Inner Sanctum: with the PM After Australia Day

It's undoubtedly a routine event for those within the Canberra press gallery bubble, but for a relative outsider like me, it was a fascinating experience to spend a good part of the weekend at close quarters with Julia Gillard after one of the most tumultuous weeks of her (or any) Prime Ministership.
She fronted the media on Saturday afternoon at 4 Treasury Place, the Commonwealth Government building in East Melbourne. Her only scheduled media event was to have been later in the afternoon, making a joint appearance with New Zealand PM John Key to spruik the 2015 Cricket World Cup.

But to avoid that engagement being hijacked by awkward media questions about the Australia Day security debacle - and the part her own office played in it - she had been forced to call a separate, earlier press conference.
The PM strode in to the media room half an hour late, but bristling with energy and, on her own admission, anger. She spoke without notes for the best part of fifteen minutes, listing in precise chronological order the events of the day before, when apparent responsibility for the violent protest outside Canberra's Lobby Restaurant had turned suddenly, and for her, sickeningly, away from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, and onto a media adviser from within her own office.

She finished and invited questions, and when they came in a rush, made it clear to the assembled press pack that none would go unanswered.
Given the potentially dire political circumstances, what was most noticeable was how assured her demeanour was; how confident and certain. Although you can never really tell for sure, her account of Friday's events, and the answers she gave us about them, seemed honest. Of course, when you do away with the spin and the obfuscation, and all that's left is the truth, you can speak
confidently and without fear of tripping yourself up. Lies and deceptions are much harder to recite accurately.
She directed the press conference like a traffic cop - pointing, waving, gesturing, deciding which reporter would be allowed to ask the next question, and replying to the questioner with a direct, stern and unblinking gaze.

Her delivery reminded me in its tone of Kevin Rudd's resignation speech and the reaction it drew - how so many people remarked afterwards that if he'd only spoken as passionately, as naturally and as honestly throughout his Prime Ministership, he might still have had it.
Having discovered with a jolt the fallibility of her closest advisers, Julia could do worse than ignore whoever is steering her towards a style of personal presentation that often seems condescending, forced, and which too often brings to mind a favourite aunt reading a storybook to an audience of four-year-olds.
Having despatched all our questions to the boundary, she strode out again, possibly to give any nearby staff members another spray.
Yet just over an hour later, she appeared for the cricket World Cup media call, apparently lighthearted and jolly, laughing easily on stage and off, the dark clouds of the Australia Day affair, for now at least, nowhere on her horizon.

On the way out of the venue, she even shrieked uproariously when she accidentally struck her partner Tim Mathieson on the shin with a souvenir cricket bat - a genuine moment of levity in what must have been for her a very grim few days.
The morning of the next day, Sunday, was set aside for meetings with NZ PM John Key and his cabinet ministers. She left her office a few minutes ahead of time, waiting outside in the hot sun, chatting and joking with the media until the guests arrived.
Her corner office on the first floor is enormous and filled with natural light, with her desk, bookshelves and a few mementoes to the left of the entry door; a lounge suite to the right. Here she sat, making anodyne small talk with Key while images of the meeting were recorded for posterity.

A little later we waited in a corridor at the opposite corner of the building for Ministers to arrive for the joint trans-Tasman cabinet meeting.
Peter Garrett loped in, warm and gentle in demeanour, yet enormous and scary-looking. As Minister for Early Childhood he must terrify small children. Health Minister Tanya Plibersek approached him from the opposite end of the corridor. What weighty affairs of state would occupy them?
"Want a cup of tea?" asked Garrett.
Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's head poked out of the tea room, asking if anyone knew where the milk was kept. It's always a tiny bit surreal and jarring to see prominent people behaving in a perfectly ordinary fashion.
At the post-Cabinet press conference, Gillard was again forthright. It was supposed to be all about establishing closer ties between Australia and New Zealand, with only two questions allowed from the representatives of each country's media. Both Australian questions (and a sneaky third) harked back to the Australia Day incident. But there was no shirking, ducking or weaving; none of the "...I'm here to talk about trans-Tasman relations..."
It was a brave performance, possibly the last resort of a politician for whom the half-truths, reversals and broken promises that have dogged her government have been so damaging, that the only remaining option is the truth, absolute, unvarnished and direct.
Whether ultimately it will be enough is impossible to tell.