Will Gillard be the next Treasurer?

Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan

The conjecture about Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Treasury portfolio that arose on the weekend following an assertion in a new book, is an interesting issue for historians and for discussions about ALP factional deals. But it is not the most significant issue.

The question now is not whether Kevin Rudd wanted Julia Gillard to be Treasurer, or even if Julia Gillard wanted to be Treasurer. The interesting question is: will Julia Gillard be Treasurer if Labor wins a second term?

As reported here a month ago, when Barrie Cassidy, host of ABC1’s Insiders, addressed a recent Melbourne bookshop event, he declared that Julia Gillard will be Treasurer if Labor wins again.

“Swan will do the very best job he can but I think he knows that he’s got three years, no matter how good he goes in the job,” Cassidy said.

“Beyond the next election Julia Gillard will be Treasurer. I think he must know that.”

The controversy arose on the weekend in the light of an allegation in the forthcoming book Howard’s End, co-written by John Howard biographer Peter Van Onselen.

According to newspaper reports, the book’s authors assert that prior to the 2007 federal election Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard had an arrangement that Gillard would be Treasurer if Labor won office.

Glenn Milne raised the question on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning. He said Julia Gillard denied there was any such arrangement.

Cassidy said that the question had caused a few awkward moments for Rudd during the election campaign.

“If you ask any of Julia Gillard’s colleagues, they’ll tell you that she doesn’t want that job,” Glenn Milne said.

Cassidy had the perfect opportunity to repeat the assertion he made in the Melbourne bookshop early In June. But he did not do so. Why not?

Perhaps Glenn Milne’s column in The Australian yesterday contained the answer.

“In my alternate role as political editor for News Ltd’s Sunday newspapers I was warned on Saturday by one of the most senior - and I mean one of the most senior elected office holders in the land - that if I reported claims in a new book that Julia Gillard had been Kevin Rudd’s preferred choice as Treasurer I would not be dealt with again by the Government. And to his credit, the person making those threats wasn’t Wayne Swan.”

There was a new twist in the story today.

This morning’s Australian, contains a report that, “JULIA Gillard passed up the chance to become Labor’s Treasury spokeswoman late in 2006 as part of a strategic decision to help Kevin Rudd end disunity in the party and set it on course to win government.”

Matthew Franklin, the paper’s chief political correspondent writes, “After weekend claims that the Prime Minister reneged on a deal to allow his deputy to be Treasurer, senior Labor sources yesterday detailed for the first time the carefully considered political strategy under which Ms Gillard rejected Treasury in favour of industrial relations, even before she and Mr Rudd successfully ousted Kim Beazley as Labor leader in December 2006.”

That clarification and the background information is all very interesting, but let’s return to the real issue.

If Barrie Cassidy is right, and if Labor wins the next election, Julia Gillard will be Treasurer.

That would mean that the levers of the nation’s economy would be in the hands of the most left wing Treasurer since Jim Cairns.

For those who do not remember life under the Whitlam Government, with Cairns in the country’s top economic job, start thinking about how, between 1972 and 1975, inflation went to 16 percent, unemployment jumped by 212 per cent, home building prices soared, home loan interest rates increased by 26 per cent and days lost by strikes increased by 180 per cent. Oh, yes, and petrol prices rose by 58 per cent.