Book Review: The Stalking of Julia Gillard by Kerry-Anne Walsh
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In 2010, Julia Gillard became the first woman Prime Minister of Australia after an internal Labor Party leadership spill. In 2013, Kevin Rudd returned to the top job he had been deposed from in the same way. What happened in between was a masterclass in backstabbing aided by a press corps with an agenda and few journalistic ethics. Kerry-Anne Walsh, a former political adviser turned reporter turned communications consultant, was taking detailed notes along the way.
It’s clear from the start that this isn’t a traditional political biography. Walsh is obviously left-leaning (having worked for the Labor Party in the early eighties) and her tone throughout is a mixture of biting sarcasm and disbelief at the decline of her former media colleagues, in particular how they seemed to be steering the news instead of reporting it (particularly fascinating in the context of how news consumers in 2020 are becoming more aware of the undue influence being peddled by Rupert Murdoch’s News organisation and other conservative publications).
She is also not a fan of Kevin Rudd, probably because she was privy to all the things he was doing in the background to destabilise Gillard. From the moment she took on the top job (and she had to be talked into it), Rudd and his backers were agitating against her, spreading rumours, launching smear campaigns and doing their best to be a thorn in her side. The press were willing accomplices and barely any week would pass without questions of leadership tensions being raised.
While all this was happening, Gillard led the Labor Party to the 2010 election, secured government in a hung parliament by negotiating with a Greens member and three independents, passed over 480 pieces of legislation, put a price on carbon emissions, began building the National Broadband Network, established the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse, and delivered her unforgettable “misogyny” speech that went viral around the world while Tony Abbott’s jaw hung open in disbelief.
The biggest problem with this book is that it ends before the big climax. Walsh and her publishers thought that a nearly-but-not-quite leadership spill in March 2013 was the end of Kevin Rudd’s ambitions and wanted to rush the release of the book before the scheduled September 2013 election. When Rudd finally succeeded in toppling Gillard in June of that year, the book was already being printed. No doubt later editions would have included an update (about Rudd’s return to the leadership and subsequent election loss to Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party) but for anyone reading this edition, it is quite obviously missing the denouement. For anyone reading it seven years later (like I did), it’s a big exclusion. The first thing I did as soon as I read the final page was go to Wikipedia to fill in the events of what should have been the final chapter.
One of the important takeaways from this book for me was the foresight of Andrew Wilkie, one of the independents who supported the Gillard government after the 2010 election delivered a hung parliament. He held talks with both Gillard and Abbott and Wilkie came away from his discussions with Abbott sure that he would be a terrible prime minister and determined not to be the one who put him in power. How right he was.
Julia Gillard appears to have been a victim of personality politics because she was more interested in developing policies and implementing them to make the lives of average Australians better rather than getting people to like her (or, more accurately, getting people to hate her opponents). And maybe Kevin Rudd has mellowed since then but he can’t take back everything he did (which has led to seven years of Liberal governments doing sweet FA to make the lives of average Australians better and everything in their power to funnel taxpayer money into the pockets of their cronies).
Read this book if you want your eyes opened to how women are treated when they aspire to positions of political power. But don’t read this book if you are a woman aspiring to a position of political power. You’re better off not knowing what you’re getting yourself into.
4 stars
*First published on Goodreads 31 October 2020
