Rudd says he shook hands with Gillard on leadership compromise

The Killing Season is again attracting headlines with tonight’s episode ripping apart ‘Spillard’ -the night that Julia Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd for the Prime Ministership.

This is the episode at the heart of Sarah Ferguson’s 3 part ABC documentary.

For the first time on television, Gillard’s backers detail how the challenge was organised.

In a closed-door meeting Gillard confirmed she would stand for the leadership of the Labor party.

According to Rudd, around two hours into the meeting he proposed a compromise: “If come the time of this election I believe I can’t win, then of course I would step aside. I have no interest in taking the Government over a cliff. If by that stage there is a judgement from John [Faulkner, invited by Rudd to witness the meeting] based on the party’s independent research that I cannot win the election, I will at that point resign the prime ministership and offer an uncontested succession to you. Then she began discussing the detail of how that might work.”

Gillard says: “I do recall a discussion about Kevin having more time and I participated in that discussion and gave Kevin some false hope.”

“Did you agree with Kevin Rudd that he could retain the Prime Ministership?” asks Ferguson.

Gillard replies: “I don’t, no, I did not agree. I can understand why Kevin felt that, you know, there was there was a… potential wedge of sun on the horizon.” She adds: “I should have been more straight forward and more clinical and less discursive. Being discursive did give Kevin false hope and that’s down to me.”

But Rudd insists: “She agreed. She not only agreed, but she had interrogated the detail of the formula on the way through. We shook hands. That’s not a wedge of hope.”

The meeting was interrupted and Gillard spoke to key backers: “They were very clear with me that… the majority support would be with me.”

In Rudd’s words, when Gillard returned to the meeting: “She walked in ice cold, ice cold, with absolute determination in her eyes. It was a complete transformation in five or ten minutes… by a person who I’d always supported in good times and in bad, as she has supported me, there’s something pretty gut-wrenching about all that, something which tears open your heart.”

Gillard tells presenter Ferguson, “You always have choices but I don’t think there was any way of, you know, stuffing… the genie back into the bottle.”

Rudd concurs: “Once the dogs of war are unleashed, it’s very difficult to bring them back under control.”

When Gillard says of Rudd, “….across his life he felt the need for himself to be filled by the approval of others. So clearly there’s a hole that needs to be filled by applause and approval,” he responds: “The first thing I’d say about that is I haven’t seen Julia’s university qualifications as a psychoanalyst.”

The Killing Season: Great Moral Challenge, Tuesday 16 June 8.30pm ABC.