In very, very, extremely surprising news, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have widely differing recollections of the night she knifed him as prime minister in 2010.
The two have spoken publicly for the first time about the night Gillard told Rudd she would challenge him for the top job for the second episode of the ABC series, The Killing Season, which airs tonight.
Their positions can basically be summed up as:
Rudd: Julia was mean.
Gillard: Kevin deserved it.
But Gillard has admitted that if she had her time over, she would do things differently.
The two former prime ministers open up on the long-speculated upon meeting in which Gillard allegedly gave Rudd assurances that she would not challenge him, before changing her mind within minutes.
"I do recall a discussion about Kevin having more time and I participated in that discussion and gave Kevin some false hope," she says.
When ABC presenter Sarah Ferguson directly questions whether Gillard promised Rudd more time to cement his position, Australia's first female prime minister appears to stumble.
"I don't, no, I did not agree. I can understand why Kevin felt that, you know, there was, there was a... potential wedge of sun on the horizon. I should have been more straight forward and more clinical and less discursive."
Rudd claims there was a little more to Gillard's promises than a "wedge of sun." (whatever that is)
"She agreed. She not only agreed, but she had interrogated the detail of the formula on the way through. We shook hands. That's not a wedge of hope," Rudd says.
Rudd claims the turnaround from Gillard came completely out of the blue.
"She walked in ice cold, ice cold, with absolute determination in her eyes. It was a complete transformation in five or ten minutes... by a person who I'd always supported in good times and in bad, as she has supported me, there's something pretty gut-wrenching about all that, something which tears open your heart."
In other surprising news, Rudd and Gillard continue to take deeply personal shots at each other.
In tonight's episode, Gillard question's Rudd strength in the face of adversity.
"Kevin was very fragile in the face of criticism," she says. Including the implied criticism that comes with bad polls or bad news stories. I mean, I think for him across his life, and perhaps some of this is explained by the hardship of his early years, but across his life he felt the need for himself to be filled by the approval of others."
"So clearly there's a hole that needs to be filled by applause and approval."
To which Rudd responds: "The first thing I'd say about that is I haven't seen Julia's university qualifications as a psychoanalyst."
We'll let Greg "fuck this" Combet respond.
Preach it, Greg.
The Killing Season: Great Moral Challenge, airs tonight at 8.30pm on ABC.