‘Don’t write crap. Can’t be that hard. And when you have written complete crap, then I think you should correct it.’

When Julia Gillard took the reins of the Australian Labor Party on 24 June 2010 she did so with the goodwill of most of her party and a fawning Canberra press gallery. But when she announced in February 2011 that her government would introduce a carbon pricing scheme, Kevin Rudd and his small team of malcontents were already in lock-step with key Canberra and interstate journalists in a drive to push her out of the prime ministerial chair.

Never has a prime minister been so assiduously stalked. Cast as a political liar and policy charlatan, Julia Gillard was also mercilessly and relentlessly lampooned for her hair, clothes, accent, her arse, even the way she walks and talks.

This is the story about one of the most extraordinary episodes in recent Australian political history. It focuses on Team Rudd and the media’s treatment of its slow-death campaign of destabilisation, with its disastrous effect on Gillard and the government’s functioning. It is about a politician who was never given a fair go; not in the media, not by Rudd, not by some in her own caucus.