{"id":6146,"date":"2013-07-09T22:08:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T12:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=6146"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:28:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:28:30","slug":"review-the-stalking-of-julia-gillard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/review-the-stalking-of-julia-gillard\/","title":{"rendered":"Review \u2013 The Stalking of Julia Gillard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"999328_10151792773706159_1911769833_n\"<\/p>\n

By Matthew Horan\u00a0\u00a0@mattyhoran<\/a><\/p>\n

July 9 2013<\/p>\n

With the blood still fresh on the walls of the caucus room, Kerry-Anne Walsh\u2019s The Stalking of Julia Gillard<\/em> is a victim of excellent \u2013 or poor \u2013 timing.<\/p>\n

Excellent because the public is looking for an insight into what went wrong with the nation\u2019s first female PM in her disastrous three-year interregnum. Disastrous because the book is just as quickly out of date as soon as it arrives on shelves. Such is the nature of political reportage.<\/p>\n

However those looking for a definitive history of the Gillard years will need to wait a bit longer. Walsh\u2019s book is not this.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a cry from the heart of one of the nation\u2019s best Gallery journalists on the state of her industry. And the book suffers because of this.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a history \u2013 it\u2019s a polemic tacked onto a diarized recounting of events. And one where the personality \u2013 and yes, the anguish – of the author shows through a bit too much, breaching the fourth wall with acerbic comments.<\/p>\n

Walsh provides none of the insight we have come to expect from political reads such as Pamela Williams \u201cthe Victory\u201d (which set the standard) and Christine Jackman\u2019s \u201cInside Kevin 07\u201d. These books were more akin to some of the great American reads such as Game Change<\/em>, with interviews with main players and allowing the reader to peek behind the veil.<\/p>\n

The Stalking of Julia Gllard sadly resembles at times a pastiche of cut-and-paste media stories overlaid with commentary. It lacks the insight. I wanted to read the inside story of the night Gillard knifed Rudd, hear of the frantic corridor conversations as her staff stitched up support while she distracted Rudd in his office. I wanted an insight into Rudd\u2019s psyche as he plotted his return, what went through his mind as his former Ministers bagged him.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s none of this sort of in-depth research. It\u2019s not like the main players were too shy to talk about it. Marian Wilkinson showed what could be done with her Four Corners report into the end of the interregnum \u2013 somewhat of a rush job retelling, but with some insight nevertheless.<\/p>\n

Walsh\u2019s book is instead an investigation of how the media covered the main players. To use an analogy, it\u2019s the sort of history that analyses Herodotus rather than the actual Persian Wars, or a sports book that looks at how the media covered the Ashes, rather than the games themselves. It\u2019s a valid enough field of study, even if the marketing has been a little indistinct on this.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s here that Walsh fails. There\u2019s little insight into how the media thought. There\u2019s a recounting of it, and Walsh\u2019s interpretation of it, but no substantive interviews with the journalists in question. There\u2019s an understandable reluctance to reveal sources, but surely some insight into newsroom decisions would be worthwhile. Equally, Walsh\u2019s analysis of the media is her analysis, rarely backed up by third-party sources. It\u2019s her essay \u2013 her crie de coeur – on the ills befalling the Gallery, not an independent and sober analysis of what did and didn\u2019t (or should have) happened.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also an attack on Rudd, who Walsh clearly believes went out to attack Gillard, and that this attack was exacerbated because she was a woman. It\u2019s a thinly veiled accusation made less thin by the word \u201cstalking\u201d in the title. It is uncomfortable because the argument falls flat when you remember that Rudd was the one knifed in the first place. He wasn\u2019t white-anting, as much as retaliating. But there is little scholarship to back up Walsh\u2019s hypothesis (even though it\u2019s not implicitly stated as such). Again, her premise falls down because of a lack of third-party analysis and commentary.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, I think that Walsh is correct, at least in regard to the Gallery. It is obsessed with personality over policy. Many in the media \u2013 especially right wing radio \u2013 would never have addressed a man in the same terms. Imagine what Hawke\u2019s response would have been to Alan Jones naming him a liar in the same sneering tone? But it\u2019s ever been thus. Caesar would have never become Imperator had he not white-anted the Senate with his Gallic Commentaries. But The Stalking of Julia Gillard<\/em>\u00a0fails to give us any new arguments or analysis of why. Those who believe the Gallery is at fault will nod their heads in collective understanding. But The Stalking of Julia Gillard<\/em>\u00a0won\u2019t change the minds of the unconvinced.<\/p>\n

Matthew Horan is a former Federal Press Gallery reporter and former Chief of Staff of The Sunday Telegraph. Since leaving journalism he has been awarded a Masters in Ancient History and is currently researching post-graduate studies in the later Roman Empire.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Horan\u00a0\u00a0@mattyhoran July 9 2013 With the blood still fresh on the walls of the caucus room, Kerry-Anne Walsh\u2019s The Stalking of Julia Gillard is a victim of excellent \u2013 or poor \u2013 timing. Excellent because the public is looking for an insight into what went wrong with the nation\u2019s first female PM in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,752,62,3546,585,72,21,757,31,32],"tags":[767,273,831,283,829,830],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/JGStalked-e1373372518112.jpg?fit=600%2C344&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-1B8","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56627,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6146\/revisions\/56627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}