When the Liberal party went into meltdown in early February 2015, I was in Africa. On the day of the vote on the leadership spill, I was in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, a truly fascinating nation. But in the course of my stay I ended up answering urgent political questions about Australia.

I have travelled enough internationally to know and accept the reality that, overwhelmingly, people are well disposed to Australia but in truth know very little about it. In particular, people know hardly anything about Australian politics. However, prime minister Abbott’s near ousting as leader broke through – even in Rwanda – because it was the subject of quick pieces on prominent global news websites.

How do you explain to someone half a world away from Australia that, despite enjoying abundant political blessings and having only governed for just over 500 days, our nation’s prime minister was now fighting for his political life?

There was no extant crisis to point to. There were challenges but no immediate crisis. There was bipartisanship concerning the national security agenda. The government enjoyed a solid majority in the House of Representatives. There was no hung parliament to worry about, only the routine problem in Australian politics of negotiating legislation through the Senate. In the court of public opinion, the hand of the Abbott government was strengthened by the fact that the biggest selling newspapers were providing sycophantically favourable coverage, and the remainder were going easy. The government’s bullying of the ABC early on was paying off, with the national broadcaster frequently pussyfooting around potential criticism of the government.

The Labor opposition was performing strongly but being given the usual scant attention afforded to the alternative government early in a parliamentary term.

All this combined meant that the political pressure on Tony Abbott as prime minister was as near zero as it is possible to get. So how to explain that, despite such promising conditions, on 9 February, Tony Abbott was forced to walk into the meeting room of his political party to receive judgment on his leadership?

In Kigali, because of occasionally disrupted Wi-Fi coverage, to many of my questioners I could truthfully answer that I did not actually know what was going on in my nation. I had not been able to see the latest news. But what was obvious to me in those days in Rwanda was that our nation would have some reassessing to do.

Content is pretty close to invented. It is irresistibly seductive to package politics like a reality TV show

Up until that point, those who are paid for their political commentary and expertise had largely concluded that the leadership changes between Kevin Rudd and me were best explained as being something to do with the nature of the Labor party and its factions and something to do with the characters of two individuals. I have sought to explain how this kind of analysis was always simplistic and slipshod. How it deliberately ignored internal turmoil in conservative governments, including the replacement of Ted Baillieu as premier of Victoria. The changing pattern of political incumbency had also been underscored by Queensland’s hugely dramatic repudiation of its one-term conservative government led by Campbell Newman and Victoria’s return to Labor, also after just one term.

Now, after the events of 9 February 2015, whatever one concludes about my story, the theory that this was all about Kevin, me and the Labor party cannot stand. This view has passed its use-by date. Contemporary reality has rendered it absurd.

Tony Abbott on his way into the Liberal party room in Canberra on 9 February 2015, the day he faced a leadership spill motion. Thousands of miles away in Rwanda, Julia Gillard was asked: ‘What is happening in your nation?’ Photograph: Stefan Postles/Getty Images

To be fair, some of the commentary about leadership and the Labor government has tried to go beyond mere jibing at the Labor party or Kevin and me. There have been some attempts to look at the new pressures on governments in the modern world and work through what this means for governments of all political persuasions. I am no longer a forensic follower of the day-to-day political news, including opinion pieces, and I most certainly have not read all the books written about my time in government. There is a level of wallowing in all of this that is neither psychologically healthy nor a good use of my time. But I have read enough of the most mainstream and noted works to feel the nation has been let down. What has been advanced as analysis strikes me as pretty thin gruel.

The media is horribly thin-skinned and vengeance-seeking when on the receiving end of criticism

It is impossible for any individual to have in their heads the full range of truly deep answers to the central question posed to me in Rwanda: “What is happening in your nation?” Most assuredly, I do not claim to do so. But I am convinced our nation needs the kind of answers that can only be found if we have a more thorough debate on the challenges of governing than the current one. That belief has led me to try to add some meat and potatoes to the gruel.

I am mindful of having a luxurious freedom, tempered with one self-imposed constraint, as I outline my thoughts. Being beyond politics, I am able to examine the role of the media without worrying about the indignant harrumphing that emanates from many journalists and commentators when you do so. For a profession that holds dear both the ability to vivisect politicians in prose and the expectation that these carved-up subjects will not complain, the media is horribly thin-skinned and vengeance-seeking when on the receiving end of criticism.

This has never ceased to amaze me.

Australia leads the press pack – in a bad way

Does our love of a contest – in which you get to barrack, have a view, even bet – explain our predisposition for leadership contests in politics? Because let’s face it, we do seem to have such a proclivity, at all levels of politics.

Looking nationally, the dominant media narrative about leadership is that now we tend to instability, whereas earlier we did not. Yet history seems to be telling us otherwise. In reality, a metanarrative of Australian national politics for more than 30 years has been leadership tensions: Hawke and Keating; Howard and Costello; Kevin and me; Abbott and his undeclared contenders.

Consider the following snapshots:

What seems to be changing is not the underlying cycle of leadership tension but the speed at which it goes around

Five years after Bob Hawke became prime minister in March 1983, it was being suggested in the media that “the time may have arrived for Bob Hawke to stand down as prime minister”. In August 1988, the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised for a change to Paul Keating. By December 1991, after one failed leadership tilt, Paul defeated Bob and became prime minister.

Four years and three months after John Howard became prime minister in March 1996, he deliberately used a line on radio about reassessing whether to stay as prime minister on his 64th birthday in order to undercut leadership speculation about an earlier move to Peter Costello.

I replaced Kevin Rudd two and a half years after he became prime minister. He replaced me three years and three days later, having had his first tilt at regaining the leadership 20 months into my prime ministership. Tony Abbott faced his first potential leadership contest 18 months after he was sworn in as prime minister.

What seems to be changing is not the underlying cycle but the speed at which it goes around. And is that any surprise when in the 30-plus years since Bob became prime minister, the speed of the media cycle has become turbo-charged? So rapid and voracious is today’s whirl, content is no longer merely reported on, it is pretty close to invented in order to keep the leadership speculation fires stoked. It is irresistibly seductive to package politics as just like a reality television show. What could be better to get attention on the political news than something that plays out minute by minute, hit of the refresh button by hit of the refresh button!

We live in one of the most concentrated media markets in the world

While we share so much in media and political culture with other democracies, it seems that in this area, we are at the head of the pack.

Neither the United Kingdom nor Canada, despite having the Westminster system, has seen leadership become such a dominant narrative, prime minister after prime minister, government after government.

No easy explanation presents itself as to why we should be so fixated. But the nature of our media market may offer some clues. Put simply, we live in one of the most concentrated media markets in the world. How concentrated is it? More than 90% of newspaper circulation is covered by two companies. For the vast majority of Australians wanting a print copy of a metropolitan daily newspaper, there are only two choices. If you live in Perth, you can get Kerry Stokes’ West Australian. Otherwise you can have a Murdoch paper or a Fairfax one. To get a Fairfax one outside New South Wales and Victoria, you need to hunt down a Financial Review.

Alongside a limited number of print newspapers, we only have three free-to-air commercial television networks. The patterns of cross-media ownership are complex, ranging across print, television, radio stations and magazines. Modern market forces tend to drive the market for free to air, pay television and the radio industry towards greater consolidation, not diversity. The kaleidoscope is turning now and many of the individual pieces will change places. But any conceivable outcome will still mean the Murdoch empire, Fairfax and Kerry Stokes’ media company will very much matter.

The content generated in News Corp and Fairfax tends to influence other media, even when it is unrelated by ownership

The content generated in News Corp and, to a lesser extent Fairfax, tends to influence other media, even when it is unrelated by ownership. It is still the case that the early-morning workers in the newsrooms of radio and television stations compose their bulletins based on what they read, which tends to be from one of our traditional media players. The impacts of this concentration are diverse and all undesirable. Above all, it means bias matters more, simply because there is less capacity to contest arguments and less diversity of commentary.

While newspapers have always editorialised about election choices, I for one would want to see news coverage actually bring voters the facts so their voting decision can be well-informed. Evidently, despite being in my mid 50s and having served in high elected office, I am too idealistic.

News Corp Australia media coverage in Sydney during the 2013 federal election campaign

What we can see clearly on the other side of the world during the recent election in the United Kingdom, we also see here. To take one example, the front page of the Daily Telegraph, Australia’s second-biggest selling newspaper, on the first day of the 2013 election campaign read simply: “Finally, you now have the chance to KICK THIS MOB OUT.”

These words were printed over a picture of Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, so there was no doubt which “mob” was the one to “kick out”. The editorial, which supposedly justified these words, was a predictable spiel against Labor and bizarrely contained the words: “It is traditional for newspapers to deliver their verdict on the eve of the election, but we would like to offer our judgment in a calm and measured way now, unaffected by the relentless spin and sloganeering which is about to cloud the coming campaign.”

These words raise all sorts of odd questions. Is that form of front page in any way “calm and measured”? Do the writers of the Daily Telegraph’s editorials fear a loss of their capacity for judgment because of spin and sloganeering or do they view their readers as incapable of seeing through political theatrics? How could anyone miss the obvious point that newspapers traditionally editorialise at the end of election campaigns because it is only at that stage that all the policies of political parties are known?



The phenomenon of errors being republished over and over does cause a major problem for citizens in our democracy

Most disturbingly, given the Telegraph told its readers to vote against Labor, how seriously could you take its claim in that very editorial that it would put Coalition policies under the same level of scrutiny? As the history of the election campaign shows, not seriously at all.

A full 10 of the banner headlines during the campaign were bitingly critical of Labor, with none even remotely as critical of Tony Abbott and the then opposition.

What this example shows is the preparedness to integrate bias so fully into a newspaper that it ceases to play in any meaningful way the role of objectively bringing facts and balanced coverage to the attention of voters. Rather the paper is a vehicle for pushing a pre-established view.

Bias is only the first problem. The second is the endemic nature of inaccuracy. Pieces have to be produced too quickly for checking.

This general vice is not confined to Australia. Rather the real issue driven by concentration is that errors get turned into accepted fact more easily. Once an inaccuracy is in circulation it is treated as an established fact and rehashed and reused. Without diversity and contestability, inaccuracy does not get called out and corrected.

Of course I have experienced this personally many times but one recent example will suffice. Walking into Gough Whitlam’s funeral, I was ushered to the end of a row where there was no seat available.

Michael Vlassopoulos, who had driven Gough around in his final years, stood and offered me his seat. I refused to take it knowing that he was much loved by Gough and that it was appropriate for him to have a good seat at the ceremony, rather than move to the back of the hall. Kevin Rudd and his daughter, Jessica, immediately and graciously came to my aid. Noticing a spare spot at the other end of the row, they organised people to shuffle down one place so a seat opened up for me.

Former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser, Julia Gillard, Bob Hawke, prime minister Tony Abbott, John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating at the funeral service for Gough Whitlam in November. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

The media made no attempt to find out the facts, but simply jumped to the conclusion the whole incident had occurred because I had refused to sit next to Kevin. While I have publicly corrected this on a number of occasions, block and copy journalism means this inaccuracy, like so many others will be endlessly repeated until the end of time. No great harm was done on this occasion but the phenomenon of errors being republished over and over does cause a major problem for citizens in our democracy. There ends up being no real way to reliably know whether what is asserted as a well-known fact is really a much retold fiction.



Bias and bullying

The way our media outlets unthinkingly peddle each other’s errors is particularly jarring given the much-vaunted rivalry between the newspaper groups. So constant is the sniping between News Corp and Fairfax, they often seem like irritable, elderly neighbours, always complaining about the other having the television too loud or letting weeds grow through the fence.

Indeed tension between our news outlets seems so acute that there are times when criticising each other is viewed as more important than arguing for freedom of the press. For example, when one media outlet is berated by government for getting a story wrong, consistent with arguing for freedom of the press, other media outlets could editorialise that freedom inevitably means the right to be provocative, even wrong.

In Australia’s media culture though it is much more likely the other media outlets would see a competitor being given a beating and want to land their own blows, siding with the government rather than defending an example of the free press at work.

I hanker for a ubiquitous culture of quality and transparency, of the media doing what it demands of others

Another impact of media concentration seems to be the normalising of perverse behaviours. In this small playground, if you are treated unfairly and complain individually, then you will be the subject of payback. The bullying culture of sections of our media establishment would be right at home in the school playgrounds of yesteryear.

But most importantly of all, between the bias and the bullying, sustained conversations about reform cannot find any fertile ground.

What thrives is leadership speculation.

Can anything be done to improve the quality? A hard question to which I have no real solution. Undoubtedly our media reforms were poorly handled. Frustration took too much hold. But there is a need for a genuine and effective model of media self-regulation, which means someone harmed by false reporting can complain and get a remedy, free from the fear of retribution.

A press conference in July 2012. Gillard says: ‘I hanker for a ubiquitous culture of quality and transparency, of the media doing what it demands of others.’ Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

I hanker for a ubiquitous culture of quality and transparency, of the media doing what it demands of others. Sources of information where any fact cited that turns out not to be true is corrected as soon as possible with equal prominence. Publications capable of fostering and sustaining deep-thinking policy discussions. Where every journalist publishes all the information you need to know about them to assess their perspectives as they publish their articles. Their pecuniary interests, whether they are a member of a political party, whether they ever worked in a political position. A publication that gives the reader a regular stocktake of what stories it did not publish or did not pursue and why; a publication that only extends the benefits of off-the-record quotes or views appearing in print to sources that genuinely would otherwise face some persecution or payback, not people who are using a cloak of anonymity for their own reasons.

I suspect I will have to dream on. But I do hope that people of good will and good ideas, including from my political party, will find ever more effective ways to work around the strictures of the current media and engage directly with the Australian people. I hope people do find ways through the cacophony to authoritative sources of news and information, places for ideas and dialogue. Perhaps the very volume will cause people to become more searching and selective.

I hope people will find more effective ways to work around the media and engage directly with the Australian people

If there was not a real and pressing need for reform in our nation, all of this could could be viewed as interesting but academic. We do not have that luxury. The real-world impact on our capacity for reform is too serious.

With today’s media cycle, how do we ever get enough information to really do a comparison of options and choices? In fact, how do we get out of the dreamy nirvana state, when the media focuses so hard on costs and so little on benefits? How seductive in that environment is the false choice of wanting to have it all and pay nothing for it?



Even when a reform is made, how can it settle intellectually and emotionally, when the media blows up every problem with implementation into a crusade against the reform itself?

I am an optimist and believe, despite all this, reform can still be achieved. Yet I am also very sure that the corrosive impact of today’s media cycle is particularly harsh in a concentrated media market. There is simply too little diversity to create useful spaces to help nurse reform through. All this means reform is harder and it also means politicians suffer more wear and tear in getting it done.

• From the new edition of My Story by Julia Gillard, with a new chapter, published on 1 July by Vintage Australia, $34.99