Alan Milburn & the Australian Election

Alan Milburn has been making headlines not just here, but in Australia. A new book has revealed the role he played advising Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd in his victorious election campaign.

The election saw Kevin Rudd defeat John Howard and become prime minister. Howard also lost his seat in Parliament. It was a remarkable victory; one for the history books. Rudd had become Labor leader only 11 months before. Howard seemed certain for victory. Rudd was the third Labor leader in two years. There was no recession nor any deep-seated animosity towards the government. Howard still had reasonable approval levels and was respected.

Milburn played an important role within the campaign structure as an adviser, but not so much within Rudd's personal staff. He did see Rudd several times during the year and was there on election night as part of a small group of staff and family. Here's an extract from the book...

Milburn was in no mood for fripperies or small talk as he was introduced to Kim Beazley's campaign strategy group...

ALP national secretary Tim Gartrell and the Labor leadership team had been introduced to the Geordie by Nick Rowley, a former staffer to NSW Premier Bob Carr, who had gone on to land a position at No. 10 Downing Street. Gartrell was impressed by Milburn's forthright style and recognised early that he might provide a valuable outsider's perspective and the "cold shower" that was often necessary in the heat of a campaign.

Milburn did not disappoint. "I was pretty blunt," he said later. "What they needed was a big bucket of directness. I told them I had no doubt that if we just continued down the same path we were heading for another loss." John Howard's "best days were behind him", Milburn told the group, but they were kidding themselves if they thought that was enough to justify a change of government when Australia's economy continued to be strong.

Instead, Milburn urged his counterparts to focus on giving voters who had supported Howard in the past a reason to change their minds. Labor urgently needed to find ways to demonstrate that the party had changed and, particularly, that it could be trusted to run the economy.

In Milburn's eyes, "it was pretty obvious there was a steam train coming down the tracks" in the form of yet another campaign by the Liberal Party framing Labor as economic incompetents. An engaging and incisive speaker, Milburn received a good hearing from Beazley and his colleagues.

"It was awful at first," a frontbencher who attended the dinner confessed later. "What Milburn didn't know was that this was probably the first time we had talked about strategy, and it was only because Milburn, as an outsider, could force it. He could get away with a lot. Kim ignored it and ignored it but ... the thing that eventually turned that conversation around was that (then treasury spokesman) Wayne Swan eventually bought into it. Until then, I think Swan had held himself out of strategy discussions because he thought anything he said would be construed as critical of Beazley, and he didn't want to risk people thinking that. But Milburn kept pushing and pushing and once he (Swan) engaged, it almost gave everyone else permission to engage and then Kim engaged and it actually became a much better calibre discussion than those we'd had in the past."

Milburn, reflecting back, was astonished at the defeat of the government, even though his ideas on strategy were important in the victory. He has said since he can cite no precedent for this type of remarkable victory, no doubt subliminally playing up his own contribution to it!

Read the full extract from the book about Milburn's role HERE.