harsh and undermine community acceptance of migrants, that harshness has not occurred around this debate, but around the asylum and refugee debate.
''I mean, when you have the Leader of the Opposition talking about a peaceful invasion, what are those words meant to imply to people? It's not meant to imply it's a good thing. Being invaded by definition is the most dreadful thing that can happen to a country.''
Aside from these and other controversies is the biggest policy challenge facing Gillard: will she be able to fund her signature policies - school funding reform as recommended by the Gonski review and disability insurance - without jeopardising other priorities?
Here, the Prime Minister exudes confidence that the budget will deliver. ''We will make the savings as appropriate to get this done,'' she says. ''I've always said there will be some hard choices in doing that but, at the end of the day, the government's budget is a reflection of our nation's priorities and our nation's choices.
''I think these things - better schools, better support for people with disabilities, better insurance for everyone against the prospect that they or a family member could have a disability - need to be high priorities and other things need to give way for them.''
For Gillard to lead Labor into the campaign, she will need to retain the support of a party room that projects fatalism, division and gloom. Asked how she intends to inject resolve and confidence into the ranks, she talks of the shared ''historic Labor task'' of governing well and retaining the electorate's confidence.
''It's for each individual to make their decision about how they get on and do it. My words to the colleagues are that I bounce out and do it every day - and that's my expectation of everybody else.''
Pressed on whether the task is beyond her with a primary vote in the low 30s, according the the current crop of polls, she insists she doesn't spend her time ''unpacking the entrails'' of every opinion poll.
''You'll say it's trite to say the poll that matters is election day, but the choice at the end of the day isn't what you tell the nice person from Nielsen when they ring you up. It's what you do when you mark that ballot paper when all the noise has died down and there is effectively a binary choice for who leads the nation.
''And you ask yourself: who has got the personal capabilities to do it? Who's got the vision of the future and who's got the plan to take us there? And it's not a choice about whether you're going to invite them around for dinner on Saturday night and I actually think intuitively people get, particularly in the modern age, that this is a profession for pretty hardened people.
''You've got to have a strong sense of yourself and a strong sense of personal resilience to deal with it. I think people will look for those capabilities, they'll look for those plans, they'll look for that vision of the future and I am very confident that I'm the only person presenting for election to the prime ministership who has got those things.''
The confidence is evident when she is asked about the prospect of someone ''tapping her on the shoulder'', either this week or in the months ahead. ''It just won't happen. [It's] much speculated upon and just won't happen. I'll just keep getting on with it and dealing with the issues that actually matter and all of this kind of side commentary can do whatever it does. It's not going to deter me - or distract me.''
It's there, too, when she is asked if she will take the initiative and stand down if the situation demands. The leadership decisions were made when she made the ''very tough'' call to challenge Rudd in 2010, she says, and when Rudd's subsequent challenge was emphatically rejected last year. ''I haven't revisited it since and I won't be revisiting it.''
Of Tony Abbott, she says: ''He knows how to frame a campaign around complaint. What he's got no vision for, and no self-belief in, is a campaign around what you can construct - and I don't think a campaign around complaint gets you there.''
Of herself, and her own self-belief, she is unequivocal. ''If I haven't flinched yet, why would I flinch now?''
