There’s nothing like a political coup, it’s equal parts destablization and exhilaration. The winner suddenly becomes a loser and bows to their challenger.

And there’s nothing like an Australian political coup – especially when it comes to the Australian Labor Party.  The ALP knows how to do the ruthless, rolling maul of backroom politics more than any other political party of the OECD.

Just ask Kevin Rudd – and before him, Bob Hawke.

So, how could an Australian Prime Minister last less than one term when he had come to power on such a wave of popularity 2 ½ years ago?  After all, six months ago Rudd was a man who was one of two of the most popular Prime Ministers in the 40-year history of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Nielsen poll.

Some may say it was Rudd’s plummet in the polls in April and May that lead to his demise.  But those polls had stabilized. What’s more, using political history as a guide, two polls this week put Labor ahead by 52 to 48.

No, it wasn’t panic at the polls that saw Rudd off but rage. It was anger at a leadership style that was both high-handed and dismissive, not to mention highly centralized and dismissive of the all-important ALP factions.

Despite that style, Gillard his Deputy Leader, had been emphatic that she would not challenge her leader, that he was the man to lead the ALP into the next election – that is, until yesterday, when media reports emerged that Rudd’s Chief of Staff, Alister Jordan had been lobbying for support in the party room.

It was that lack of trust of Gillard, despite her utter loyalty, that sparked the political firestorm.

Put it down to bad management or as my brother, living in Melbourne, succinctly put it in a text, “workaholic, control-freak micromanager who let his ego interfere with him relating and communicating with the electorate.” Quite right, too.

And as the Aussie media proudly trumpeted that Down Under had it’s first female PM, we all yawned on this side of The Ditch and said, “yeah whatever”.

Our first female Prime Minister came to power more than a decade ago and since then we’ve had another who held onto power for an unprecedented nine years.

Julia Gillard could learn a thing or two from both of them.

There are strong parallels in how Gillard and Jenny Shipley, New Zealand’s first female Prime Minister, rose to power.  Both became leaders as the result of a coup.

Shipley executed hers while then- Prime Minister Jim Bolger was attending a conference in Scotland.

Shipley however couldn’t hold onto power and her National government became increasingly destabilized, eventually losing the 1999 general election.

Lesson # One; it’s one thing to get power, another thing entirely to hold on to it.

Gillard’s similarities to Helen Clark, New Zealand’s second female Prime Minister are even more acute.

Both have steadily risen through their respective Labo(u)r parties from their university years.

Both have been slandered with the “B” word (for barren, the ultimate sexist epithet), both have a focused determination that is white hot.

And Gillard can learn a thing or two from Clark, arguably one of our greatest Prime Ministers. Like Rudd, Clark had a highly centralized leadership structure but unlike him she was prepared to play the faction game. Labour’s NZ caucus was always split.  She managed to bring them together by a combination of patronage and fear.

Lesson # Two; Gillard’s role now will be to meld the even more faction ridden ALP in time for the next election.

Already, even as PM-elect, Gillard was putting as much space between her and her predecessor as she could, saying she would immediately cancel the government’s multimillion dollar advertising war with the mining industry over the super profits tax.

She told a press conference that a good government was losing its way.

The trouble is, she was an integral part of that same government that came up with the mining tax policy in the first place.

How Julia Gillard manages that in the next ten-months before Australia must hold a general election determines if she’ll be like Jenny Shipley – and never elected by the voters as a Prime Minister – or if she’ll be Australia’s version of Helen Clark, carried into office by a popular mandate far bigger than just her caucus.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Crisis Management, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.