Australian Labor Party. - The Killing Season Uncut

Sarah Ferguson is an ABC journalist. In the same year that she worked on The Killing Season, she also wrote and presented Hitting Home, the landmark series on domestic violence. She has presented the ABCs 7.30 and worked as a journalist on Four Corners, where she won four Walkleysincluding the Gold Walkley in 2011 for A Bloody Businessthe Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill Award, four Logies for most outstanding public affairs report, as well as the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism and the Queensland Premiers Literary Award.

Patricia Drum has been a researcher for the ABCs Four Corners and Media Watch, and a producer at 7.30. She is also a solicitor and has worked in federal politics as an adviser to Labor MP Maxine McKew. Patricia was a researcher on the ABCs documentary series The Killing Season.

THE
KILLING
SEASON

UNCUT

UNCUT

SARAH FERGUSON

WITH PATRICIA DRUM

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

1115 Argyle Place South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2016

Text Sarah Ferguson with Patricia Drum, 2016

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2016

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

An ABC News production

Writer/presenter: Sarah Ferguson

Series producer/director: Deborah Masters

Producer: Justin Stevens

Research: Patricia Drum, Anne Worthington

Executive producer: Sue Spencer

Front cover image design by Deborah McNamara Australian

Broadcasting Corporation

Front cover photo of Kevin Rudd by Russell Shakespeare/Newspix

Book cover design by Philip Campbell Design

Typeset by Cannon Typesetting

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Ferguson, Sarah, author.

The killing season uncut/Sarah Ferguson with Patricia Drum.

9780522869958 (paperback)

9780522869965 (ebook)

Gillard, Julia.

Rudd, Kevin, 1957

Australian Labor Party.

Government and the pressAustralia.

Prime ministersAustraliaInterviews.

Nonfiction television programsAustralia.

AustraliaPolitics and government21st century.

Drum, Patricia, author.

324.29407

More than a hundred research interviews were conducted for the television series The Killing Season. For this book we have drawn on 144 hours of interviews and transcripts of fifty-five on-camera interviews, as well as three recorded research interviews. The majority of the material in this book is new and does not appear in the ABC series.

Transcripts prepared for television are literal, including every breath, noise and stumble. For the book we have followed the editing style used in television: repetitions, ums and ahs and breaths have been removed from the text. Ellipses indicate that we have joined answers from the same section of the interview, as well as where longer quotations have been edited.

T HE ABC TELEVISION studios at Gore Hill in Sydney are full of ghosts. For fifty years, actors, performers, politicians and crews have filled the vast studios, the green rooms and makeup chairs. Now the studios are being sold, the lot is almost silent.

A final drama is being played out in a corner of Studio 22. The cameras, lights and microphone stands are ready, but the two chairs facing the cameras are empty.

In a green room behind the studio, Kevin Rudd is stretched out on a sofa. He looks anguished. His jacket is off, draped over a chair. The jacket wed insisted on bringing back ourselves, for continuity, after a first interview in Boston. It had hung in our office for two months, a hostage against Rudds return for a second interview. As he speaks, Rudds fingers grip the edges of an iPad.

Im not coming back in. Im not going back into your witness box.

It had been a long morning. Wed stopped for lunch in the middle of questions about Rudds performance as Australias Prime Minister in 2010. Id suggested he take a break, have some food, relax, but hed scheduled a meeting instead. Wed watched as the tail-lights of his white Comcar disappeared beyond the security gate. It was hot and still on the concrete apron in front of the studio, heat rolling off the buildings large metal doors. The producers and the crew were in summer clothes; I wore a tight purple jacket, the one I had worn in the Boston winter. We sat on the ground among discarded wooden pallets and ate lunch, wondering if he would return.

The questions Id put to him through the morning session had been relentless, quoting the views of former colleagues on his performance. The most personal judgement was that of fellow former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. I read it out to him, keeping my voice neutral.

I thought for Kevin so much of his engagement in politics was about the applause, the celebrity, being fted by people. Across his life, and perhaps some of this is explained by the hardship of his early years clearly theres a hole that needs to be filled by applause and approval.

Rudd paused.

The first thing Id say about that is, I havent seen Julias university qualifications as a psychoanalyst.

Gillard had chosen to make her attack on Rudd personal. Rudd offered a moral critique about Gillard. I learnt listening to them that you couldnt determine who was telling the truth. You could only put them side by side and let the audience decide.

That morning I had gone on too long in the same vein. The rhythm of the interview had slipped away.

When Rudd finally returned to the lot, he disappeared into the green room and wouldnt come out. Time was precious. His minder leant against a wall, non-committal. Rudd kept asking why he was being cross-examined when he was the wronged party. His doubts about our intentions for the series returned. He was in pain, he said. He sipped his trademark tea, the blend hed won a celebrity tea-making competition with.

All of a sudden, Rudd stood up, grabbed his jacket and said, OK, lets go. He walked into the studio, swinging the cushion he used to support his back, joking with the cameraman.

Camera set.

Sound set.

Speeds up.

I settled in my chair and looked over at Rudd.

When you look back over that period, what do you reproach yourself for the most?

If youre looking for love, dont go into politics.

Lachlan Harris

W EEKS FROM BROADCAST on the ABC in 2015, the three-part documentary series on the RuddGillard governments had no title. Everyone working on the series called it the Labor doco. Series producer Deb Masters burst into the room where I was writing. What about The Killing Season? she said.

I smiled. She didnt need to explain. The title had been staring at us for months in the opening lines of the series: