Free The Killing Season Uncut by Sarah Ferguson Page B

period of time and in some detail, this was not a small thing for the Treasury. I was gutted by it. And this was an official that from time to time I had mentored. So this had real personal impact. I did feel personally betrayed.

    â€¦

    SF: Do you reproach the Leader of the Opposition for accepting those leaks?

    KH: Me? Reproach?

    SF: Yes.

    KH: I was very disappointed. Surprised and disappointed. I was then and I continue to be.
    The question for
The Killing Season
wasn’t about Turnbull but how the Grech incident affected Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. Rudd’s popularity stretched into polling territory previously occupied only by Bob Hawke: as preferred prime minister, he led Turnbull by 65 points to 18. Turnbull had called Rudd’s integrity into question and failed, spectacularly. But more importantly, Turnbull’s misjudgement weakened him, making him vulnerable within the Coalition, until he lost the leadership—at the most inopportune time for Labor.
    Surprisingly, Andrew Charlton said the weakened opposition harmed the government instead of helping it.

    And so there was a period where the government really didn’t face an effective opposition and that is always very risky for a government … When the opposition isn’t fulfilling its function, it makes it difficult for the government to continue to be as focused and relevant on domestic issues.
    Rudd himself was fortified by Turnbull’s demise but denied he took any pleasure in it.

    I have no particular taste for the personal brutalisation of politics, none whatsoever. Others do. They kind of enjoy the blood sport. I’m repulsed by it.
    Â 
    In Boston, we progressed well through the interview session on that last morning, until Rudd suddenly announced he would be cutting short the afternoon session because he was flying to Saudi Arabia and needed to pack. Those hours were precious to us. I knew there was no point returning after the break; Rudd would be too distracted. We got a commitment from him that we would have extra time in Australia before Christmas. Deb Masters took Rudd’s jacket and tie for safekeeping.
    Rudd pointed at the local sound recordist and suggested Shane drive him to his hotel. Shane didn’t have much choice. When he returned to the studio later to help break down the set, he said the fifteen-minute drive to Cambridge was the most frightening journey of his life: ‘I’ve never driven a prime minister before. What if I had crashed?’

CHAPTER 5
GILLARD’S STORY
    They were discussions about how we work with Kevin. None of them were leadership discussions about replacing Kevin, none of them.
    Julia Gillard
    I N OCTOBER 2014, ahead of our interview, copies of Julia Gillard’s memoir arrived in our office. The producers and I each grabbed a copy and began searching for her account of the leadership change in 2010. Gillard had never given a full account of that event. Now we expected to hear the whole story from her point of view. The book was entitled
My Story
after all.
    The room was quiet except for the sound of pages flicking backwards and forwards, and producer Justin Stevens tapping the search function on his iPad. I looked up and said, ‘Where is it? Has anyone found it?’ The book was oddly structured and I assumed that in my haste I had missed it.
    There were a few pages about the leadership change in the first chapter, ‘Becoming the First’, but with significant omissions. There was no more detail. Gillard had elided the facts of the most significant moment of her career and one of the most significant moments in contemporary Australian politics.
    At the same time, she was unsparing in her personal assessment of Kevin Rudd and those of her colleagues who had gone on to support Rudd’s return in 2013. Her former friend Simon Crean was depicted as a buffoon. Bob Carr, her choice as Foreign Minister, was a gossipy dilettante overwhelmed in the