From the fall of a PM to a more low-key departure

While the removal of PM's became a regular event in the decade to follow, at the time it felt like a massive event because it had not happened for a long time. And I spent much of that week in Parliament House in Canberra so had a front row seat to some of the action - by which I mean the press conferences - as Rudd departed the PM's office and Julia Gillard moved in.

As we know Rudd would hang around in Parliament for a few more years, becoming PM again in 2013, before eventually departing after defeat in the federal election that year.

At the time I was the editor of The Inverell Times in northern NSW, and spent some time in the office of Inverell-based senator John Williams, which would produce a story for the Times on the senator's staff.

As I was walking through the long corridors of power that week with Williams' chief of staff Greg Kachel he asked if I received the press releases from the Member for Parkes Mark Coulton.

Yes I do, I told him and he said we'd drop into his office as we lived down the road from Inverell at Warialda, near the boundary of the Parkes and New England electorates.

That was the first time I met the MP, whose electorate I would move to last year when I took on the editor's job at the Daily Liberal.

At that first meeting we chatted casually, as he and Greg reminisced - from memory - on some of the region's rugby league players.

A few days later, on the day there was a change of Prime Minister, I ran into Mark in the hallway near the office where all the leadership drama was happening.

In the years since then our paths crossed again, as newspapers in his electorate were ones I looked after. Not to mention I had a journalist at the Moree Champion depart to go and work for him. She is still there. And she was the first person I called recently when I heard the whisper that her boss was about to announce his retirement.

It's been a long career in parliament and I cannot think of many politicians who have been better to deal with in my time as a journalist and editor.

This week we reported on how the Nationals were going searching for its next candidate to contest the election in Parkes.

Between now and the election more names will appear as other parties and candidates put their name forward.

Whoever wins the seat will have big shoes to fill.

Laurie Bullock

Editor, Daily Liberal