Playing the game ... Rudd had a crack at Swan and Gillard last week when he expressed the ''hope'' the mining tax would make its forecast revenue. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones
One would have thought that there was nothing left unsaid about the events leading up to Kevin Rudd's demise as prime minister in June 2010.
When Rudd tried to take the job back in February this year, ministers and MPs elbowed each other out of the way to go on the record to traduce Rudd's character, the way he ran the government and to vow to never serve again under him.
Ditto, Rudd's supporters, a handful of ministers among them, did not hold back as they set after Julia Gillard and pronounced her inability to take Labor to victory at the next election.
Gillard won the February leadership ballot but, because the polls have stayed relatively poor for Labor since, the issue has never quite gone away.
This weekend the whole saga is set for another heave-ho when extracts of Maxine McKew's new book, Tales from the Political Trenches, are run in the Fairfax media before the book's November 1 release.
All of which coincides with the resumption of Parliament next week for what will be the second-last sitting week of the year.
The book is believed to contain nothing dramatic enough to explode the government but enough to provide a great big, fat distraction for a few days at least.
One area likely to spark debate is the book's probing of the mining tax, and with whom fault lies for the botched original version which crumbled in the face of a concerted campaign by the miners.
Essentially, there will be an exploration of the blame game between Rudd and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, over the failure to consult the industry adequately before rushing ahead with the announcement of a tax that was noble in sentiment but flawed in design and, of which the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, was kept in the dark until the last minute.
The issue will have extra resonance with the release today of the midyear budget update.
The watered-down Minerals Resources Rent Tax, a pre-election compromise hastily negotiated by Swan and Gillard after Rudd and his Resources Super Profits Tax collapsed, is not expected to make the $13.4 billion over four years as estimated in the budget.
This is due largely to falling commodity prices and the paucity of mining companies which, due to the design of the tax, actually have to pay it.
The tax started on July 1 and, today, the miners must inform the Tax Office of their first quarter liability.
It is uncertain then, whether a downgraded mining tax forecast will be in today's budget update. If not, we will have to wait until the budget in May.
Regardless, Rudd had a crack at Swan and Gillard last week when he expressed the ''hope'' the mining tax would make its forecast revenue.
He accused them folding under pressure by saying it was unremarkable that mining companies exerted pressure on governments.
''The key question is whether government responds and how government responds,'' he said.
It sounds like he's opened up to McKew on that front.
The paranoia and anger in the ALP about the book is palpable, especially as it comes just four weeks after Lindsay Tanner's latest offering sucked the oxygen out of Gillard's trip to New York to lobby for the United Nations Security Council.
Last week in Canberra, there were allegations from the Gillard camp that Rudd must have ''ghostwritten'' the book given the detailed nature of some uncomfortable questions McKew asked political figures during her research.
They included questions about the mining tax.
McKew, a journalist of 30 years, was doing her job thoroughly, asking questions and seeking responses to the answers provided.
Rudd said last week that McKew sent him a list of ''many, many, many questions'' and he sent her written responses.
McKew told the Herald her book was based on ''hours and hours and hours or recorded interviews with MPs, ministers, staffers, former bureaucrats and members of the Bennelong community''.
She teased that the parts of the book people will be talking about will not have come from Rudd.
The paranoia among the Gillard camp is high because McKew was an unabashed Rudd loyalist.
It was his vision as opposition leader which convinced her to quit the ABC, join Labor and run against John Howard in Bennelong.
In government, to ''do a Maxine'' became a pejorative term for asking obsequious questions in caucus.
One claim, reportedly contained within, is that the story the Herald's Peter Hartcher wrote on June 23, 2010, which was cited as a trigger for the coup against Rudd, was ''totally manufactured''.
This claim appears to have imploded. Hartcher's story concerned Rudd sending out his chief of staff, Alistair Jordan, to gauge support among caucus. As it turns out, the Melbourne MP Michael Danby was one of those sounded out and has come forth to say so, thus vindicating Hartcher.
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