EXCLUSIVE
The manner in which Julia Gillard took the leadership from Kevin Rudd was a ''defining political misjudgment'' for Labor that weakened the legitimacy of her prime ministership from the outset, according to former cabinet minister Greg Combet.
In a book to be launched next week, he says the June 2010 ousting of Mr Rudd ''sent shock waves from Canberra that resonated throughout the country''.
''Although key figures had lost confidence in Rudd, the apparent secret plotting against him seemed to exemplify so much that the Labor Party had become: the whatever-it-takes approach, the revolving-door approach to leadership pioneered by the NSW branch [of Labor] and the exercise of power by small groups of factional leaders and key union officials,'' he writes.
Mr Combet was a supporter of Ms Gillard and says if Mr Rudd had decided to run against her on the morning she was installed as prime minister, he would still have voted for her.
But in the book The Fights of My Life co-written with Mark Davis, Mr Combet says: ''Rudd's decision to not contest a ballot also meant that there was no democratic touchstone to which any reference could be made, and a change like this required the legitimacy of a democratic decision.
''If this was his intention in not forcing a ballot, it was a masterstroke that denied Gillard this legitimacy from the start.
''No matter what her strengths and merit as prime minister, which were considerable, she was hamstrung from the outset, with her authority, legitimacy and respect as Labor leader impaired by the manner of Rudd's removal.''
Mr Combet, who has revealed that Ms Gillard offered to help him become leader in June last year if that would hold off a Rudd resurgence, writes that Mr Rudd reacted to his political execution with a ''slow-burning fury and a vicious, no-holds-barred quest for redemption''.
He says Labor should never repeat the mistake, and that power inside the party should be diluted to avoid it. Party membership is too small and ''too easily controlled by creeps like Eddie Obeid and his family and Joe Tripodi and others'', he said.
The best way to expand and democratise the party, he argued, was to throw open key votes to ''Labor supporting [individual] members of the affiliated trade unions".
Ms Gillard will launch the book on Tuesday.
