While Canberra is very excited about what Julia Gillard may or may not have said to Kevin Rudd on the night of June 23, the chances that voters have the remotest interest are minimal.

They weren’t interested in the Kirribilli Agreement, to which the purported events of June 23 have been bizarrely compared (talk about the media cycle speeding up — Hawke and Keating’s agreement was over some years; the alleged Gillard-Rudd agreement lasted mere minutes, and John Faulkner had to do double duty as Sir Peter Abeles and Bill Kelty).  They weren’t interested in the Howard-Costello “agreement” that saw Canberra obsessing over the contents of Ian McLachlan’s wallet in 2006.

That’s not to say such revelations don’t have real-world consequences, beyond political gossip. While some of the detail of Laurie Oakes’ question yesterday had been ventilated by Rudd himself at the Caucus meeting that terminated his command, the bulk must logically have come either from Rudd himself or from sources aligned with Rudd.

Clearly if it was from Rudd himself, in an apparent harking back to his days as an inveterate leaker under Mark Latham, it makes his return to the frontbench immensely problematic.  Ironically, the Rudd Cabinet was, at least once Godwin Grech was removed from Treasury, highly disciplined.  The presence of the former leader in the Gillard Cabinet would be destabilising even if he never said a word to a journalist.  Every future leak would be blamed on Rudd and seen through the prism of destabilisation of his replacement.

But it’s much worse if the leak came from sources aligned with Rudd, in effect parading Labor’s divisions over its treatment of the former leader.  Those divisions are only natural, but the issue is whether they are put on display to an extent that undermines the Government’s re-election prospects.  Voters may not care about leadership deals but they hate parties engaging in navel-gazing.  Remember it’s only a few days since backbencher Chris Trevor vented his spleen about how Rudd had been dealt with.

Gillard is hardly the victim in all this.  The Prime Minister, her deputy and other senior Labor figures have been engaged in a subtle campaign of vilification of Rudd ever since they knifed him.  The sneering attack on Rudd’s population views in a NSW Labor flyer handed out in the Sydney electorate of Macquarie is an eloquent example of the sort of casual demonisation of the former party leader that is now considered acceptable.  If a Rudd partisan has been responsible for the leak, it’s no worse than the steady shafting of the former PM that we’ve been seeing for three weeks.

On the story itself, there’s a basic reality that it overlooks — as soon as it was revealed that there were moves against Rudd’s leadership, he was finished. Labor could not afford for him to survive and have any hope of winning the election. That’s why the numbers shifted so rapidly to Gillard — why even Rudd supporters agreed to back her. Rudd, desperate to hang onto the Prime Ministership and shocked by the rapid deterioration in his position, might be forgiven for thinking he could have credibly clung to power. If Gillard seriously believed it, her much-praised political judgement — which hasn’t exactly been on display to great effect over the past three weeks — must be questioned.  That even in the Rudd camp’s version she barely entertained the notion for more than a brief period says otherwise. In fact she was seizing the Prime Ministership simply by walking into Rudd’s office that night.

Gillard herself has a watertight defence on the issue, that she agreed the meeting would be confidential and will keep that confidence.

There’s a view within the press gallery that the public interest in the events in question outweigh that confidentiality. The Herald’s Phil Coorey, whom I regard as an outstanding journalist, has repeatedly argued this line, including to John Faulkner at the latter’s press conference announcing his retirement to the backbench.

It’s always wise to be wary of journalists arguing about the public interest. The sacerdotal model of journalism still abounds in political coverage, particularly television coverage — the idea that journalists have a special role mediating between politicians and the public.  Intrinsic to this model is that journalists are more in touch with the public interest than self-interested politicians.  Politicians are indeed self-interested, but then so is the media, which likes to disclose confidential information even when there is no public interest.  At least politicians submit to a version of a public interest test every three years, unlike the media.  Moreover, journalists have their own restrictions on disclosure, insisting on the right to protect sources that is comparable to the confidentiality of the confessional (the sacerdotal model again).

If Gillard undertook to keep the meeting confidential, it has to be a compelling case for a Prime Minister to demonstrably break her word. That we’d all love to know is clear.  But quite what the public interest that should override such a commitment hasn’t been identified by journalists. There may well be one, but mere assertion that it’s in the public interest that someone should reveal discussions conducted in private with the intention that they remain private need to be backed up more strongly than they have been.