No love lost here: Former Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Credit:AFP Fierce differences emerge about the Rudd government's over-reliance on the so-called "Gang of Four", or kitchen cabinet – which comprised Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner – and which steered the response to the Global Financial Crisis but was later criticised for circumventing cabinet too regularly, amid claims of governance problems within Rudd Labor. On the bullying claim, Ms Gillard states that "Kevin was always very anxious to strut his stuff in Question Time" and that during one meeting, which she had led as manager of opposition business "tactics hadn't gone his way, I'd taken a view about something else forming the issue of the day and after the tactics meeting broke up he very physically stepped into my space, it was a bullying encounter, it was a, you know, menacing, angry performance". Mr Rudd says the claim is "utterly false" and that he can recall no angry exchanges with Ms Gillard "including on the night that she marches into the office to announce the coup. I said to her repeatedly but Julia you are good person, why are you doing this?" He also states during the documentary that "Julia was my loyal deputy and I didn't believe she would do that [challenge] until that point" and later, that he relied a lot on Ms Gillard while overseas "because what I wanted to happen longer term was for Julia to replace me as Australia's first female prime minister".

Ms Gillard states the two-term leadership deal was struck because "getting us back into government in 2007 was a big ask, we needed to win a lot of seats, so clearly Kevin wanted to know that he would be supported for more than one shot and I was prepared to say that". As an aside, Ms Macklin says she stood aside as deputy because "I knew Julia wasn't going to stop, she would continue until she won". The government's response to the Global Financial Crisis is covered in detail by the documentary. In comments that go to the heart of why Ms Gillard and the so-called faceless men moved on Mr Rudd in June 2010, Ms Gillard states that before the crisis, there was growing concern in the ALP about Mr Rudd's management style but that the GFC suited Mr Rudd's "command and control" decision-making style. After the worst of the crisis had passed, however the Gang of Four was not disbanded because, in Ms Gillard's view "he preferred to do business that way" though she argued for a "more regular decision-making style".

But Mr Rudd rejects that charge as "the most creative reconstruction of a political memory I have ever heard. I remember Julia, in particular, enjoyed and liked the relative secrecy of that small gathering". As 2009 progressed Ms Gillard said she sought to discuss policy, politics and "managing Kevin" – though she adds "none of them were leadership discussions". In further criticism of Mr Rudd's management style, the former immigration minister, Chris Evans, highlights the unilateral handling of the Oceanic Viking stand-off with 78 asylum seekers, asserting that he received a call from the then prime minister's chief of staff to advise him of a deal with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "That was done without consultation with the relevant ministers and certainly without the calling of a national security committee of cabinet meeting," he states. Mr Rudd does not deny the charge but states: "If there was a breakdown in the command structure within the government about which ministerial office was engaged or not, it is difficult to sustain that a prime minister has to physically pick up a telephone to every senior bureaucrat and minister and say this is what is happening."