Quarterly Essay 59 Faction Man by David Marr

Author:David Marr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.

Shorten was changing his mind about Gillard as the numbers flowed towards Rudd. He was deeply troubled. The AWU stood foursquare behind the Prime Minister and so did Conroy. For the first time in his political life, Shorten contemplated breaking with his closest allies. He admired and liked Gillard, but he had seen polling that suggested Labor’s numbers in the House of Representatives would be halved if she led them to election day. He paid for a poll in Maribyrnong that showed a 13 per cent swing against him: this Labor prize would become marginal. There was no factional discipline in the drift towards Rudd. Individuals were making up their own minds. In some worlds, that’s how politics works. Penny Wong had gone across. Kim Carr was happily behind Rudd again. The NSW Right was behind the contender and threatening to ignore Shorten in future leadership contests if he didn’t shift too. Shorten was almost over the line. On Sunday 9 June, Barrie Cassidy set the contest ablaze by declaring on Insiders that Gillard would not be leading Labor to the next election. Swan would blame Shorten for lighting the match. Cassidy denies this. Shorten continued to maintain that he was backing the prime minister: “I support her and continue to support her.” He saw Gillard just before the Midwinter Ball and told her how deeply concerned he was. He let her know the writing was on the wall. Convinced he had already switched, her people froze him out of strategic discussions. But Shorten says he vacillated almost until the last day:

I hoped that this would pass, that somehow she would work it out, or he would work it out, or that they would work it out. Having been through one change I really did not want to be part of another change. No one has ever suggested I undermined Julia. My motivation seriously about the second change was a lot more thought-out, and a lot more difficult, and with a lot of scar tissue from the first change.

I didn’t think that Labor would win more than 25 or 30 seats if we stuck with Julia. I thought we were heading for Armageddon. My logic was that there are millions of people who put their trust in Labor and we had to come up with a better answer.

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