Meanwhile in other spill news, NSW Premier Nathan Rees has lived to fight another day, reportedly seeing off the possibility of a leadership challenge by Treasurer Eric Roozendaal and/or Frank Sartor.
NSW Premier Nathan Rees insists his leadership is “solid as a rock”, as Twitter is abuzz with allegations of a NSW leadership spill. Mr Rees emerged from Tuesday’s caucus meeting saying there’s “no change at all” in the NSW leadership amid speculation he could be overthrown by Treasurer Eric Roozendaal or former minister and Rockdale MP Frank Sartor.
The rumor mill has continued to churn ever since Rees outmaneuvered the Labor right hard heads at the party’s annual state conference, dismissing cabinet ministers Joe Tripodi and Ian McDonald in the process.
A day may be all the time Rees has left.
Update: Looks like it’s on.
Update II: Via the ABC, Premier Rees has called a presser for 9AM.
Update III: There will be a special caucus meeting held at 6pm. A transcript of Rees statement can be found here.
Update IV (by AW): Once more, a Labor party hands power to a woman to let her clean up the mess.
Kristina Keneally has become the first female Premier of NSW after defeating incumbent Nathan Rees 47 to 21 votes in a Labor caucus meeting this evening.
The leadership ballot took place after Nathan Rees quit the NSW Labor leadership.
Mr Rees lost the spill motion 43 votes to 25.
Caucus then annointed Ms Keneally, the planning minister, as the state’s 42nd premier.
I have no idea, other then deposing Rees, what the NSW Labor Right actually hope to achieve. They are simply delusional. I mean Roozendaal FFS.
Er, Shaun, is it past your bedtime, or are not all your dosg barking?
The ALP Right is furious over the events at Conference. NSW Labor, of all State Labor governments, has not fallen into the trap of investing institutionally in government – until now. Conference saw Rees using the authority of his office as Premier to ram through any number of changes (some of which, for the record, I suopport, and some I do not).
What do the Right have left? If they don’t arrest the slide now, it’s possible that the next election will see not only the routing of the Labor Government but the end of the Right’s dominance.
So you strike while you can – install a RIght Premier, reverse the dangerous changes made by Rees (using the authority of the Premier’s office, which the Left will not very well be able to complain about) and prepare for life in Opposition…with the Right firmly back in control.
I would have thought that was fairly obvious.
There is no slide, it’s terminal. NSW ALP need a Liberal government to know why they’re alive, and if there’s one way to remain in Opoosition for as long as possible, have the right in charge: preferably Tripodi as Opposition Leader with Roozendaal or Princess Kristina as Deputy.
This petty, fixing of grievances won’t help the Right won’t arrest the slide. Labor are heading for a rout and a few of them will find themselves looking for new jobs. It is just the shuffling of the deckchairs.
Reports say Sartor is now in line to be the next premier. Like I said re Roozendaal, FFS.
Tripodi as opposition leader? Surely that would be like…be like…Tony Abbott becoming opposition leader. Except I believe some people genuinely like Abbott.
Sartor. Madness!
So we’ve got a bunch of assh*les on the Labor right determined to do a bunch of useless things that people don’t want, like the electricity privatisation, the CBD Metro project, etc, and who won’t do things that people actually do want, like the north west rail project.
We also have an unprincipled bunch of lying assh*les on the Liberal side who are promising to match the Labor party on the stuff that they know people don’t want.
Both sides wonder why their polling is so bad.
Would it be too much to ask of the assh*loes on both sides to stop doing things that people obviously don’t want? And to promise and actually do things that the populace want?
This is like the 2004 US election. Bush was obviously useless, and could’ve been easily beaten, but Kerry went into the election promising to be just the same, only better.
It shows that there are as many morons in the Terrigal faction of the Labor Party as there are in the ultra-conservative faction of the Liberal Party. These fools don’t realise that one of the reasons the polls are so low is that there is continued infighting in the Government.
If Rees survives, he needs to get the National Executive to dis-endorse the rats.
Magic.
Can’t wait for the NSW Labor vote to hot 15%.
Richly deserved.
That was a great press conference.
The Telecrap is reporting that some Left MPs may sit on the cross benches in the upper house if Rees is deposed.
Madness. Hsven’t they paid attention to Canberra’s doings over the last week? In some ways, it’s even crazier because at least that was a diogfight within an opposition that had buckleys and no chance of winning power in 2010. Rees has a remote chance of recovering and winning in 2011.
You have to wonder about the sanity of people who are arguing about who gets to wear the captain’s hat on a ship that needs all hands focused on stopping it from sinking beneath the waves.
This just in …
Roozendale and Della Bosca are given the bad news — their faction doesn’t support them and thinks that only Sartor could win in a challenge. Roozendale who had denied involvement is shown to be a liar. Gosh, what a surpise.
I recall Eric from Macquarie Uni in the mid-1980s. I will avoid saying defamatory things on this site, but let’s just say I can’t think of many people in the parliament I’d be less happy to see as premier.
Is that including the Liberals, Fran?
In Roozendale’s case, yes it is. There would be many who would be as appalling but I’d be hard-pressed to think of someone worse.
As I said, I had the benefit, if that is indeed the right term, of knowing him and his circle of Labor Unity types personally in the mid-1980s, so perhaps I am prejudiced.
I will only muster a half-hearted hurrah if Kenneally becomes premier. Red letter day for women etc but what a bloody shambles and she grates big time.
What a bloody turnup for the books.
The Right put up with Rees for fifteen months. The trains stink, literally and figuratively. Hospitals shudder. Sydney’s infrastructure groans from decades of underinvestment.
You know, ORDINARILY when faced with a government that shows contempt for civil liberties, a blind and unstinting faith in market-solutions over any sense of community, an extraordinary focus on ‘law and order’ over the actual causes of crime, incredible cronyism, and general complete incompetence, we turn to LABOR governments. But what the hell do we do if we already HAVE a Labor government?
So the Right put up with Rees until the day he turned on their power-brokers, who were a fairly significant part of the reason why Labor is loathed in the first place — the coziness with big business, the corruption, the general contempt for democracy. And they toss him out and replace him with the candidate MOST identified with Tripodi and Obeid and their whole NSW Right ilk, and the most likely to look at the direction they’ve driven the state in and to yell FASTER!
I have a new blog. It’s called ‘Labor for O’Farrell’. It has no posts yet. It doesn’t have any overriding policies, since, let’s face it, in most respects the Liberals would be worse. But it is driven by one undeniable impulse — this government must go. It must die. A stake must be driven through its heart and its scattered remains must be buried at diverse crossroads. This shambles must END.
Joe Tripodi has become the NSW Premier.
Last week I posted here criticising the prevailing idea that it would be some sort of tragedy if a generation of born-to-rule NSW Labor Right actually missed out on their birthright – and I was howled down. Let’s be clear, Fran, David and others – LaGuardia’s right, Labor needs to go into Opposition in NSW. It is ignorance and slander to assume that anyone, even a government consisting entirely of blue-green algae, could or would be worse than this lot.
Where are the imbecilic women who think the rise Kenneally is some sort of triumph for their gender? Patronage and a sense of entitlement is what you need to make it? Fuck that. She’s an idiot and so is everyone who voted for her.
Labor will lose the 2011 NSW election, it must lose, and anyone who thinks this is a bad thing is a fool.
Update IV: Once more, a Labor party hands power to a woman to let her clean up the mess.
Just as Blue Dog Patriot@2 told us on weds night: