Julia Gillard gave tacit approval for other Labor figures to move against Kevin Rudd in 2010, the second episode of the ABC's The Killing Season documentary suggests.

Interviews with her former staff and various Labor frontbenchers contradict the picture Ms Gillard has long painted of herself as an unwilling leader, only contemplating change at the last minute when the party's backroom men said it was her or political death.

"She listened to what people were saying and obviously she was in a position to rule it out categorically and she didn't, and so events moved forward as a consequence of that," her former adviser Gerry Kitchener told the program.

"I think that's sort of different to [saying] she was agitating, because she wasn't agitating at all. Other people were agitating, but she didn't say no."

A former Labor frontbencher and one of Mr Rudd's allies at the time, Martin Ferguson, said Ms Gillard went as far as discussing opinion polling with him on a flight from Melbourne to Canberra.

"She was about one thing that Sunday, about a change of leader," Mr Ferguson recalled.

"She was clearly pushing and prodding to see how I'd respond, 'if you would only see the polling', she kept talking about the polling, polling, polling, polling."

Ms Gillard rejected the claim.

"The relationship between me and Martin Ferguson was not close at the time, highly estranged. And so it's just ludicrous to suggest that I would be swapping confidences with Martin Ferguson," she told interviewer Sarah Ferguson.

Sorry, this video has expired Martin Ferguson recalls flight with Julia Gillard ( The Killing Season )

Gillard 'reduced to tears' by speculation about loyalty

Anthony Albanese, another ally of Mr Rudd's who also served as Ms Gillard's leader of the house, also suggested the leadership move was calculated.

"You don't make a decision to challenge for the leadership of the Labor Party against a first-term sitting prime minister because an article suggests that the chief of staff is supporting his boss to remain as prime minister," he said.

Mr Albanese was talking about a Sydney Morning Herald article Ms Gillard said reduced her to tears.

The story said Mr Rudd's chief of staff, Alister Jordan, had been talking to Labor MPs to see if his boss still had the party's support.

The article speculated the move showed Mr Rudd did not believe Ms Gillard's public statements that she was not interested in the leadership.

Someone Ms Gillard was close to, frontbencher Tony Burke, divulged a coded conversation the pair had not long after Mr Rudd took a big hit in the polls, in which he offered her his support.

"I grabbed a bottle and took it downstairs to Julia's office in the deputy prime minister's room," he recalled.

"I left it 'til the very end, I wanted to make sure, neither of us were in a leadership challenge conversation, but I did want Julia to know that I believed at some point she'd be prime minister of Australia and I also wanted her to be able to deny that I'd said anything.

"So I just left the final comment: 'There's one issue tonight we haven't spoken about it, if you ever want to raise it with me, don't hesitate'."

Again Ms Gillard stuck to her story that she did not want leadership change.

"It was clear to me that in his version of the future, that would be me stepping up for the leadership of the Labor Party," she said.

"Once again that was a discussion a bit carried out in metaphors rather than very straight talking, and I was, you know, keen not to see it progress to a further, more-explicit stage."

Gillard paints Rudd as 'fragile' and needy

Sorry, this video has expired Julia Gillard says Kevin Rudd has 'a hole that needs to be filled by applause and approval'

Throughout the program Ms Gillard paints Mr Rudd as a broken man, incapable of running the country.

"Kevin was very fragile in the face of criticism, including the implied criticism that comes with bad polls or bad news stories," she said.

"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."

Mr Rudd hits back, saying: "I haven't seen Julia's university qualifications as a psychoanalyst".

Ms Gillard said Mr Rudd was particularly brittle in the midst of his battle with the country's miners over the proposed Minerals Resource Rent Tax.

"He was doing things publicly but in terms of the big decisions before the Government he was incapable of making them," she said.

"He, as a sort of seasoned politician in front of the TV cameras, could, you know, turn it on.

"But his demeanour behind closed doors was absolutely miserable, irritated.

"If I was going to summarise it: personally miserable, politically paralysed."

Sorry, this video has expired Julia Gillard says Kevin Rudd was 'not physically or psychologically in the zone'

Someone else who saw Mr Rudd up close during his time in office, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, describes it as a train wreck.

"You know, one of those slow-moving catastrophes," Dr Henry said.

"Train wreck?" Ferguson asks him.

"You said it, yeah that's right," he replies. "Didn't look like it at the time, but in retrospect, that's what we were witnessing."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 5 minutes 47 seconds 5 m ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson speaks to Mark Colvin about the program. Download 10.6 MB

But Dr Henry says that did not justify Mr Rudd's removal.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten declined to be interviewed for the program, but he does not escape criticism.

Ms Gillard's adviser Gerry Kitchener said that during a conversation about Ms Gillard's ministry, former Labor senator and party powerbroker Mark Arbib said Mr Shorten could not be trusted.

"That he would do Julia in, that the one thing she couldn't do was give him [the] Industrial Relations [portfolio] because he would use it to solidify the union base to knock her off."

Watch The Killing Season: The Great Moral Challenge at 8:30pm on ABC.