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Making sense of Labor’s leadership showdown

After months of leadership speculation, the debacle which has put the ALP into crisis will be resolved on Monday. Erdem Koç breaks down the week's dramatic events and looks ahead to what's next.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has ended months of speculation by calling a caucus meeting for Monday morning to determine the Labor leadership.

It’s a dramatic time in Australian politics, and it’s easy to get lost in the midst of the hype and endless coverage of the crisis.

Here’s a breakdown of the events which have led to the calling of a leadership ballot, and a look ahead at what’s in store next.

What will happen on Monday?

The 103-member Labor caucus, which consists of all Labor members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, will meet at 10am on Monday, before parliament resumes.

A ballot will be held, where Julia Gillard will declare the leadership ‘open’ to contenders.  She will re-nominate for the leadership.  A deputy leader will also need to be elected.  The ballot will be secret in nature, where caucus members need not reveal who they’re voting for.

Kevin Rudd has not explicitly stated that he will challenge for the leadership.  In his Washington press conference yesterday as well as his subsequent one this morning, he said that he would make a full statement on his future when he returns to Australia.

But from Mr Rudd’s second press conference it can easily be inferred that he will challenge. It was at this conference that he outlined a series of policies that he would like to see restored, and explicitly stated that he does not believe Prime Minister Gillard can lead Labor to success in the next election.

If Rudd challenges Gillard, will he be elected as leader?

It’s hard to know.

Mr Rudd will need 52 caucus votes to be elected as leader.  Various newspaper reports have suggested that Rudd has 40-odd votes, but that a third of the caucus is undecided – that is, they are undecided as to whether to vote for either of Ms Gillard or Mr Rudd.

Many cabinet members in the government, such as Wayne Swan, Greg Combet and Bill Shorten, have declared their support for Julia Gillard.

Will there be a third candidate contesting the leadership?

Again, this is hard to tell.  Many political commentators believe it will be limited to a Rudd vs Gillard showdown.

There have been other names floating around during previous leadership speculations, such as Stephen Smith or Greg Combet, but that now seems an unlikely outcome.

Is there a chance Rudd won’t challenge?

It seems unlikely, but yes.  If he doesn’t run, it will mean that Mr Rudd has accepted the leadership of Ms Gillard (for the time being), and will go to the backbench.

Some commentators have raised the prospect of Rudd resigning from parliament all together, which would trigger a by-election in his seat of Griffith.  If this happens, there is a chance the government could lose that seat.

With the independents’ support, the numbers in the House of Representatives were 76-73, after Harry Jenkins resigned as speaker and Peter Slipper took the job.  If Labor loses Griffith, and the Coalition wins that seat, the numbers would go to 75-74, which could spark a re-negotiation process with the independents.

And so, in the current political climate, Mr Rudd’s resignation could prove fatal for the government.  It seems unlikely that Mr Rudd would risk this, even if he doesn’t contest for the leadership on Monday.

If Rudd is elected as leader, who would be his deputy?

Not Wayne Swan, that’s for sure.  In a statement released last night, Mr Swan attacked Mr Rudd, stating that: ‘The Party has given Kevin Rudd all the opportunities in the world and he wasted them with his dysfunctional decision-making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people including our caucus colleagues … The Labor Party is not about a person, it’s about a purpose.  That’s something Prime Minister Gillard has always known in her heart but something Kevin Rudd has never understood.’

This is a scathing and unprecedented attack on Kevin Rudd, so it’s hard to see how the two could possibly work together either in the leadership team or even on the frontbench.

What would happen to Gillard if Rudd becomes leader?

It’s almost impossible now to see any situation where Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd could sit on the frontbench together.  This also applies to many other senior members of the government, such as Simon Crean and Stephen Conroy, who have publicly launched stinging attacks on Mr Rudd.

Ms Gillard has indicated that if she loses the ballot, she will go to the backbench and renounce any further ambitions for the leadership.  In her press conference this morning, she said that she expected the same undertaking to be taken by Mr Rudd.

Would there be an election if Rudd becomes the prime minister?

He’s not obliged to call a general election until the end of the 2013, but he’ll no doubt come under attack by the opposition to call one.  But given the fact that he’d lead a minority government, there is a chance he may not have the support of the independents to form government.

The independent MP from New South Wales, Tony Windsor, for example, said that it was ‘more than likely’ that an election would be a likely outcome if Mr Rudd is returned to the prime ministership.

And if Rudd isn’t elected…?

He would go to the backbench (assuming he won’t resign from parliament altogether, which seems unlikely).

There is a chance that he would sit on the backbench for some time, while continuing to build support for a possible re-challenge later on.

What can be drawn from Rudd’s press conferences in Washington?

Quite a lot.  They were an extraordinary attack on the ‘faceless men’ within the Labor Party.

In the first conference, Mr Rudd said: ‘I deeply believe that if the Australia Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men – Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.’

In the second conference, Mr Rudd said that there needs to be serious reform of the Labor Party, to ensure it’s not run by ‘faceless men’.

This was a direct attack at the very structure of the Labor Party.  The Labor caucus is commonly divided among factional lines – the two biggest being the National Right and the National Left.

The Right holds key names such as Bill Shorten and Mark Arbib, two factional leaders who were instrumental in installing Ms Gillard as prime minister, even though she is a member of the Left.

Other prominent members of Labor Left include Doug Cameron, who is the leader, Anthony Albanese, Jenny Macklin, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Evans, Penny Wong and Greg Combet.

Mr Rudd is not associated with any of the factions.

Ms Gillard has labelled this attack as ‘profoundly insulting to my colleagues’.

What can be drawn from Gillard’s Adelaide press conference where she announced the ballot?

Very little apart from the bleeding obvious.

Though it was almost the first time she commented, in detail, the events leading to the leadership election in 2010, including references to Mr Rudd’s ‘difficult and chaotic work patterns’.

She also conceded that out of respect to Mr Rudd, she said very little about his leadership at the time, instead ‘using the terminology that the government had lost its way’.

She further conceded that the Rudd government was very much focused on the ‘next news cycle’ and the ‘next photo opportunity’ and that she’s tried to put the focus back on good policy.
How did we get here?

It was the 7pm ABC news bulletin on June 23 in 2010 that broke the news that there were ‘leadership rumblings’ within the Labor Party.  Later that night, Mr Rudd addressed the media, calling a special caucus meeting for the next morning to determine the leadership of the ALP and hence the prime ministership of Australia.

At that ballot, Mr Rudd did not challenge for the leadership as it became clear that Ms Gillard had the numbers to win.

Since then, there has been ongoing speculation that Rudd would challenge to get the top job back when the timing was right.  He was a backbench member until the federal election, after which he was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Much of the current leadership speculation came to afoot early in 2012, with both Ms Gillard and Mr Rudd constantly questioned about the Labor leadership.  Ms Gillard has repeatedly said she enjoys the support of the majority of her colleagues, and Mr Rudd has always said he was happy (in fact a ‘happy little vegemite’) being the Minister for Foreign Affairs.  It’s safe to say now that that is no longer the case!

Why has this reached the level it has now?

Last week, the ABC’s Four Corners program devoted an entire episode to this issue, titled ‘The Comeback Kid‘.  There were fresh revelations about the Labor leadership election in 2010, with Prime Minister Gillard refusing to answer allegations that she knew staff in her office were preparing her ‘victory’ speech weeks before she challenged for the leadership.  She also avoided questions that she had showed polling to senior members of the parliamentary Labor party that showed she was the preferred PM over Kevin Rudd.

Senior ministers and backbenchers were subsequently questioned throughout the week about whether they were shown this polling by Ms Gillard.

Then late last Saturday night, a video of Kevin Rudd was posted by a mystery user (whose account has since been deleted) on YouTube which showed him losing his temper and swearing while trying to record a message in Mandarin.  The video was taken while he was prime minister.  Mr Rudd questioned the ‘unusual’ timing of the posting of the video, saying that it was obviously archived by the prime minister’s office or a governmental department.  Ms Gillard denied her office was involved in any way.

An hour after the video was posted, Mr Rudd gave an unprecedented interview to Sky News before he headed off to the G20 meeting in Mexico, where he said that he should have consulted more broadly as leader – one of the key criticisms which resulted in him being ousted.  Many saw this as his way of sending a message to the Labor caucus that he was a changed man, paving the way for a leadership spill.

This resulted in a series of commentary from senior members within the ALP.  Many acknowledged that the ongoing speculation about the leadership was damaging to the government.  Some attacked Rudd, while others pledged support to Ms Gillard.

Simon Crean, a senior Labor frontbencher, said that Rudd should ‘back off’ and end the speculation.  Steve Gibbons, a Labor backbencher, tweeted that: ‘Only a psychopath with a giant ego would line up again after being comprehensively rejected by the overwhelming majority of colleagues.’   Darren Cheesman, who holds Labor’s most marginal seat of Corangamite by only a handful of votes, called on Ms Gillard to hold a leadership ballot and declared his support for Mr Rudd. Doug Cameron, the leader of the Left, said that Mr Rudd was always a better leader than Ms Gillard.  Craig Emerson has said the only alternative to Julia Gillard is Tony Abbott.

Yesterday, News Limited and Fairfax newspapers were reporting that senior government sources had revealed that Ms Gillard was prepared to sack Mr Rudd for his ‘disloyalty’, or at least call a leadership ballot.

Mr Rudd subsequently called a press conference from Washington where he resigned as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, saying he could no longer fulfill his duty as a minister, without the explicit support of the PM.

Final observations…

Whatever the result from Monday’s ballot, there’s no doubt this whole saga will have serious implications for Labor.

The Age‘s Michelle Grattan says ‘the chance of the government appearing convincing to a majority of Australians seem nil – it’s about the size of the loss’ and that ‘Labor and its leaders have squandered the mandate Australians gave them in 2007.’

Meanwhile, former Queensland premier Peter Beattie has lamented that Queensland, which goes to the polls in the state election on 24 March, is bleeding, thanks to the federal crisis.

If Ms Gillard retains the leadership, Mr Rudd will most probably remain on the backbench.  She then has to deal with the prospect of another leadership challenge later on.  And the opposition will no doubt constantly remind the public of the statement by Mr Rudd, and others, that Ms Gillard can’t win the next election.

If Mr Rudd becomes the prime minister, he will need to deal with the disunity and divisions within Labor, and particularly the current frontbench.  This will be not be an easy task.

Either way, we sit and wait anxiously for Monday morning at one of the most fascinating times in Australian political history.

Erdem Koc teaches journalism at La Trobe University.  You can follow him on Twitter: @erdemkoc

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