Julia Gillard has accused Kevin Rudd of physically intimidating her in a bullying manoeuvre when he was opposition leader. The former prime minister made the claim in the soon-to-be-aired ABC documentary The Killing Season, which was then put to Mr Rudd in a tense interview. Ms Gillard said the confrontation took place after a 2007 meeting of Labor's Parliamentary tactics committee that she convened in her capacity as manager of opposition business. "Kevin was always very anxious, you know, to strut his stuff in Question Time and tactics hadn't gone his way," Ms Gillard told Killing Season host Sarah Ferguson. "I had taken a view about something else forming the issue of the day. "And after the tactics meeting had broken up he very physically stepped into my space and it was quite a bullying encounter. "It was a, you know, menacing, angry performance." Mr Rudd dismissed the allegations as "utterly false". He said there had ever been an angry moment between himself and Ms Gillard "including on the night that she marches into the office to announce the coup". The remarkable claim is the first of many expected to be aired when the three-part series debuts on the ABC next week. The program focuses on the Labor Party in the final term of John Howard's Coalition government and includes the removal of then opposition leader Kim Beazley by Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard and the pair's subsequent battles for the leadership. The documentary includes another previously unaired revelation that will not help Ms Gillard's reputation for dishonesty, deserved or not. Ms Gillard told Ferguson she had pledged to support Mr Rudd as Labor Party leader for two elections, a promise she later abandoned when she ousted him from the prime ministership. "Getting us back into government in 2007 was a big ask," Ms Gillard said. "We needed to win a lot of seats. So clearly, Kevin wanted to know that he would be supported for more than one shot, and I was prepared to say that." The former leaders were also split on the role of the so called "Gang of Four", a group of senior ministers including Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard as his deputy, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who led the government's response to the GFC and were later accused of shutting cabinet out of a number of key decisions. Ms Gillard said the group — often referred to as the "kitchen cabinet" — was not disbanded after Australia had survived the GFC "Because I think in Kevin's view, in particular, he liked to do business that way". Mr Rudd called his deputy's comments "the most creative reconstruction of a political memory" he had ever he heard. "I remember Julia, in particular, enjoyed and liked the relative secrecy of that small gathering," he said. Ms Gillard also revisited the subject of the PM's infamously chaotic methods of governing, saying she "consistently put the view that we needed to move to a more regular decision-making style". "And increasingly I discussed that with Wayne Swan, because we both knew what it was like to be in the middle of the decision-making chaos," she said. However, Ms Gillard said her discussions with Mr Swan were never about replacing the prime minister.

• published: 03 Jun 2015
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