Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews Australian Labor Party Strategist, Bruce Hawker

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

BRUCE HAWKER interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Good morning to you Bruce and welcome to Q+A. How long had that spill been brewing?

BRUCE HAWKER – Labor Party Strategist
Not too long at all I think, the collapse in the vote for Labor actually started to happen just a couple of months ago. Up until then the Prime Minister had been running at stratospheric levels. It was almost North Korean like the popularity that he was able to muster in the polls, when the fall came it came very quickly, and you saw in the last few days the speed with which faction leaders inside the party moved.

PAUL She moved with rare effectiveness.

BRUCE Indeed, and was probably more the case of people who were key strategists inside the parliamentary party getting anxious about a number of issues. We've got a number of issues, a resources tax here in Australia which has been introduced by the government, which has been the subject of huge controversy and opposition from the mining companies. The debate around that has effectively sucked a lot of air out of the room, and it's very hard to get any sort of a message through as a government. I think that was the finishing point for the Prime Minister, when he couldn’t punch through good messages about paid parental leave sort of legislation, which was passed in the last week of the parliament. I think the writing was well and truly on the wall at that stage.

PAUL Well of course that speech that he made when he was dumped as leader he was able to recite a litany of government achievements. But Bruce, apart from the carbon issue and that mining tax you’ve mentioned, what other worries did the caucus have about Kevin Rudd, and I'm speaking really about him personally. I've read that his behaviour had become somewhat erratic, he'd become too isolated in his office with his young team, that he didn’t consult Ministers, he'd ceased to consult Ministers enough. Were those some of the worries?

BRUCE I think there was a concern that the presidential style of the Prime Minister was stopping him getting the counsel that he needed from people outside his office, and I think that did actually lead to a lot of the concerns amongst the people that finally made a decision to move. As I said he had been an extremely popular and successful Prime Minister for a long time, and he did move to do a lot of things. I mean he stopped the global financial crisis hitting the Australian shores, and he did that by introducing a major stimulus programme. But unfortunately for the government some of the stimulus measures didn’t work particularly well in the sense that there were cost overruns, and that became a focus of attention too. So again the stimulus had an immediate positive effect on the government in that we avoided a recession, and we had 5.2% unemployment, you know the envy of the world. But a lot of the roll out was flawed, and I think he had a very difficult time punching through a message as a result of that as well.

PAUL Anyway we see yesterday Bruce, a couple of polls came out, one poll's got Julia Gillard with an eight point bump up. There's a 14% bump arise for Gillard for Labor already in the first preference polling. Will it last and how will it affect when she chooses when to go to the country?

BRUCE Well that’s the 64 dollar question Paul, obviously you wouldn’t expect leaps of that level to be maintained. You think that they would settle down to a more reasonable sort of level than we're seeing there. But right at the moment Julia Gillard is running extremely well in the polls. She's got out of the blood on your hands sort of cycle of news coverage which was around for the last couple of days, and she's now looking to the positive sides of her administration. She's putting her own stamp on things. She's put out an olive branch to the mining industry. She withdrew the government ads, and the mining industry in return withdrew their ads which were attacking the government. So immediately things have calmed down and if she continues that sort of style, then the public will be reassured, because as you said the government did a lot of things in its first two and a half years. And that really caused some anxiety I think in the electorate in that they weren’t explaining in detail what was being done. Julia Gillard I think will pair down the number of issues that she wants to talk about, give a real sense of calm and reasonableness to her public presentations, and I think it will be very difficult for Tony Abbott, the Opposition Leader, to punch through. And punch is probably the right word there because he's a very pugilistic sort of a fellow, and I think dealing with a female Prime Minister will present him with some challenges.

PAUL Bruce a final question. Kevin Rudd was perceived this side of the Tasman as somewhat cool towards New Zealand. How will Julia Gillard be?

BRUCE I think Julia Gillard will recognise that New Zealand is an incredibly important partner for Australia, and she will, I would expect, to be making a trip to New Zealand at some stage in the not so distant future in her Prime Ministership, because she recognises the importance of that relationship. Not that Kevin Rudd didn’t, but we were dealing with a global financial crisis last year, and I think most of his focus was on the northern hemisphere rather than on the southern hemisphere. Now that things have calmed down a bit I think there'll be a more local focus on the new Prime Minister's agenda. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes. I think she'll go extremely well as Prime Minister, and I think the other message for all leaders out there is – these are volatile times and no leader, whoever you are, whether you're in New Zealand, Australia or the United States, should be too comfortable about the crown that sits on your head, it can slip very quickly in these volatile times.

PAUL It can go very quickly indeed as we saw this week. Good on you Bruce, thank you very much. Bruce Hawker in Sydney.

ENDS

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