The Killing Season: The bloodletting is far from over
If there is one thing we can learn from the ABC’s Killing Season, it’s that the ALP is still a long way from opening the door to its back-of-house machinations.
Sarah Ferguson has so far delivered an insightful, intriguing, colourful and educational account of one of the most turbulent periods in Australia’s recent political history.
But if one thing is clear, it is that it will be many long years until we can look to Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard for a truly objective account of what actually happened to the first Rudd Government and its successors.
For both Rudd and Gillard, the wounds are still too fresh and the stakes are still too high.
When Fran Kelly delved into the Howard years, she had the advantage of a former Prime Minister who was truly resolved to leaving politics behind.
Howard had no festering sores to nurse. He was able to speak more frankly and he admitted openly many of the mistakes that left him vulnerable to Rudd’s 2007 charge to the lodge.
Retirement from parliament does not mean a free for all to tell the public what really happened on that frantic night in 2010 for either fallen Labor leader.
It simply turns the page to another chapter. Their eyes now are squarely on legacy and winning the battle for history books.
Rudd and Gillard agree on very little. A common thread between the other ALP and civil service luminaries in the series does not yet appear apparent, and the viewer is still left with little choice but to read between the lines to attempt to draw conclusions.
Effectively, that leaves us in the same position we were in in September 2013.
Revelations of a close relationship between Gillard and archetypal “faceless man” Mark Arbib are interesting. The revelations of Greg Combet's personal fatigue with Labor’s civil war when the Rudd-Gillard alliance toppled Kym Beasley are colourful.
But do they tell us anything about what happened beyond the obvious?
Not really.
Not to the cynics amongst us anyway, and after nearly eight years of political discourse framed squarely around scandal and back alley intrigue, cynics are in rare abundance.
Politics is still politics. It was then and it is now.
After all this time, we still have to choose who we believe, and it is likely to stay that way until neither Rudd nor Gillard is in a position to defend their legacies or legitimacy, or until they no longer care.
That work will come from historians; those who look from far away upon the turbulent days that saw the keys to the Lodge change hands four times in six years.
It is not just Rudd and Gillard who are not prepared to take a panoramic look at the period though. The Australian public is not ready either.
Since Tony Abbott’s ascension to the Liberal leadership, political debate has become more hyperbolic than at any other time since Gough Whitlam stood on the steps of Old Parliament House.
The feelings in the electorate still run too deep.
Ferguson has thus far provided a brilliant account of episodes that led to Rudd’s downfall.
From the Global Financial Crisis to Utegate to Copenhagen, she has given us a wonderfully over-arching view of the affairs of the time.
But to those in the voting public who thought Rudd was hard done by the wounds are almost as fresh as they are for Rudd himself.
For those who loved Gillard, Rudd remains a villain who had potentially as much to do with Labor’s downfall as Tony Abbott.
For the Liberal voters, faceless men, debt and deficit disasters and great big new taxes are all that matters.
It will still be some time until the heat comes out of the debate, and if the depth of passion that can still be brought forth at the mention of the name Gough Whitlam is anything to go by, many of us will not live to see our answers.
News break - June 17
