By Conal Hanna
Greg Combet comes across as a thoroughly decent chap.
Of all the ministers to have ridden the Rudd/Gillard roller-coaster, Combet left the political theme park with his dignity far more intact than most.
On Thursday, he re-entered the fray, making public one extraordinary revelation: that Julia Gillard offered to help make him prime minister in 2013, in a bid to thwart Kevin Rudd’s return.
That Gillard made the offer is interesting, if not surprising; Australia’s first female prime minister was an astute politician, astute enough to realise she was a dead duck politically, and her revulsion of Rudd meant any serious contender would have seemed preferable to her predecessor’s return.
Revelation: Greg Combet.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
But it’s Combet’s reasons as to why he turned down the job of leading the country that are most revealing.
On the ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday night, interviewer Chris Uhlmann asked Combet the following question: "Greg Combet, in June last year you had the opportunity to be prime minister and you didn't take it. Why was that?"
In response, Combet gave two answers. The second of these was his health. Fair enough.
It was his first reason, though, that shows Labor has seemingly learnt nothing from the past four years.
From the transcript: “I thought, firstly at a political level, I thought it was a pretty difficult manoeuvre to install yet another Labor leader with a month or two to an election. It would have been extremely difficult, firstly, to gain the support of colleagues, I think, and then the support of the Parliament and then to run an election campaign. So, politically, I thought it was a pretty hard manoeuvre to pull off.”
Essentially, what Combet is saying is that he didn’t do it because he didn’t think it was achievable. Which is hard to quibble with. He’s right.
But there was a better reason not to have done it. Because it wasn’t the right thing to do.
Australians had shown in 2010 they didn’t particularly like the Labor Party deciding the prime ministership on a whim. Yes, we may live in a Westminster democracy, in which the parliamentary party is able to elect its leader, but the Australian people kind of like to have a say as well.
Here’s how the interview should have gone down.
Chris Uhlmann: "Greg Combet, in June last year you had the opportunity to be prime minister and you didn't take it. Why was that?"
Greg Combet: "Well, Chris, I didn’t really think it was the right thing to do. The Australian people like to choose who the prime minister is, and that is their right. We may have been close to an election but that’s beside the point. The role of prime minister of this country is a very important one, it’s one we in the party cherish, and it’s not one to be handed around willy nilly in a bid to stave off electoral oblivion."
Instead, we had the confirmation that seemingly everyone in that Labor government - even the good ones - approached every question from the perspective of what could be achieved politically, rather than simply what was the right thing to do.
I know, I know. It sounds naive. It’s not like I don’t expect them to consider the political ramifications of their decisions. It would just be nice if that wasn’t the first thing that went through their heads.
Combet’s interview was particularly distressing because he spent part of it emphasising how Labor needed to learn the lessons of the Rudd/Gillard years - while at the same time showing he had not learnt the most important one of all.
When you have a fundamentally decent politician revealing such a fundamentally flawed approach to such a fundamentally intrinsic issue as who should lead the country, then what hope is there for Australian democracy?
It is the nation’s biggest single stumbling block: our politicians are obsessed with politics. With the politics of politics. Faced with any significant decision, their innate response is to consider what’s in it for them and theirs rather than to answer the often difficult, but in a way, kind of simpler question of, "What is the right thing to do?" For the country, not the party. And then set about tackling the political ramifications of their decision afterwards.
It’s by no means a problem that’s unique to Labor. This is, after all, a country in which the Greens voted to kill off a scheme to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions in 2009. In which a Liberal Party dedicated to market-based solutions destroyed an emissions-trading scheme designed to provide exactly that in favour of economically infantile "direct action".
Which brings us to the other sad discussion point from Combet’s interview - his reflections on Labor’s failed bid to introduce emissions trading.
Here, in one area where they did try to lead public opinion rather than follow it, the ALP was left decimated by the relentless negativity of then opposition leader, now Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
It does not bode well for future policy debates. Just like John Hewson’s disembowelling in 1993 set the tone for no-gaffe (no-policy) election campaigns for decades, Abbott’s win-at-all-costs victory will come at a price for the country. As it is with children, rewarding a certain type of behaviour in politicians only encourages it.
Meanwhile, there was a lot of lamenting on Twitter among Labor types on Thursday night that Combet will never get the chance to be prime minister.
Based on what he revealed in Thursday night’s interview, I don’t think I can agree.
Conal Hanna is a Fairfax Media journalist.