There’s been extensive discussion of Nicholas Stuart’s new book, Rudd’s Way on Brian’s thread about the political demise of Kevin Rudd.
I’ve been dipping into it and have written a post about it for the ABC’s Campaign Diary blog. I think Stuart shows us that the accepted narrative of Kevin Rudd’s failure, now ‘overshadowing’ the issues of this year’s federal election, is only a partial one, and without much nuance. You can read why here.
Good article, Mark.
Thanks, adrian!
That’s more like it. I doubt Rudd is finished and look forward to a comeback.
Must get hold of Rudd’s Way. I suspect that a few years down the track, Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership will be judged very kindly. I, for one, was sad to see him removed.
The more we see of Julia doing nothing (even pulling the old community consultation thimble trick) the more Rudd is starting to look like a giant. No wonder he was a lone band in govt (if true) when he had to fight this sort of inertia. I wouldn’t have talked to any of the nobodies myself.
Lying, Blonde, now Red…what do you think Mark? Rodent city eh?
This is all a bit less than optimal, Mark. You haven’t read the whole book and by my calculation I have about 70,000 words to go. I’ve read the sections entitled “Co-operative Federalism” (mostly about Health), “Leadership” (a general assessment), “The Fall” and “Epilogue: The Verdict”. What I’ve read concentrates on 2010, but makes generalisations with examples that cover the whole Rudd ascendancy.
First let me say that I’ve never said much that was favourable about Gillard’s achievements in education. I doubt I’d ever make a summative judgement, because there are areas (TAFE and universities, for example) that I don’t know much about. My main worry in the schools area is that she doesn’t appear to have been consultative or inclusive in policy development, which are supposed to be hallmarks of her prospective leadership as PM.
And on the Ruddster, I did do a post to make sure that the achievements of his government were not overlooked. I think inevitably now when the history of Rudd’s PMship is written about, there will be an effort to separate out Rudd’s role in each of the achievements.
There were some projects that clearly required Rudd’s involvement, for example Health, where COAG and federalism were in play. Stuart’s portrayal of what happened seems to indicate that Rudd hindered more than helped the resolution. Stuart doesn’t go so far, but Norman Swan the other day characterised it as a sell-out. Swan reckons the fine print leaves the states in control. Stuart says Rudd acted like a bully, used the media relentlessly to talk past the premiers and chucked enough money at it that the states couldn’t refuse, rather than working on solving the actual problems.
Health wasn’t the only cave-in. The biggest was probably the CPRS, where arguably the polluters got paid, rather than the other way around.
There are questions as to whether Rudd intervened in the right places and whether his interventions helped. Stuart seems to answer both in the negative, in many cases. On the GFC he says that it was fixed by throwing money at it but a chance of restructuring the economy was missed.
I don’t always agree with Stuart’s assessments (he seems to think the NBN is a big waste of money, for example) but his insights and judgements are always worth thinking about.
On the other thread I outlined Robert Manne’s article in The Monthly which says there were three chapters in the Rudd saga. In the third chapter, from Copenhagen onwards, Rudd faltered. Stuart’s account of the same period is relentlessly devastating. Overall he’s harder on the guy than I would have been.
He talks about his “chaotic office”, his centralisation of policy, his habit of doing it his way:
He told us on TV:
Stuart says this shows a preference for a presidential style rather than the traditional cabinet governmment. Then there’s this from p262:
While Stuart piles it on he does recognise his strengths, which he says were on display as he went out the door, his vision for a better world and his commitment to achieving it. Nevertheless, he says finally the problem was Rudd himself.
If Stuart is right, then rehabilitation will not be impossible but will certainly not be easy.
But as you say, we need more information, and also, if Rudd had gone the double dissolution way on the CPRS and the health insurance subsidy, then Manne’s chapter three would have been entirely different and Rudd would have become a Labor hero.
This scenario is not incompatible with Stuart’s view, as the cracks didn’t really start to show until Rudd was down there with his notebook in front of parliament telling insulators that he’d heard and he’d fix it, and then going on TV with mea culpas, admitting the whole thing was a stuff-up, that Labor deserved go get a whacking in the polls.
There’s an issue worth looking at, I think, as to whether Garrett was really such a bad minister, or whether he was inflicted with a program that was always going to be problematic. We accept deaths on the roads with a great deal of comparative equanimity. We do so also in the building industry, but not in people’s ceilings on a government funded program.
It has been noted on this blog that the insulation scheme had a reduced incidence of deaths. Everyone out there, Stuart, journos like Tingle and Lenore Taylor, everyone thinks the insulation scheme was a “debacle” (the word Stuart uses). Rudd seems to agree, and there is a question, although I haven’t been following all the detail, as to whether Rudd was more to blame than Garrett. Time may tell.
Very nice post Brian.
Unfortunately, much of the discussion about Rudd’s legacy and deposition has been filtered through the prism of what people want to believe is true, rather than a dispassionate assessment of all the available evidence.
It will probably be some years before a more objective account is written, when Labor is out of government again and public servants, MPs and other senior party figures are prepared to go on the record over the events of the period.
Brian, I made it clear in the post that I hadn’t read the whole book.
I have now.
FWIW, I think Stuart is far too hard on Rudd, and that’s partly to do with the fact that he himself doesn’t appear to understand much of how policy works, and partly to do with the fact that he doesn’t evaluate what his sources are telling him.
For example, the bulk of the chapter on foreign affairs deals with China, and the thrust of the critique appears to be that he was insufficiently malleable from China’s perspective – for instance, in his speech in Beijing where he mentioned human rights.
It’s pretty clear to me that most of what he’s saying in that chapter comes from foreign affairs officials who were pissed off by budget cuts and not used to a government actually making foreign policy as opposed to doing what the department wanted (which is what happened under Downer with the exception of Iraq).
Similarly, he seems to fall into the trap of expecting things to have happened instantly – the same attitude the media has, or of not seeing that other factors are at play. Policies on social housing and redressing Indigenous disadvantage are supposed to be long term ones. If not enough housing was built in the NT in one year, there’s a problem of implementation, not necessarily of the policy goal. And Macklin is one of the Ministers that he said had carte blanche.
Or, as with the example I used in the post of the G20 – it’s just wrong to ascribe blame to Rudd that some of what was initially proposed didn’t eventuate. I can’t see how he is meant to be able to stop Merkel and Sarkozy from wanting to pursue their own course on fiscal policy and financial regulation single handedly.
Incidentally, reading the book didn’t give me a great deal of confidence that many of the Ministers who will now supposedly under Gillard have free reign are either very competent or have much to offer in policy terms.
And I’d also note that it’s possible to draw aspects from the sections on Rudd’s downfall which are significantly at odds with the prevailing narrative. That was my point in the post – it’s all been wrapped up in a very one sided story, which is demonstrably – in some matters – wrong, if Stuart is right.
Hi Mark, I was thinking we may be able to have a stoush, but I don’t think so. I’d need to read the book. Reading that stuff is core business for you, but it is down the list for me, even in terms of the limited time I have for reading.
FWIW I agree with this para:
Journalists, which is what Stuart substantively is, typically don’t understand how policy works, nor about the administration of complex organisations or how political leaders have to manage their time. They always think pollies should have spend major slabs of time to give it their full attention. When I was in publis administration I had 18 committees and in one little study an average time on task of 8 minutes. When Carmen Lawrence was supposed to have misled parliament my judgement was that the time she had to think about what she did would have been measured in seconds.
There is another debate to be had as to how public policy ought to be developed. The Rudd government’s policies on climate change came out of a weekend seminar in Brisbane in 2007, which got the science wrong, I think. Yet years later, if they deviate from policies and strategies established that weekend, which depended on who they invited and the interactions between them, and possibly the twist put on it by whoever wrote up the ‘outcomes’, politicians get plastered for changing their minds, doing backflips, not giving industry the certainty they need etc.
Gillard’s ostensibly more deliberative approach, (the council of scientists, which is overlooked by the pig-stupid media, is more important than the citizens group, which is only advisory, another point missed by most of the reporting) may be worth doing if we get a better bead on what we need to do before we rush off to do it, fail, kick out that bunch of pollies and put in another bunch who in this case would be dedicated to unpicking everything the first lot did.
For me Gillard’s ‘gobfest’ is heaps better than a weekend seminar, largely below the radar at the time and now forgotten, but I’m not sure Gillard’s chosen way is optimal.
I agree with this paragraph also:
There were a couple of other’s Stuart gave a tick to, eg Tony Burke and Chris Bowen. If journos actually listened to Burke’s exposition of his sustainabilty brief they might understand it. Right now not even the better ones like Laura Tingle even come close.
I’m not sure that “free reign” will be the go with Gillard. In the mining tax resolution, Swan and Ferguson had a brief negotiated with Gillard and I gather there was a cabinet meeting also. Gillard was certainly in and out of the meeting with the miners, which went on for days.
Pretty much, I agree with your whole comment. Also the last sentence and this from LO:
Finally, elsewhere I quoted a defence of Rudd’s administrative style from Pat Weller who spent four weeks in his office. On reflection, I think Weller being there would have altered the normal behaviour and dynamics of the office. Also in a comment quoted in the Fin Review, Weller defended Rudd’s style, not from what he saw there, but because he had a happy family life. One of the aspects mentioned by Stuart is that Rudd had markedly different personas in different life settings (though he doesn’t mention family in the parts I read).
He’s a bit on an enigma, really.
BTW, I think Lenore Taylor and David Uren’s book Shitstorm might be a better treatment of the Rudd government’s response to the GFC. In her interview with Richard Fidler she gave a lot of credit to Rudd, both in the domestic response and in his international initiatives. But she was also critical of how Rudd ran the government. I bought it the other day, but have only had time for a cursory glance. It seems to be well-documented and properly referenced, as was, for example David Marr’s and Marion Wilkinson’s Dark Victory.
Sorry, Stuart does mention Rudd and family, including an apparently cringe-worthy children’s book he wrote last Christmas, when Stuart thinks he should have been reading the Henry review for relaxation, but not, I think, in the sense Weller used to defend his administrative style.
Brian – “Hi Mark, I was thinking we may be able to have a stoush, but I don’t think so.”
Thanks for the heads up – I was wondering if I would need popcorn.
Sorry to disappoint fb, but we’re not really the stoushing kind.
I’ve put a further comment on the other thread, but I think it only exists “in Exile”.
Brian, all the Exile posts have been imported over to this new blog, so you should just cut and paste it on the thread here: The untold story of how Kevin 07 bit the dust
More of a citizens’ assembly?
Interesting stuff, Mark. If the “micro-manager” theme doesnt end up holding as much water as people suggest – we are back looking at
a. ALP culture – and how Rudd didnt fit, and peeved faction leaders;
b. the well known strategy stuff-ups, which the plotters had as much of a hand in as Rudd himself.
and
c. the one that has received least attention: maybe some key Ministers just weren’t that good at their jobs.
I guess time will tell, as LO suggests.
I’m leaning towards c. as a big bit of it!
OK, thanks tigtog @ 14, here’s a summary I promised of Nicholas Stuart’s explanation of how Rudd fell. I’ve made a lot of specific references in comments on the other post, which I won’t repeat.
Stuart says Rudd’s rise and fall can be explained with reference to three factors.
First, Rudd assiduously established a media presence that made him very recognisable and he started to register in the polls.
Secondly, he cultivated the factional leaders.
Thirdly, there was Gillard. Rudd recognized her ambition, the support she had from the faction leaders, her warmth and friendship with many in the caucus.
Rudd approached her and pointed out that being from the Left she would never command sufficient numbers in her own right to gain the leadership. But together as a leadership team with her as deputy they could win. Although she commanded more numbers in the Caucus than he did, she recognised the truth of what he said and agreed to join him.
After the election in 2007, Rudd did not maintain his support from the faction leaders, or anyone much in Caucus.
For Gillard, OTOH, the deputy leadership gave her a high profile so that she registered in the polls and maintained her contacts in the Caucus to the extent that when the faction leaders turned to her, she had the numbers.
Stuart says she remained the loyal deputy to the last.
Stuart then goes into a summary of the problems of process in Rudd’s administration, how he was losing traction with the electorate and didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it, which you’ve heard more than enough about before. I don’t want to rehash the extent to which Stuart may be right or not about this.
Gillard’s support cracked when the Hartcher article appeared in the SMH about Jordan canvassing support for Rudd. Stuart says:
It’s not particularly relevant, I think, as to whether those who thought the government was going over a cliff were right or not. What matters to Gillard’s motivation is what she believed. And that we really don’t know, but it is a fair bet, I think, that she really thought they were going down.
We are entitled to say that she should have been able to deconstruct polls better and also appreciate the potential harm done to democratic process, but she committed no crimes, broke no rules, so the proof will be in what happens in the future.
I have worked in a large organisation with many divisions and branches. I’ve seen the loyal deputy scenario play out where the loyal deputy finally gives up on a boss that he/she sees as ineffective or worse.
At this stage I’ll say three things. First, that I make no judgement on whether Gillard should have acted. I’ve said that I’m inclined to think that she should have waited until after the election and I’ll stick with that. But then she would have had a case only if Rudd had won, but barely scraped through.
Secondly, I’m more hopeful than many on this blog that she will make cabinet government work, if she wins, and there can be no certainty about that.
Thirdly, I think it is incredibly important if Labor wins that she chooses her ministry on merit, ignoring the factional leaders who got her there if their talents are only in scheming, plotting and playing power games. If she does that she will have struck a blow for all of us and for the Labor Party as well.
It is certainly true that a number of ministers were not particularly good at their jobs and Rudd himself certainly felt that. Indeed, that was one of the reasons he sought to centralise as much policymaking in his office as he could. He simply didn’t trust other ministers very much. Remember also that Rudd wasn’t just micromanaging a number of ministers. He was also micromanaging the states through the COAG cooperative federalism things. Again, in part, because he had little faith in state bureaucracies. Of course, it isn’t straightforward to solve that problem. By trying to bring so much under his control, he actually left himself with insufficient time to focus on the really important things. Micromanagement is often a consequence of managers not having faith in those they manage. Problem is, even if the manager’s concerns are valid, micromanagement doesn’t really solve the problem.
When I was working for him in opposition inside his policy unit, we basically set up working committees that allowed the key policy adviser on that issue in his office, to run the entire thing (with Rudd’s oversight of course) and simply use the shadow and their staff as a sort of secretariat. That meant, for example, that very little policy came out of Garrett’s office on climate change. He was simply a messenger for things dreamt up elsewhere. In government it is a little different, because of the departments. But then cross departmental committees enable similar processes to develop.
Rudd had unending faith in his ability to do almost everything better than anyone else. Unfortunately, it turned out that he had more limitations than he thought.
I think that’s fair comment, LO. Rudd’s work in co-ordinating different departments in Queensland would have influenced his approach, but state governments are far less complex beasts than the federal mob.
Possibly the ideal role of the PM is to set a general direction, set priorities and lead public opinion.
But it’s important to note that Don Watson’s book on Keating demonstrated there is always a polarity between trying to do this (Keating was fairly hands off except on certain issues he took as his own – eg the Mabo response) and pressures for micro-management coming from the political climate and particularly, the need to shape and respond to the media agenda.
There’s also the fact that first term governments almost inevitably have inexperienced ministers (if they’re elected after a long period in opposition). And the fact that the calibre of ministers is perhaps not what it once was.
None of this has necessarily gone away because Rudd’s gone.
Interesting, well- balanced commentary as usual Brian.
Interesting that Rudd cultivated the factional chiefs when he needed them and ignored when he thought he didn’t. Basic mistake in strategy.
Also interesting that Rudd recognised Gillard’s talent and used it to further his career, as well as hers of course. It also emphasises the fact that Gillard thought Rudd was leading the government over a cliff and so acted responsibly by taking the leadership.
[...] there is a summary of the account from Nicholas Stuart’s book on how Rudd fell and then Mark’s post on Stuart’s [...]
[FWIW, I think Stuart is far too hard on Rudd, and that’s partly to do with the fact that he himself doesn’t appear to understand much of how policy works, and partly to do with the fact that he doesn’t evaluate what his sources are telling him.]
Stuart has taken the easy route of going with much of the standard Murdoch media meme since he couldn’t get close enough to the main parties and the ones who spoke to him off the record….well have a guess where they came from.
He has failed pretty badly on this, in not only ignoring the myth creating of Murdoch but failing to full recognise context or deal with political realities and historical comparisons.
A study of any PM would be capable of producing material with which to build a negative theme then add confirming anecdotal padding.
Stuart seems to have no idea of the political and even legal realities that go into policy making, dealing with offices and State governments and adopts a fairytale world standard.
I think the Right Wing faction that knifed Rudd will be happy as it is their ‘leaking’ to the Murdoch media to undermine him along with their own get Rudd program helped create a false history which is taken for granted.
As far as Rudd goes it has to be said he performed as well as most first term PMs and even better given the peculiar circumstances in which he had to serve – GGF and Global Warming.
The immediate comparison that can be made so far with Gillard is that she is so far well below Rudd’s performance and will need to lift her game to not be seen a failure.
This could end up being her achilles heal, the man she knifed could well provide the standard against which she will be judged and failed. Especially the MSM will run this method regardless, to paint her as a usurper and failure.