THE first decision taken by Kevin Rudd’s cabinet in 2007 was to approve a $1 billion proposal for computers in schools, brought to the table by Julia Gillard. The so-called education revolution had begun. At its next meeting, the new cabinet focused on a plan to eliminate Work Choices and create a new industrial regime — another of Gillard’s babies.

Rudd’s first symbolic act as prime minister had been to sign the formal instrument for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Soon after he was heading to Bali for a UN climate-change conference and a date with Ban Ki-moon on the “greatest moral challenge of our time”. Working his way through a long to-do list, purposefully and methodically, seemed to be Rudd’s modus operandi.

But he’s no longer there because, as his successor Gillard says now, “a good government had lost its way”. Well, if it ever was a good government, it wasn’t long before the rot set in and Labor strayed off course. Computers in schools need maintenance, so the program cost doubled; the Fair Work laws were tipped against business and amounted to re-regulation of the workplace; an emissions trading scheme was pushed into the never-never.

The Labor experience has been a sober reminder that it takes more than good intentions, meetings and a big bag of money to succeed.

Heading to an election, the Rudd-Gillard project looks to have been a mediocre one, especially if you recall the grandiose expectations of 2007. Perhaps no other government in living memory has so thoroughly squandered the goodwill that was attached to it, from the euphoria of a famous victory and the apology to the Stolen Generations, to the indulgence of the 2020 Summit.

From social activists to hard-line capitalists, they all expected more. “Labor talked a great game on reform,” says one business leader of serial boardroom networkers Wayne Swan, Lindsay Tanner and Anthony Albanese. “They all said the right things to you in private, but they did not have the follow-through.”

Consider the over-hyped claims about “nation building”, “closing the gap” for indigenous people, solving the water crisis, creating a new regional architecture for the Asia-Pacific, reforming health and hospitals, re-engineering the Federation and “ending the blame game”, broadband pipes to every Australian home, cutting red tape for business and “root and branch” tax reform.

Labor habitually fell short of its stated goals: it was due to poor implementation (home insulation, GP Super Clinics, indigenous housing, computers in schools), the scale of the challenge (economic infrastructure, water), the folly of the original promise (the takeover of hospitals, grocery and fuel watch, school halls). Yet Rudd, Gillard or Swan never eased up on the rhetoric, the sense of grandeur in small things.

Many times, Labor simply lacked the wit, experience and courage for change (emissions trading, tax reform, deregulating the book market). John Howard and Paul Keating, in their own ways, have spoken to Inquirer about Labor’s unwillingness to spend political capital or inability to tell a story to the community about where they are heading.

One well-documented failing was due to Labor’s inexperience in ministerial offices; the few old hands, with political skills and life experience, left early in the term. Young advisers did not shirk long hours but lacked perspective, the temperament for the ups and downs of the political arena and the authority to challenge a minister. As well, their bosses began to equate process with progress. So the measure of how significant a policy was how long it took to do it — cutting spending, wading through the Henry tax report, committee meetings, doing an interview — not the end result. For Keating, the flurry of business is an excuse for “non-thinking.”. “That’s not what I call work,” he tells Inquirer of the treadmill of process. “The real work is thinking.”

Gillard has quickly hit the reset button and we’ll soon know if the people will grant her the chance to start a new phase for Labor. But first, she has a lot of explaining to do about her “framework”, if in fact she has one, given that her career has been marked by rapid advancement rather than the discipline of creating a narrative and sharing it with the public.

The convenient explanation offered by Labor about why it ran off the rails is Rudd’s poor management, his endless character flaws and the external shock of the global financial crisis.

Labor responded brilliantly to the GFC, almost uncharacteristically in retrospect, in large part due to the nest-egg bequeathed by Peter Costello, a willingness to act early and to listen to old, wise heads, and the heroic efforts of Australian consumers at precisely the right time.

But it botched the run home to recovery. The emergency stimulus measures to prop up the building industry were done in haste (and therefore poorly designed to deliver value for money), are still being rolled out after the crisis (too much, too late) and cannot be reined in because of the political stink it would now cause.

Of course, there are achievements to savour. Rudd spoke about some of those things the day he was deposed: welfare reform, Infrastructure Australia, the apology, higher pensions, a national curriculum, the MySchool website, paid parental leave.

Reviews and taskforces have provided possible agendas — on tax, higher education, energy efficiency and renewables, primary health care and superannuation — for Gillard or Tony Abbott.

Perhaps one of the most telling aspects of modern Labor is this: its discipline, professionalism and fit-to-rule mindset. Midway through its term, the proudest boast senior ministers had about their tenure was that the Rudd government had not lost a minister, unlike the previous Howard “show”, which was like a departure lounge for shambolic amateurs. Then along came Joel Fitzgibbon. And, a little while later, after only 31 months in the prime ministerial chair, the biggest casualty imaginable. At the very least, Labor has freed our collective imagination.