Last night Julia Gillard paid a visit to an annual News Limited gathering in Sydney. Greens leader Bob Brown has said in the past that he didn’t have a problem with meeting News Ltd representatives — but he’d have them visit him on his turf, thank you very much.

Not so the PM who accepted an invitation from CEO John Hartigan in the wake of heated public statements from both sides.

Gillard said it was to be a private discussion, but added: “You would expect me to be talking about the government’s reform agenda and my vision for the nation’s future. Such meetings have been addressed by prime ministers and opposition leaders in the past so when I was invited by Mr Hartigan I accepted the invitation.” Neither side would comment on last night’s discussions.

Perhaps they went a little something like this exchange, recounted by Chris Mitchell to Sally Neighbour, in a profile on the editor in chief of The Australian in the latest edition of The Monthly to hits stands this week:

One night in mid May 2010 Mitchell was invited again for drinks at Kirribilli House, accompanied by the Australian’s political editor, Dennis Shanahan. Mitchell says he wanted to warn Rudd that the outcry over the mining tax could bring him down.

“I said, ‘Look, I think you should know that from what we are hearing you are in personal danger … We are picking up a lot of rumbling — you personally have to get this off the agenda as soon as possible.'”

Mitchell’s account is a startling reflection on the hubris of one — or maybe both — of these men. “I felt he [Rudd] didn’t really understand what was happening around him and that he was in grave danger. He was so aloof from the party, he didn’t have anyone to run numbers for him … The problem in running a very centralised and aloof kind of office is it’s very hard for people to knock on your door and tell you it’s going off the rails.”

I was intrigued that Mitchell told me this story (and made a point of saying he had checked with Rudd first), because it seems to illustrate more than anything that he relishes being at the centre of power. This echoes the view of a minister who knows him, who says Mitchell has ‘delusions of grandeur’ about his role in politics. Mitchell told me: “I wanted you to understand we had a reasonable relationship before he lost his job. I didn’t want it to seem the Australian is crowing about Kevin losing his job.”

Given the silence from all sides, guess we’ll never.

Today, Crikey Deputy Editor Jason Whittaker and Crikey‘s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane will discuss the COAG health reform agreement.

Visit the podcast page (or via our iTunes page) on our website at 4pm AEST to download or listen.