“Why not?” I asked. She replied that the government’s position had been weakened by Copenhagen and she doubted we could win a double dissolution election against [Tony] Abbott on a “hip-pocket” issue like the CPRS. I said that was nonsense; in the latest Newspoll, I was ahead of Abbott 60 to 23 per cent, and the government was ahead 56 to 44 per cent, and we hadn’t been behind ever since she and I had taken on the leadership in late 2006. Loading But then came the second message. “We also need to abandon our policy on the CPRS,” Julia said, “otherwise we’ll be walking into an election year with a huge target painted on our foreheads.” This one stunned me. I knew Julia had not been a big contributor to the climate change debates in the cabinet over the previous year and a half, unless they turned into a discussion on the cost impacts for consumers. I also knew that she was critical of Peter Garrett’s environmental evangelism. But until our conversation that day, it hadn’t occurred to me that her convictions on the core question of climate change action were so thin.

'I want you to be Australia’s first female prime minister' Then prime minister Kevn Rudd with his deputy Julia Gillard in December 2008. Credit:Andrew Meares Alister, my chief of staff, maintained his practice of walking with Julia in the mornings of parliamentary sitting weeks. One morning in February, to his great surprise, she spoke to him openly of the need to kill both the CPRS and the idea of a double dissolution. She feared we would lose the next election unless we changed course and, she told Alister, Mark Arbib shared her view. Alister recommended I call her in for another chat. Loading

So in early February, I asked what was bugging her. She was not forthcoming. She kept returning to her simple message that the CPRS was now “electoral poison” and that she would die in the ditch over any attempt to hold a “double D”. I replied that we should continue to talk these things through with the colleagues. There was no particular urgency to make a decision. I then mentioned the unmentionable: “Julia, you do realise that I don’t intend to be prime minister for life? I have no intention of passing [John] Howard’s record. In fact, I have no intention of passing [Bob] Hawke’s record. This is a killing job, which you yourself will discover one day, not too many years hence.” She stared at me silently, intently. I continued: “Not only do I want you to be Australia’s first female prime minister, I want to smooth the way for that. In fact, I want to be part of making it happen.” At that point she became visibly uncomfortable and asked me to drop the subject. I ignored her and said what I was feeling. “I want to win the 2010 election, win the 2013 election, and leave at some point during a third term.”

Julia just looked at me. Silently. Impassively. Then, saying she had a meeting to go to, she rose and walked out. 'An atmosphere of crisis' The morning of Wednesday, 23 June, began with the familiar drive from the Lodge to Parliament House. When I arrived in the office, Alister greeted me with the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald. My chief of staff, always unflappable, was shaken. He had just got off the phone from Gillard. The subject of the conversation was an article by Peter Hartcher, the Herald’s political and international editor, with the headline: Rudd’s secret polling on his leadership. It claimed Alister had been ringing around the parliamentary party the day before asking for pledges of support against a leadership challenge from Gillard. He told me that Gillard was “beside herself” at the idea that her loyalty had been called into question. The real problem, however, was that the story wasn’t true. Nonetheless, the briefing of the story was a clever play by those who had done so, given that Hartcher had long been seen in the press gallery as close to me. Whatever the truth of my relationship with Peter Hartcher – and it was infinitely more complex than that – the impression had been given that someone close to me had deliberately leaked the story. Its effect was immediate. It created an atmosphere of crisis when before there was none. This suited Arbib, Feeney and those plotting the coup down to the ground. They needed a catalyst to act. Now they had one. Alister suggested I go and see Gillard, so I walked around to her office. There she sat, grim-faced, glasses on, showing not a flicker of human emotion, yellow highlighter pen in hand, forensically marking up the offending column, identifying clues as to its pedigree. I had seen Gillard do this many times before. However, this was the first time she had accused my own office of being the guilty party. I told her she was just plain wrong. I said that the whole purpose of the story had been to drive a wedge between the two of us. She remained unconvinced, though gave no reason as to why.

'In the face of absolute treachery' Then treasurer Wayne Swan and prime minister Kevin Rudd announce the economic stimulus package in 2008. Credit:Glen McCurtayne Late that afternoon, the factional chieftains of the national right – Arbib, Swan, Stephen Conroy, David Feeney and Don Farrell – decided, with Gillard’s concurrence, to finally let slip the dogs of war. They set about briefing caucus members with polling “research” that Arbib, Feeney and Karl Bitar had produced. Caucus members were told that the only way we could possibly survive the next election was to “remove the prime minister” and replace him with Gillard. The word soon came back to my office from caucus members. I called Swan on his office phone direct, something I rarely did. He answered, not knowing it was me. “What’s happening?” I asked.

“I told them not to do it,” he replied.

“Do what?”

“Challenge,” he said.

“So what are you doing, Wayne?”

There was a long silence before the fateful reply: “I’ll be voting for change.”

“So you told them not to challenge, but now you tell me you’re voting for change. How does that stack up?”

Another silence, then: “I’m with Julia.”

“So after all these years, Wayne – when you pleaded with me to be made shadow treasurer despite doing everything you could to oppose me before I became leader, and after pledging your loyalty here in this very office when I appointed you treasurer – you’re doing this?”

Silence. “Goodbye, Wayne.” I hung up. There was nothing else to be said in the face of absolute treachery.

'Why are you really doing this?' Then deputy prime minister Julia Gillard makes her way back to her Parliament House office after a meeting with then PM Kevin Rudd on June 23, 2010. Credit:Glen McCurtayne At around 9 pm, Gillard showed up. Her eyes were cold as she said was challenging for the leadership. I said I’d already assumed that, though I had found out from the news reports, not from her. What was her reason for challenging? I asked. She said she didn’t believe we could win the election due by year’s end under my leadership. I asked her for evidence. She referred to “party research”. I asked to see it. She declined.

I pointed to the two-party-preferred Newspoll from two days before which had us comfortably ahead, just as we had been for 84 of the previous 86 Newspolls. To this she had no answer. I then asked her straight out: “Why are you really doing this?” I warned her that she had been badly advised by her new supporters from the right faction. I also reminded her of the conversation I’d had with her back in February, when we I’d declared my intention of overseeing an orderly transition to her as the next leader. Gillard disputed none of this. She just sat there, saying nothing. I then asked if she would postpone her challenge for the leadership until November, just before the next election was due. I said that if John Faulkner concluded at that time that the party could not then win with me as its leader, based on the party’s real research, then I would resign in her favour. Kevin Rudd during a June 23, 2010, press conference where he declared there would be a ballot for the Labor leadership. Credit:Andrew Meares

Suddenly she was interested. And nearly an hour and a quarter later she agreed: the coup would not proceed. We shook on it, with Faulkner present throughout the entire conversation. While I went to prepare a statement for the media confirming that our political disagreement had been resolved, Gillard left the room. Barely three minutes later she returned and reneged on the deal. She then said, again without the slightest emotion, “I’m now asking you for a ballot.” Appalled, I said to her, “You’ve just repudiated an agreement we shook hands on only five minutes ago.” She just nodded and then, reluctantly, said, “Yes.” It turned out that the whole deal had been nothing but a tactic. I had been distracted for two precious hours in honest search of a resolution, while Gillard’s supporters had run amok across the caucus and the media. By then it was too late to organise a counterattack. The die had been cast.