'The Killing Season' - Episode 3

To The End, The Chaos

Aye Carumba, as Bart Simpson would say. Episode 3 puts us into the tumultuous 3 years of Julia Gillard's turn at the Prime Minister's chair and finishes with the election defeat. As with the previous episodes, it feels like too close to be called history as the heat from it being news is all too familiar.

Perhaps this is part of the Big Now where everything is in some way significant, but it leaves you feeling numb to realise that the ALP coughed up a big lead over personality issues. It is on the whole, unreal and unbelievable. Our disbelief marks us out as neophytes, the unwashed, and outsiders in the arena of parliamentary politics. Clearly we knew so little and have little to do or to say or give.

What's Interesting About This Episode

This was simply devastating to watch right down to the end. People have said some rather extreme things about Kevin Rudd but I don't find him that hard to understand. He's logical and principled and what you see is what you get. He's not perfect, he's not the saviour, but he's there for the greater good. When he was Prime Minister he was there for all Australians. Over the years I have been told how warm and friendly Julia Gillard is, but I actually find her mentation a lot harder to understand. I have to commit to political expediency as the guiding ruler understand why she would do or say the things she would. And yet it's not like she didn't have principles and she had much discipline.

Still, watching this episode was even more traumatic than the previous 2 episodes. Kevin Rudd is essentially self-conscious to a fault while Julia Gillard seems to be unaware of the extent she kids herself when she prevaricates. When she chooses to characterise things, she is far less convincing than Kevin Rudd, and Rudd to his demerit, does not characterise things enough. They may be two of the least insightful leaders from the ALP in a long time. It's funny because they're both clearly intelligent and educated, but insight into themselves seem somehow faulty. Mark Latham seems to possess more insight into his own character than these two, and we thought he was nuts and unworthy.

As long time readers know, I never warmed to the Julia Gillard Prime Ministership. What happened with the 2010 Rudd removal was too drastic and shocking for me to ever get over and then embrace the new Prime Minister. What it did was highlight how little control we had over the political process, and just how much the parties run on the cult personality and take our votes hostage. When Julia Gillard tells us her time in office started with a shadow over it and it only got darker, it highlights the fact that she's trying to ignore the deed that got her into office having any currency as a problem. You really shouldn't try to talk about accidents you caused in the third person.

Lessons In Power

In watching it, one thing becomes very clear. Julia Gillard should have been ruthless and forced Rudd right out of Parliament. As long as he remained, everything that happened was inevitable. The problem of courses was that she couldn't buy out his career, and there was not enough political capital anywhere to buy out Kevin Rudd's career. And so he stayed. Which is like one of those Bond movie bits where the villain's got James Bond strapped to a death machine, spills his beans on the dastardly plot to take over the world and walks away without killing James Bond. She really didn't finish the job she started. And as long as Kevin Rudd was politically alive, he was always going to come back.

The fact that Julia Gillard didn't have this simple insight alone tells you a few things. She didn't really think through what would happen in the event she knifed a Prime Minister in his first term, and a very popular one at that, and she didn't seem to have the insight that if the shoes were reversed, she would be the one doing the come back. In fact if there's one thing that could be said about Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister, it would be that she didn't seem to have a hell of a lot of insight into the minds people who voted for the ALP in the Kevin '07 campaign. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe it was a blind spot, it's really hard to tell and we may never know. But it translated as being tone-deaf to the electorate.

Then again, former Senator Mark Bishop observes that she was miscast as the leader.

Albo Made Me Cry

There was a moment in March 2011 when there was the first spill to try and bring back Kevin Rudd, and Anthony Albanese pleaded for unity. It was busting him up that the ALP had come to such straits.  Holding back tears he fronted the microphones and pled. Seeing that footage again just broke me. It was pure grief.

But then it made me think, "who are these people making Albo cry? Who are these people in Parliament moving these machinations?"

They're the first beneficiaries of Whitlam's free tertiary education. They are that generation who got the free tertiary education and did with it whatever they could - and they made it parliament. It wasn't a birthright, it was serendipitous that it fell on their laps; and now they're milking it for what it's worth, damn the country, the future generations, the budget bottom line or any kind of integrity. They're grubs.

You Missed The Bit That Pissed Me Off, Sarah Ferguson

It's a very simple thing if you are not a union member but support the broad Left. In this country, if you can't go with the radical idealism of the Greens, then you have to find your place with the ALP. If the ALP tells you, we're putting union concerns ahead of your concerns - your 'social democrat' ones - then you are deprived of a political platform that represents you. Now, I might not agree with Kevin Rudd's do-gooder Christianity-tinged ethos on a personal level, but in all his time as leader and PM, I never felt like the ALP somehow didn't represent my broadly Left-y position. Julia Gillard set about narrowing what the ALP stood for, to the point she was telling us proudly she is not a leader of a 'social democratic' Party.

Gillard sold us out. She told me and my friends who are educated and progressive, and who broadly support her cause, to fuck off. And while I'd never vote for the Tories, she wonders why the middle ground never came back.

Alan Jones & Tony Abbott

Years ago I met a producer who was worried what would happen to an Australia where right wing shock jocks ruled the airwaves with their extraordinary rants. At the time it seemed a little too sensitive to the carping of people who were exercising their right to freedom of expression. Nonetheless it is abundantly clear that years of this kind of hateful bilge from the likes of Alan Jones has infected our democracy to the point where sensible dialogue does not find traction, and instead we get slogans and obtuse rhetoric.

The destruction of nuance and meaning in our polity by the likes of Alan Jones directly led to the rise of Tony Abbott, who can only be described as an utter disaster as Prime Minister. Now, Alan Jones might console himself by saying that he was a kingmaker, but what is the point of installing a functional imbecile as the Prime Minister of this land?

The poisonous slogans and rhetoric that emanated from Alan Jones and his kind has for worse and worser and worst-est, destroyed the political discourse in this country. It is shameful that Alan Jones still has a job and keeps doing it. It is shameful that the Prime Minister of this land takes his cues from the likes of Alan Jones.

Shameful and vile, is what all this is.

It's All Over Now

It's all a little quaint now that we've adjusted to the daily horrors of an Abbott Government. Right up to the last minute of Kevin Rudd's first Prime Ministership, there was a semblance of intelligent discussion about policy and where our nation was going to go. Julia Gillard did try to keep it going, but in the face o the monolithic negativity and feigned-stupidity that marked Tony Abbott's time as Opposition Leader, it never really survived.

Today, I have been reduced to just laughing every time somebody tells me the latest study thing Tony Abbott has said or done. The short answer is, on some level we have no control over any aspect of this stuff. Our democracy only offers us a delusion that our votes count, our opinions matter, facts trump opinions, that our democratic ideals are somehow intact. The fact is, Tony Abbott's government goes to show everyday how venal and menial our existence is, how much our political classes disrespect us, how little integrity there is going in Canberra, how close we are to an authoritarian state where things get decided by decree and not proper discussion.

There are days where I blame Rudd and Gillard for what transpired that brought us to this place. Then again, it might just be a reflection of just how dumb the population has become, and was inevitable that we would come to this point in time. We may marvel yet at Rudd and Gillard in future years - it becomes more likely the longer we are forced to live under the rule of these tories.