As a political enforcer, he describes himself as have all the sentimentality as a vulture on a lamp post, but he says the hardest thing he ever had to do in politics was to vote against his mate, Kim Beazley in favour of Kevin Rudd for the leadership. The senator is joining us today from Melbourne to talk with Sunday's political editor, Laurie Oakes.

LAURIE OAKES: Senator Ray, welcome to the program.

ROBERT RAY: Morning, Laurie.

LAURIE OAKES: Last time I will be able to call you senator.

ROBERT RAY: Yes, that's true.

LAURIE OAKES: Do you mind being known as a numbers man and being compared to a vulture?

ROBERT RAY: I'm not sure about the latter, but a numbers man is just a good political all-rounder that knows the rules of the game, knows how the system works and knows how to work the system, and I think they are an essential element in politics, provided, I guess, you never misuse your power.

LAURIE OAKES: What do you mean by that? How do people misuse their power?

ROBERT RAY: Well, I think they get carried away. I don't think good numbers men, good faction leaders are autocrats. They take soundings and then come up with the solution. I don't think the public image of - you know, the old-fashioned bosses and in the United States were autocrats. I don't think they exist generally in Australia.

LAURIE OAKES: You gave a speech in 2006 in which you attacked some faction leaders. You talked about the dialects and the Stazi element who lacked a Labor soul. Why did you give that speech and what did you mean by that?

ROBERT RAY: Well, the speech was given to try to influence their behaviour. Factions are part of Labor's history and they will continue into the future, and they will actually be of benefit if they contribute to the success of the Labor Party. But if they ossify, if they just become patronage reward machines, then the Labor Party will suffer. And I'm trying to get the message across wherever I can that the Labor Party must expand its pool of talent that it gets in federal and State Parliaments, not just union officials, not just former staffers, all of whom make a very valuable contribution but to reflect Australian values and to reflect the proper views of our voters, we need a wide range of occupations, genders, et cetera in the Parliament.

LAURIE OAKES: You are bowing out after 27 years in the Senate tomorrow and a lot longer as a Labor Party powerbroker. You have been a successful Defence Minister, reforming Immigration Minister. What do you regard as your greatest achievement over those years?

ROBERT RAY: Well, I do look back with some pride about the reforms we brought in, in the immigration area, removed a lot of sleaze out of that, but I probably enjoyed being Defence Minister the most, and I think if you ask most of my Liberal counterparts, they loved it, too. It is such an interesting and diverse portfolio and in the end, quite a critical one. I think I left in '96, having spent $60 billion, that would probably do me.

LAURIE OAKES: You are bowing out as a Senator, but will you stay around as a member of the national executive or working in the machine?

ROBERT RAY: No, I'm not. I left the National Executive 6 or 8 years ago, probably got called back in the interim. I leave it to the Mark Arbibs of the future who I have a very high regard for.

LAURIE OAKES: They will obviously seek your advice and I want to do that now. The Labor Party seems to be tearing itself apart in New South Wales over the State Government's attempt to privatise the electricity industry. Now, something has clearly gone wrong with the performance of the numbers men and faction leaders there, hasn't it? What can they do?

ROBERT RAY: Politics is never free of difficulty, but getting some sort of synchronisation between the party and the parliamentary party is the secret to success, and this is something we worked very, very hard on right through the '80s and ever since to make sure that the National executive of the Labor Party and the national conference is pretty much in tune with what the Federal Labor Party are doing. At the moment in New South Wales they do have a very difficult issue and so far they have not resolved it well. I mean, politics isn't all bliss.

LAURIE OAKES: Do you see a way through it?

ROBERT RAY: I have a different view from everyone else. I'm a great believer in privatising generational electricity, but not the distribution, and I think that would have been possibly a better way. Having various generators of electricity competing on price grounds into a centralised grid seems to me the best solution. Now, we did knock for that in Victoria under Kennett. I think we should have.

LAURIE OAKES: Does it have the potential, though, to wreck the New South Wales Government and damage Kevin Rudd, do you agree with that assessment ?

ROBERT RAY: I don't think it will damage Kevin Rudd and I doubt it will wreck the New South Wales Government. It would have 30, 40, 50 years ago. I mean, there is a whole history of State and Federal governments being undermined or wrecked by party activity. I very much doubt it will go to that in New South Wales.

LAURIE OAKES: Michael Costa, the New South Wales Treasurer, has said that he and the Premier will go to the National Executive for support. Does the National Executive have the power to overrule a State Conference of the party?

ROBERT RAY: Well, it certainly can, but I mean, only on the basis that national platform is being breached, and I must say I haven't done a comparison between what's on the national platform and the decision carried yesterday.

LAURIE OAKES: Well, if you were advising Mark Arbib and the other people who will take over your role now on how to deal with New South Wales, what will you tell them?

ROBERT RAY: Well, I think, you know, they're going to have to come to a compromise. I mean, both points of view are very strongly argued. In the end, they're going to have to take a course somewhere down the middle, I suspect. I don't think a government can completely ignore its party.

LAURIE OAKES: OK. You've served three Labor Prime Ministers - Hawke, Keating and Rudd - how do you rate them against each other?

ROBERT RAY: Look, that's trying to compare cricket greats to football greats. They're all different in different ways. The current Prime Minister is probably the best briefed leader I've ever, ever dealt with and the most disciplined at staying on message. I think he has immense potential, but the other two had all sorts of strengths as well, and it's very, very hard to separate all three. I think surprisingly, I always found Paul Keating's style of chairing Cabinet more similar than dissimilar to Bob Hawke’s. Fairly consensus, occasionally not, but mostly a consensus approach.

LAURIE OAKES: You told me that Keating used to use ridicule in Cabinet to get his way, but it didn't work on you. Can you give us an example of how he tried to do that?

ROBERT RAY: I think that was more as Treasurer. He had a tremendous sense, so if he disagreed on a particular policy area, he could really rip you up. It wasn't done with malice, but technique. Tended to bounce off me.

LAURIE OAKES: You resisted the Keating challenge. Was the party, were you wrong, was the party right to dump Hawke when they did?

ROBERT RAY: I may have been wrong in terms of electoral prospects but I would never have been part of the fifth columnist operation that occurred in late 1991. I don't approve of this then and I certainly don't approve of it today. There was a rampant degree of disloyalty shown to Bob Hawke in that 6-month period, not necessarily inspired by Paul Keating, I might add. It was a terrible time to live through when the main enemy of a Federal Government was within your own ranks.

LAURIE OAKES: Could Bob Hawke have won that election, though, the '93 election?

ROBERT RAY: Well, he could have, but as history recalls, Paul Keating had a magnificent history and all credit to him.

LAURIE OAKES: You also said that the hardest thing you've ever had to do in politics was to vote for Kevin Rudd against your good mate, bees business bees. Why do you feel you had to do that?

ROBERT RAY: I felt we were facing almost certain defeat under Kim Beazley and although Kevin Rudd was not certain of victory, but the thing that terrified me was that the Labor Party had a missing generation of individuals that would never get to serve and what's happened of course, with the victory in 2007, a range of people at the peak of their political powers can now demonstrate how good they are. I'm talking about Wayne Swan, Stephen Smith, Anthony Albanese, Lindsay Tanner, Tony Burke, Joe Ludwig - a whole range of people that may have missed a political career representing the country as ministers had we lost that election.

LAURIE OAKES: Is it true you told Kim Beazley very early in his period of Opposition Leader, way back in '96, that he would never be Prime Minister?

ROBERT RAY: No, actually he told me and I confirmed it, because who ever takes over as Leader of the Opposition after an election defeat almost inevitably never become Prime Minister. With that knowledge, it never once deterred Kim Beazley from leading the party well, and he never ever showed a lack of resolve. Just remember, of course, he got the majority of the vote in 1998. That was a fantastic effort over two years' time, to rebuild the party and to get a majority of the preferred vote at the '98 election.

LAURIE OAKES: But he never got there. Why?

ROBERT RAY: He never got there because politics is partly cyclical and in the last one-term government in Australia was 1929-31, exceptional circumstances of a depression and a party split defeated skull Len, so it's not unusual. I predict the same for Brendan Nelson. I doubt he will ever be Prime Minister because - not because of him, himself, but because he has taken over at a very, very inauspicious time.

LAURIE OAKES: You voted for Kevin Rudd against Kim Beazley but you wouldn't vote for Mark Latham against him. Why not?

ROBERT RAY: You've got it drawn the line somewhere.

LAURIE OAKES: What did you think of Latham?

ROBERT RAY: Well, I think towards the end a failure to deal with the three - and a very unfortunate illness, led him to make some statements and actions that I don't approve of. Look, that's history. I didn't respond at the time and I'm not about to now.

LAURIE OAKES: Is it true, though, that you were so anxious to prove you didn't vote for him, you marked your ballot paper, and how did you do that?

ROBERT RAY: You can't, of course, mark your ballot payer in such a way that it identifies your vote, but I did manage to underline Kim Beazley's name and put a couple of as terrorist beings next to it and a 1 in the swear. They will be in the records somewhere and probably in archives by now.

LAURIE OAKES: What about admiration for others - Alexander Downer and Peter Costello?

ROBERT RAY: I have more admiration possibly for Alexander Downer, which would surprise a lot of people, but I mean, he was a diligent Foreign Minister and always decent in his dealings with us. Peter Costello - I've had very little to do with over the years, and being a senator, you don't really get to meet and see and deal with them. So, I think since the election, he has behaved fairly sensibly, stayed out of the limelight, and I really think he should find another career now.

LAURIE OAKES: What do Kevin Rudd and his ministers need to be careful of now? What's your final bit of advice to them?

ROBERT RAY: Well, it would be the same advice to anyone: Be aware of the problems of hubris. That's a detestable word, I know, but it actually sums up. Don't start talking about being the natural government. I mean, you're only as good as your last decision, essentially, but I think they've made a very, very good start and some of them are going to surprise you. Some of those who weren't rated when they were Opposition spokesmen are going to star as ministers, simply because of the circumstances of the time, and never ever got the necessary publicity when they were in Opposition.

LAURIE OAKES: I assume that's not really your final bit of advice. Tim Gartrell says he wants to keep using you and drawing on your expertise. Are you available to help?

ROBERT RAY: Well, I'm certainly available to help, but you get out of currency in an awfully quick period of time, but there is a whole range of people on the Labor Party that can do a bit of mentoring and offer advice. The one thing I won't be doing is being a guilty of generational jealousy where we judge the next generation of being nowhere near as good as us. Of course they are, they are as good as us. The ministers in this Government is as good as those in the Keating and Hawke governments, no question about that.

LAURIE OAKES: Final question: What about a government job?

ROBERT RAY: Not for me. It was speculated a few months ago I might take a diplomatic post. That doesn't suit me personally. I don't criticise anyone does. I think putting some politicians into a diplomatic post does help, but it's not just for me.

LAURIE OAKES: Senator Ray, we thank you.

ROBERT RAY: Thanks, Laurie.

Click here for a printer-friendly version.