This post started out as a comment and grew a bit, so I decided to put it up as a new post. As a post it reads like a comment at times unfortunately, but here goes.
We should perhaps begin by reminding ourselves the Rudd and Gillard were once co-plotters and politically quite an awesome team.
Jacques, I don’t know how many times I need to keep saying this. The day before the election Gillard said that winning the election would be mandate for a carbon price “provided the community was ready for this step”. Well, it was a big mistake politically, her approval ratings tanked and have never recovered and she has worn the “liar” tag ever since.
su @ 256, the book Shitstorm by Lenore Taylor and David Uren is pretty much a “must read” on the GFC, or failing that Taylor’s interview with Richard Fidler. I think we owe Rudd big-time but also Swan, Ken Henry, a few other officials and to a lesser extent Gillard, and lesser again Tanner.
Jacques and others, Taylor and Uren spent weeks inside the bureaucracy researching their book, which was finished I think about May 2010 and it tells of the most appalling dysfunctionality stemming from Rudd’s administrative style. The Fidler interview which was just after coup goes into this also. These confirm what Labor Outsider and others have consistently said. It can’t be brushed aside with talk of sour grapes and other trivialising comments.
Rudd’s PM-ship was not all of one piece. Robert Manne, in an article written also just before the coup, discerned three phases and a marked deterioration. I gave an outline
here.
akn @ 283 “Hah. Bullshit.” is not an argument. Go read Manne and Taylor and Uren. Rudd did deteriorate in office. I think the debacle in Copenhagen may have been a critical turning point as I outlined here.
On the coup, I think Pamela Williams got it right. Her account is highly compatible with what Gillard said today. Gillard worked her arse off as deputy trying to make the government work, but in the end realised it wouldn’t. There was a confluence of people complaining to her, movers and shakers trying to recruit her to have a go, the appalling performance of Rudd at a business dinner the night before and the story in the SMH showing that Rudd didn’t trust her.
The only thing I’ve changed my mind about is that I now agree with Mark that the manner of the coup was fatally flawed, lacking consultativeness and democracy. Gillard has never risen above this to gain a position of genuine legitimacy.
Where I disagreed with Mark then is that in spite of Rudd’s successful campaigning in 2007 and record of achievement he was going to go down in 2010. Given how close it turned out to be I was probably wrong about that. Rudd couldn’t have run a worse campaign than what happened.
Now the manner of the Rudd campaign and the response to it has ensured, I think, that Abbott will win the next election. He would need to pick up in Queensland and Western Australia and I can’t see him doing it. Furthermore there will likely be losses in the other states. So it is probably a matter of holding onto the furniture and being in a position to make Abbott’s reign a single term.
Interesting that Kim Carr is backing Rudd. He was one of the blokes who asked Gillard to roll Rudd in 2010.
the-untold-story-of-how-kevin-07-bit-the-dust
Marn is backing Rudd too. If Rudd gets up would that mean environmentalists will be locked up?
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/afp-spies-targeting-green-activists-20120106-1pogq.html
I’m sticking to my guns.
If you hate Rudd’s guts then you’d be hoping he comes home, slinks to the back bench putting his full support behind Julia. With no sooking.
If you’re a Rudd fan (like me although I’m a Julia fan as well and at this point an anyone but Abbott fan) you’d be hoping Rudd gets back, takes the higher road and takes all the knocks on the chin and moves with noble grace to the back bench putting his full support behind Julia.
Anything else is death for the ALP and I can’t understand why those heaping shit on him (like Swan) think this is a smart move. Every jibe, every insult, every leaked clip gives him less and less room for him to do the right thing. As it is he is going to not only have to lose a lot of face to save the ALP, he will have to practically render himself unemployable.
Worth it to save Gillard? Totally. But I’d guess he’d be looking at some of the scum sitting next to her and wondering why he’ll have to be the one to cop a bullet.
IMHO though, Swan’s disgusting character assasination has me vowing off voting ALP for as long as he’s in office.
Heh…on the BBC world news website, I just stumbled across the ‘Australian PM leadership spill’ story, which has been up on their website for over 6 hours now…and has garnered exactly one comment!
This is an orphaned opinion these days, Brian. I don’t know why, but ’08/’09 has been largely whitewashed. Maybe it’s a return to the good old days when plenty of Labor people turned a blind eye to macroeconomics in favour of grand progammatic schemes?
I’m not a Queenslander, but I’m a Victorian schooled in the history of the ALP being electoral no-hopers (family connection to the workings of the fifties government of John Cain Sr. and then again to the ’82/’92 government) and I will say this—I think we also owe Rudd bigtime for understanding what electoral disaster means for Labor.
IMO every little Dalek seems to think the ALP is the natural party of government now thanks to Hawke and Keating, that there’s no threat from the Coalition, certainly not when it’s lead by the crazy simian.
I think Rudd knows this is BS. He remembers what it meant to de-tory-fy the Queensland bureacracy after Fitzgerald.
He’s working from an essentially ‘never again’ perspective, I reckon. This helps explain why there are Leftwingers who find it so easy to back him.
If Rudd does challenge and does win the media would be pushing for an instant election. He wouldn’t be PM for very long.
It was debatable that Gillard was electable prior to this, but certainly now no matter what Rudd does she is unelectable. She is more than ever representative of the public’s bad blood toward Labor.
But the campaign against Rudd hasn’t been about protecting Gillard’s PMship, they should pretty much know that she can’t win an election. It is entirely about ensuring Rudd doesn’t return and again be a challenge to the power of the power broking faction.
But as ham fisted and thuggish as ever their over playing of the kill Rudd meme may end up pushing Rudd and others out of the party, before an election. But it really seems they do not care about this. Maintain their personal power seems to be paramount.
Thanks for the book recommendation, Brian. That is a bleak prediction, I hope against hope it will prove to have been unduly pessimistic.
Yeah Thoma and that’s what will kill the ALP. I’ll decide where my votes go each election but a lot of my friends have alreasy told me that from now on they’ll either park their vote with Liberal so as not to ‘waste’ it (grrrrrrngh) or just not bother voting anymore.
If I was Abbott I’d cement this be looking at electoral reform , bringing in voluntary voting.
Yes, funny how every Gillard surrogates (with the exception of Plibersek) has been attacking Rudd ahead of defending Gillard. It seems no talking points were distributed, or at least no positive talking points were distributed. If Tanya P was making up her own upbeat comments for the camera then good on her.
OTOH Rudd’s surrogates have been repeating talking points that are most certainly not personal attacks on Gillard. They’re talking points that are dispassionate, yet laced with high mindedness (something worthy of sneering at, according to Heather Ewett on 7:30).
The Gillard Camp is making a big mistake if this a drawn out ’91 style process. They can’t keep up the nuclear attacks on Rudd indefinitely if he’s to hang around on the backbenches after winning a third or so of caucus in the ballot.
It’s almost as if the negative tone of the pro-PM surrogates was designed to actually help a third party…
The problem is possibly that no one is electable after this. Im thinking particularly of Swan, Crean, Conroy, Emerosn writing Liberal Party campaign ads for the last 36 hours.
An unparalleled capacity to screw the pooch is the real winner.
Yep. I can see the campaign now.
Quick two second grabs of each of them with their screed against Rudd. along with what Rudd did for them. A positon. A title. etc.
Fade to Tones.
“Now Mr Rudd and I don’t agree on a lot. But look at how this mob are behaving. Is this how they treat a mate? If they treat a close mate like this…how will the ALP treat you?”
Fade to white text on a black background. “With mates like these who needs enemies? Don’t vote ALP. It’s Un-Australian.”
For a year and a half Rudd has done his best to destablise the ALP. Prior to the 2010 election he was the deep throat for Laurie Oaks in an unprecedented Ministerial offered attack on his own party that almost sunk Labor. Short memories!
“The Gillard Camp is making a big mistake if this a drawn out ’91 style process.” – Nickws @10
Yep, it only makes sense if they expect to stop future challenges by utterly crushing Rudd on Monday – which I think is quite probable. I reckon the game plan is to try & seriously embarrass him, after which hopefully he’ll retire to the backbench & stay there, hoping to become Opposition Leader in July 2013 and PM by July 2016. If they’re wrong and Rudd gets a swag of votes (say, anything over about 30) then Gillard will probably resign – there’s no way forward for her from there as she’ll be mortally wounded. My guess then is that an “anyone but Rudd” candidate will then emerge – perhaps Shorten.
But this government is dead – whatever happens from here the best they can hope for is to survive until June 2013 and then be obliterated. They have betrayed their supporters, and the country as a whole too – not least by ensuring the election of a “know nothing” reactionary government.
@Jacques: People publicly declaring themselves is, in a way, a very pro-democratic move, as it removes all media speculation. In the last 30min I have seen Combet written down to both the Rudd and Gillard camps and although Faulkner is also seen as solidly pro-Rudd, as far as I am aware, there is no public statement that supports this. Given the excellent analysis of the role of the media in all this by Tim Dunlop, I could interpret this as either media tealeaf-reading or the media having access to facts which they feel they cannot reveal because politicians are manipulating the journalistic code of ethics.
Honestly, that was an inevitable fall out from an unprecedented and unjustified middle of the night knifing. The timing of the election was all Gillard’s as well.
It was inevitable there would be payback, especially as the faceless men immediately set about trashing Rudd up hill and down dale. What on earth did they expect? But these people are so full of spite and malice they can’t help themselves.
Thomas Paine, you got the chronology arse about.
ALP MPs didn’t set about destroying Rudd’s reputation until (well) AFTER Rudd showed he could not be relied upon to support Gillard’s leadership.
Well, at least Rudd doesn’t seem to give two hoots about ‘legacy’.
He’ll be right up there as version2.0 of the Latham e-explode-o-bot, “Warning; warning– alien space craft approaching!”
Who knows, maybe there’s a job from Gina in the waiting? Doing the typesetting and such, that’d be therapeutic for someone with Rudd’s controlling personality.
Ok, give me a number out of 100.( 0 being zero chance)
Senario: Kev looses ALP ballot , quits, joins AKP( good mate of Katter), wipes floor with Jones and Newman in Ashgrove.
Have a think.
“….I think, that Abbott will win the next election.”
You reckon? Julia Gillard actually held off two opposition leaders- Abbott and Rudd- in the last election. She should not be underestimated.
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joe2, they’re shot mate. With any luck Gillard & Rudd will blow each other up.
Just get the popcorn out sit back and relax.
This the Heseltine/Thatcher/Major scenario you describe, dd.
But Maggie T only went when it was obvious she didn’t have a majority of votes to win a ballot—this 30 votes threshold you mention as being the end of Gillard, that implies a caucus majority for the PM still in being.
So, you suggesting that she has a magic mark to reach, and if she doesn’t meet it her faceless men will go and Dalek for another candidate? Yes, entirely possible.
Hasn’t the fat man already denied this?
Or are we now trusting politicians to accurately reveal 3rd party journalisic sources regardless of what said journalist says?
This level of hearsay actually ties in with Tony Burke’s anti-Rudd spiel: “The stories of Rudd’s terrible management are legion.”
Yup, lot of stories out there for a Cabinet minister to ponder when talking about how bad the former PM was. Lot of stories.
Of course it would be nice if a Cabinet minister could provide us with a first hand account involving himself and the subject of his scorn. Not a story, but an experience.
Testimony>evidence>anecdote>>>>>>>stories told by people other than Tony Burke that Tony can’t claim to have been occurrences in his very own ministerial experience.
(Yes, I accept that Rudd was capable of monstering public servants and staffers, I just reject the notion that there is a transitive relationship at work here that means Rudd was guilty of monstering caucus colleagues when he did that. Though this goes to the fact that there are obviously staffers who demand to be granted the same status as elected parliamentarians, which leads into factionalism being bigger than MPs. See Abbott and his chief of staff. But that’s really another topic.)
Jacques, I think you cannot wait for an Abbott government, for all your talk of fighting the so called “progressive” cause…cheap ciggies and pokies for all!
Testimony 1.
Kate Ellis
I’ll accept a lot in this debate is a position genuinely held – even if I disagree with it. There’s just one exception: I simply cant stomach peole asserting that Rudd was somehow the main, or a major problem of Labor’s abysmal 2010 campaign.
Oh please! Try Bitar, try Gillard, try the awful footsies with a moribund NSW govt, try ‘moving forward’, try the citizens assembly, try the unsightly blood stains on the floor.
All these were far more important. Talk about excuse-making for the incompetent! Frankly, if Rudd was behind the scenes blowing a few raspberries at this awful, awful rubbish, I can only agree with the verdict. Who could blame him. It was the campaign equivalent of a pool turd.
Shorter tssk in 2009/10: ‘The ALP are so incompetent I have no choice but to vote Liberal’.
Modifying his concern troll schtick in a transparent attempt to remain undercover, shorter tssk in 2011/12: ‘The ALP are so incompetent I have no choice but to vote Green’.
Except that getting v.excited about an impending Abbott govt. tssk @9 reverts to type in mock dismay about supposed friends moving from ALP -> Lib.
I agree with PatriciaWA, Gillard can win in 2013. This spill can be her making as a PM.
I greatly enjoyed JG’s recent assertiveness with the Press, refusing to accept their condescension and disrespect. It worked because it was genuine.
Rudd will lose, go to the backbench and scream like a stuck pig, but he is now exposed as destabiliser and proven incapable of running an office as sophisticated as PM (see Windsor’s comments which independently endorse recent Swan dirt file and comments of Gillard backers).
The exposure of Rudd means that his interminable whinging will not be accepted by the voters. They will soon get sick of it in the new light.
Meanwhile JG’s policy achievements will continue to stack up, adding to an already impressive list, and Plibersek was very good on 7:30 Report tonight stating what the next round will contain.
The somnolent Howard administrations in a decade did not accomplish one-fifth of what the Greens/ALP have done in half the time.
Bought The Australian today. It backs Rudd in every article on the challenge as turfing out Gillard does the ALP the most damage. If Rudd wins the ballot (he will not, though) The Oz will once again make Rudd their Australian Of The Year.
Well, six minutes have passed. Must be time to hear from tssk again…
Lefty E @ 26, I’m inclined to agree with you. There’s a plausible narrative that the leaking during the campaign was done by others and Rudd only saw a chance when Gillard’s polls went down when she announced the carbon thing.
He has consistently said that his main priority was to see that Abbott doesn’t become PM, so naturally when Gillard faltered his thoughts turned to himself. Since then he has been teasing the press whenever they ask him.
It would have been interesting to see what Gillard could do if she had a clear go, but she didn’t and probably never will.
Giles, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m kinda hoping that some sort of reverse magical thinking is in effect. I loathed the Howard government and I no that an Abbott government would not benefit me either, especially now that I’m unemployed. Part of me hopes that I’ll remain being wrong.
I agree with you about the JG government and it drives me almost insane that not only do the media not report on it, they’re actually reporting the opposite. You’d think that the way they hysterically go on (almost as bad as I do) that we were economically and politically about to turn into the Southern Hemisphere version of Greece where in reality we’re the envy of the Western world!
Yairs. Brian, my current life project partner worked in Canberra for various ALP ministers for twelve years. Apparently this is something of a record. We both used to be in the CPA together. Different days, eh?
Anyway, his take on Rudd is that he is and always was a total creep. He commented that the first time he met him was at a Premiers’ conference and that Rudd conducted himself like a top dog bureaucrat from Qld. Offended everyone. His behaviour is now like a wounded top dog public servant.
My own experiences with the NSW PS, in which naked fawning and grovelling are the only acceptable way of relating up and everybody kicks down as a matter of routine, convince me that Rudd is undoubtedly a highly strung, precious and odious arse. But he’s not alone in that; he’s an absolutely typical senior public servant and the party sure as hell knew what he was like when he was appointed leader.
It’s an ugly business at the top and no-one ought to be under any illusions as to exactly how ugly. I’ve had personal dealings with several current ministers, several past ministers and numerous parliamentarians from the ALP. There isn’t one of them I would rate as anything other than a first class, a-grade, card carrying, internationally accredited political thug.
There’s a damn sight more to this than meets the eye. As Manne puts it there is a suspicion that there is “something sinister” at the centre of the party.
Don’t take it out on me, it’s actually been the ALP that clearly wants an Abbott government, they’ve been trying to bring one about since June, 2010.
I get you think things like ultra-expensive smokes and compulsory internet filters are a great idea but WTF with the pokies jibe? I criticised Gillard for breaking her promise with Wilkie?
There’s much bluster about acting for “the country”, and acting for “the party”.
Surely now if anyone in the ALP is acting for the party, and the country, they’ll commence rebuilding after the Monday vote, put maximum energy into developing a crack party that can take power after the LNP make a hash of it from 2013. The bloodletting now is a naked exposition that the national ALP is toxic beyond repair. But there is real talent languishing, matching Plibersek, Wong, Combet and to some extent Roxon with b and c grade efforts like Hockey, Bishop et al, it’s not even a contest.
But the young ALP talent needs a clean slate. JG can slip back into a working role, but needs to be clear on the future of the party. Rudd? I’m thinking a rock somewhere out in Bass Strait where he can advise passing ships and seals.
ALP Feb 2012 model is not good for itself, let alone the country. wake up.
Perhaps a little bit of perspective would be helpful. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. While I detest Tony Abbott in so many ways, he’s not Rick Santorum.
Bounce for the Greens out of this? Well, they got 13% at the last election. I can’t see them going down. I’m going to pull a number out of my ass and go for 20% federally. The ALP are going to lose a lot of votes our of this, and not all are going Liberalward.
wbb @ 25, is that meant to be a data point for my “what personal evidence do certain cabinet veterans want to provide that Rudd was as dysfunctional as they now claim he was” challenge?
I don’t see it.
Though I’m glad you mention Ellis, seeing as I have her being our next Labor PM should they lose as badly next year as Gillard’s polling indicates they will.
‘Cos she’s about the only on young enough to endure another decade in the wilderness.
My theory about Gillard’s personality is that she’s spent her whole adult life being a “political [insert epithet]‘s” woman; she’s trained herself to exist in that world, for those men.
Hence somebody like Joe DeBruyn finds it so easy to advocate a vote for Gillard, as she is his Leader, after all.
akn @ 30, I worked for a quarter of a century in the Qld public service and never encountered anyone like Rudd. There was a good deal of idealism to go with pragmatism and the way you describe it is pretty much foreign to me.
I was there of course when Rudd was in the Premier’s Office. He was known as rather manic and had the nickname “Doctor Death”. I’d categorise him as more of a political apparatchik rather than a public servant and didn’t see him as PM material when he went into politics.
I reckon he’s one of a kind.
My theory is that this is all less meaningful than it looks. It’s a sort of epilogue to the Rudd era. It wouldn’t have been like this if Rudd had settled for his new role as FM, but evidently he really did hope to regain the top job. However, he doesn’t have the numbers within his own party, so that’s just not going to happen, even if polls do rank him as more popular than Gillard and Abbott. Maybe Rudd and Turnbull should get together…
” it tells of the most appalling dysfunctionality stemming from Rudd’s administrative style”
It’s a measure of the weakness of the FPLP that they couldn’t either fix Rudd’s administrative style or come up with a buffer to smooth out the bumps. That’s how you deal with a bull elephant boss, it’s not rocket science it just requires a will and I think that was what was lacking. They convinced themselves that the coup was necessary because that was what they wanted to happen.
You might want to clarify this, because it looks pretty fucked up to me. A something’s woman? What, gangsters moll? Was that the part of the barrel you were seeking to scrape?
I believe that Gillard never got legitimacy because of the underhanded way she removed Rudd. The new leadership spill is great, and I fully support Rudd. As far as I’m concerned he’s the only one to block Abbott. So much so that I’ve started a petition – http://www.change.org/petitions/member-of-parliament-elect-kevin-rudd-as-leader-and-prime-minister
My main recommendation for those who want Rudd to become PM again would be to look for your local Labor member and tell them what you think before Monday – Rudd should be PM! The best way to find their local MP is http://www.alp.org.au/federal-government/labor-people/
@30
Politics is full of distasteful characters but some of Kevin’s antics really were worse than most.
Working hard and at all hours is often par for the course in politics, but to keep up that sort of pace you have to think that it is towards a useful end. Kevin would often require these enormous and far too detailed briefing documents to be prepared on every policy topic imaginable. But it was rare that he actually read them and they tended not to lead anywhere.
When he did his morning 5 minute spot on Sunrise, he often had 2 or 3 policy advisers working up briefing material for the entire prior day.
More generally, the entire policy process was completely subservient to the media cycle. In the policy area I was responsible for policies would be worked up and planned for an announcement on a particular day, then pulled at short notice, then you would hear nothing for days or weeks, then it would be suddenly urgent to announce it again, then it would be pulled, and so on and so on.
The policy process was twisted in the sense that good policy usually starts with identifying a problem and then working out the best way to deal with it. With Kevin it was more often that he had already worked out what he wanted to do and instead wanted policy people to find a rationale for what he already planned to do.
Shadows, and in particular the minor ones, became bit players in their own portfolio areas, often not kept in the loop about what was being planned until the last minute and given little opportunity to shape the final outcome.
It was not a policy process conducive to high quality output and it left all involved exasperated and burned out.
I never worked for Julia but I know quite a few people that have and they say that the dynamic in her office was very different. You certainly don’t hear the same complaints from the bureaucracy.
Of course, none of this was evident to the broader electorate. They just saw Kevin’s apparent calm and smiling face and gift for communication. He was like the Dorian Gray of Australian politics. It was only towards the end that things began to unravel.
Unfortunately, while Julia’s policy process and negotiation skills are top notch, and she is a respectful and inclusive leader, she doesn’t have the same political nous as Kevin does, has been prone to missteps (asylum seekers being the obvious example) and perhaps most importantly, hasn’t been able to break through with the Australian public.
If you could combine the best aspects of both Kevin and Julia into a single political figure, you would have a great leader. Of course, we don’t have that option and although there are some talented people on the front and back bench, I don’t see any potentially great leaders there either.
I often wonder what would have happened had Kim Beazley survived Kevin’s challenge and gone on to defeat Howard. It is hard to imagine that the party would be in the state that it is in today…
LO, I thought Rudd lost his communication skills in the third phase of his reign. In 2010 he frequently went on the box and apologised for things he didn’t have to apologise for, saying he took full responsibility and he and everyone would just have to work harder.
He’s possibly calmer now and in a way more effective, but I think has become a very divisive figure. I think the people just want to move on.
I take it you have never worked in the commercial field where this is par for the course. Heck I did 16 years that contained many 24 hour days, continual 7 day working weeks, and that was normal. Yes we prepared all sorts of commercial analysis that would never get used, or even read, but were required to meet all possibilities. This was our job, what we were there for and that was the standard for working there.
Yes it can be unreasonable often. But this is the PM of the country charged with directing the path of the country. So he like to have at his finger tips high quality information of various subjects, even an ‘unreasonable’ amount. As a citizen this brings me more confidence than not.
But I think thing that made it worse for everyone is that we are talking about a first term PM after Labor being in opposition for a decade, so yeh, he is more likely to be hyperactive in order to make sure he is over everything, over compensating.
Frankly Rudd is probably the only person in Labor who has a chance of winning the next election. Especially after this latest debacle.
That the powers that be in Labor are doing everything to make sure he doesn’t lead means quite clearly their priorities are nothing to do with remaining in power.
LO,
if you just hold off of the assylum seeker condemnation for a bit and try and place this policy in some kind of priority queue, how are you going to prioritise it? Upon which features?
One general approach would be in terms of public opinion, in which case we can scream at Gillard and the government all we like, but for the sake of this exercise this means the policy is low priority.
Another feature is difficulty in finding a solution– it’s not an easy issue to solve. Or put in another way, there are other issues, which are easier. This issue has a history– it is no overexageration to suggest that One Nation inherits from the same ideology as our current Refugee policy. People like us, commenting on blogs, are too quick to say, that the political outcome of the 2001 election was due to bad Labor communication and sometimes that’s true in politics, but the Liberals have runs on the board with this topic. It’s theirs.
Another feature would be human rights, goodwill, compassion, but if we start to rationally prioritise on this issue alone we will never be able to generate any policy. Policy needs something tangeable, as I’m sure you more than most of us are aware, such as a solution to “detention.” The community has to make its ideological positions more than just words. But has there ever been a project to donate a seaworthy ship to Indonesian-based refugees? It would be a small price for such a grand statement of intent!
I believe that, while some of us know how to deal with criticism, many people in the community are unable to tell the difference between criticism and an attack on what a person has been able to actually achieve in the real circumstances which they find themselves in. We can criticise Gillard for not pushing the window, for not yet scoring more points against a shambolic Liberal Party, for not being statesman-like enough, but she’s also done pretty good, as far as I can see. In a hung parliament with a couple of pretty crazy folk in key positions, she’s delivered sound well-formed policy and politically she got Slipper into the speaker’s chair.
That’s some of why I think Gillard needs a fair go and should have the support of the Labor caucus in the coming leadership spill.
Thomas,
if you have to routinely work 24hrs a day, you have a terrible management team– or are yourself managing your time badly. Overestimating one’s capacity for work is a problem, not something to be proud of as ultimately the quality of the decisions of the person doing the work suffers as will the product itself. Serious projects require organisation with time for non-work activities included. A financial plan also requires the incentive of leading a healthy and fulilling lifestyle.
There’s been a lot of commentary recently here in Europe about how little German workers work, with respect to the hours they work and compared to other nations in the EU (for example UK). But German productivity is extremely high– now to speak plainly, this is based on realistic planning. Planning which doesn’t seek to push productivity gains simply onto private industry by deregulating work and welfare regulations.
I want politicians who are not just working hard but being productive and creating legislation which is well-formed, sensible and can be built upon in the future. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I don’t want the result to be bad because they are unable to manage their time professionally.
Thomas – as Joe just said, that is pretty much bollocks….very few commercial organizations work in that way, and those that do are being run very inefficiently…Besides, having worked in investment banking I can tell you the work conditions were far worse in Kevin’s office….Finally, set aside the hours and think about the output. Kevin was not even reading the briefing material he was asking for. It was too dense and he didn’t have the time. It actually made things worse because he would get on TV and make mistakes because he hadn’t read the material. If it had been a true briefing (ie concise) he might actually have had time to go through it. He was a terrible user of his own and others’ time. Because of those flaws and being unable to think about policy development outside of the filter of the short-term media cycle, the policy process was chaotic and the final outcomes often poorly thought through.
Joe
Those are all good points on asylum seekers. In truth it is a terrible issue for Labor. The instincts of most members is towards a policy that is much more humane and accommodating than the current status quo. But the median voter has a far more conservative and exclusionary view. Labor has been trying and failing to find a middle ground approach for a decade now.
So I guess it depends on how one judges the outcome. If you want to take a pragmatic approach you could commend Julia. If politics is primarily the art of the possible, then she has done reasonably well. I have a lot of sympathy for this approach to politics as the perfect is often the enemy of the good.
However, don’t you think there are some issues that carry a greater moral significance? Where you have to take a more ethical stand even if it means suffering politically for it? I’m not exactly the most left wing person in the world but I find it very difficult to defend Australia’s current indigenous and asylum seeker policies to friends outside the country.
That said, the problem with asylum seeker policy has been much greater than just the rights and wrongs of the current policy. The lurching around from one possible solution to the next without appearing to have done the necessary background work has not looked good. It is the one policy area under Gillard that has resembled something I would have expected from Rudd.
Why Aint Rudd Dead?
Kev Rudd aint dead?
No! Kevin Rudd aint dead!
In Canberra Labor people sigh.
He just will not be told.
He is done for, has been rolled.
The feller just don’t understand, “Goodbye!”
Journalists there dread
When all the world’s in bed
If he’s awake and wants to vent his spleen,
He calls out all the press
And gives a long address
On the evils of the ALP machine.
“We are gathered here today
So I can have my say
On how badly I was done by
And not given all my dues.
No one listened to my views
While Julia Gillard gave me the evil eye.”
“Don’t complain that this is night.
I have to catch a flight!”
But just to keep them pacified
And to earn a bit of glory
He’ll feed them with a story
Making sure they know it’s classified.
And so off they go
And harass ASIO
Whose agents really know him.
With their mates in DFAT
They’d like to join the brass hats
In Defence and find some way to show him!
Why aint Kev Rudd dead?
When each Department Head
And every leftie politician
Have come to hate his guts?
Cos he’s nowhere near as nuts
As that other one in Opposition.
LO,
absolutely. That is, of course, totally correct about the fundamental position that ethics has in political decision making.
And your point is totally valid criticism. Furthermore, the handling of the issue has been at times not up to scratch, both ethically and pragmatically– but it was a tough issue to cut your teeth on as new-PM.
The easy solution is just to say, stuff ‘em, not just because they’re queue jumping Muslims, but because it’s such a challenging and complicated process. The Liberals said, ‘too hard, no can do!’ Because it starts with communication, and then there’s personal identification, but there’s also children’s rights, there are technical aspects like health, the conditions of detention, cost, etc.
It must make running a public utility like the Commonwealth Bank seem like not such a hard thing to have to do– even for a government.
Nobody can defend the government against the criticism, that illegal assylum seekers in Australia are not being treated right, and that something needs to be done to improve on the current situation. But we also need to remember what the Gillard government has been able to do, in the position it’s in. We also need to think about our own responsibility to make a difference, assuming this issue really is important to us.
Jeremy Sear has a great summary of the media harvest from this at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2012/02/23/ah-i-think-i-understand-how-the-media-convinces-itself-it-wasnt-a-beatup/#more-14358
And of course the excellent Mr Denmore http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/mounting-precious.html
Looks like my new years resolution to stop watching or listening to The Insiders was the right one for my health.
I make a few points on the Rudd-was-dysfunctional-and-nasty to colleagues meme:
1. The original justification for dumping him was, if I recall, that Julia was more saleable (oops, better strike that one off the list);
2. I haven’t seen no evidence that even one of his cabinet colleagues approached him and asked him to mend his ways. Yet you can’t even sack a lowly employee without giving them fair warning.
3. If true, what does (2) say about the quality of Cabinet and/or the strength of their objections to Rudd’s style?
4. My recollection (correct me if I’m wrong) is that most of his cabinet colleagues had no idea he was going to be rolled. The plot was hatched OUTSIDE the ministry and they were swept along.
5. But finally, and most importantly, this meme leaves absolutely no room for personal political ambition. Are we being told that thousands of years of political history and everything we know about human nature and the ALP was put into stasis and Rudd was rolled for purely altruistic reasons. Give me a break. There can be no doubt that many instigators of the plot have done very well since. Are we to believe that was purely good fortune?
6. And finally, if Rudd is as bad as people say, why is John Faulkner, the conscience of the party, supporting his bid?
TP, you need to concede the possibility that “the powers that be” may honestly (though mistakenly) believe that the ALP can win the next election without Rudd.
I doubt either of them can win. The introduction of the carbon price/tax reforms is Labor greatest opportunity to turn their fortunes around – as I said before, Rudd would have difficulty owning that policy, just as Gillard has had difficulty owning the economic stability throughout the GFC.
Carbon pricing is the most significant policy differential between Labor and Liberals. Even claiming credit for the GFC is difficult because it gives the Libs the opportunity to talk up the surplus they left. Labor need to be focused on carbon pricing/tax reform, education and health.
@50 do you really think that Kevin wasn’t aware of the distaste for the way he was running things? He new but didn’t particularly care. To him, the fact that people didn’t like it was a sign that he was doing the right thing. He didn’t exactly have much respect for most of his colleagues, which is why so much decision making was centralised. To some extent he was right – there were a lot of underperformers and he really is brighter than the average bear. But he was taking on far too much than he could deal with.
The coup may not have been initiated within the cabinet, but most cabinet ministers have close relationships or at least regular conversations with key factional figures. The timing caught some (but certainly not all) by surprise but the fact that so many were prepared to dump Kevin surely tells you a lot about how many viewed him in the party?
Of course there is always personal ambition involved in politics, which means an appropriate filter should be applied to everything coming out of the mouths of politicians. However, it is a bit of a stretch to claim that invidual ambition was the prime motivation. Swan in particular should be heavily discounted because he and Kevin haven’t gotten along for years. Kevin never wanted him as Treasurer but was more or less forced into it.
Whether you believe it or not, there were genuine concerns amongst many in the party about how Kevin was managing the job. Many thought that things were going to get worse, not better. We will never know what would have happened if Kevin had continued as leader to the election. Some will say that he was already righting the ship, that the electorate was unlikely to unseat a first term PM, that he was a superior campaigner to Abbott. Others will say that he had no way out of the mining tax debacle, that his decisionmaking was becoming increasingly erratic, that he had no idea where to go next on the asylum seekers issue. Unfortunately we will never know which view is more right.
LABOR OUTSIDER – All relevant points. But you seem to concede that the coup was hatched by “key factional figures”. So far as I can tell, the sole job of such figures is to foster the political ambitions of those in their factions.
The role of factions is much more complicated than that. Rudd himself was not outside the factional system and there are very few ministers that are not important factional players in their own right…
Grattan: “lot’s of people like Kevin Rudd, as the polls show”. Yes it’s the “Be Nice To Kevin Weekend”.
The Ruddsters running a US style nomination campaign. He’s repeatedly calling on the Australian people directly, not the party, to put pressure on the party, to elect him. This has a three pronged intention:
To have party members swamped, over a short sharp shock of two or three days, by as many emails and petitions calling for the return of good old Kev, the devil we know…cause we just shouldn’t trust “that woman”, as he and campaign team can muster.
To be seen as the one who will “reform the party” by doing away with “faceless men” (code for the party) and getting the “faceless/party” to be more answerable to “the people of ‘stralia”
To make further movement towards an election win by the party should he lose, untenable, as the Australian people will have been “betrayed yet again” by “that woman’.
While it is, IMHO, both petulant and self obsessed for him to even get to this point, it is clever, and it sidesteps the usual party room focus of the reporting, allowing the journoshpere to continue the Juliar “that woman” stuff and still look as if they are actually covering a Labor Party leadership vote while treating it as a general election.
And again, if he loses, they’ll be the call for a real general election because the “’stralian people” have been “denied their voice” by “faceless men” in “the party”.
It stinks, and it’s doing nothing but helping the conservatives. Shameful, and while he could have retired into history as the man who said sorry, now, potentially, he’ll have the long term collapse of the party into shambolic years of opposition as his legacy….while the conservatives f up the country even more for another 12 years or so of hatred and bile.
He’s on the radio now making a general election campaign launch speech. Puke.
“key factional figures”….hmm….I don’t think that is a winning argument for Rudd.
In a contest of key factional figures versus Hawker Britton, as a voter I know how to express my dissent with certain factions. It involves a nuanced senate ballot and voiding my ballot in the house of reps if the choice isn’t great. As a voter, there is’nt a damn thing that I can do about Hawker Britton…..that, Mr President, is not people power.
wbb@25. That’s pretty strong evidence from Kate. It also corroborates the evidence from journos about the faceless four journos he’s been leaking to. And of course Laurie Oakes would deny Rudd was his Deep Throat. Journos keep secrets so they can keep getting the good stuff. Labor’s last campaign was unmitigated rubbish. But the fact that they had to spend so much time dealing with leaks was one of the things that made it that way.
It’s really obvious now that he’s been destabilsing the government ever since he’s been knocked off, yet he’s playing the Messiah now. “Only I can save the Labor Party”. I think if they don’t make him PM, he’s be quite happy to destroy the government. ‘Cos it’s all about Kevin.
I’m also hating how he’s dragged out Therese and Jess to give him character references. Of course, that’s just to contrast himself with Gillard who doesn’t have a photogenic family to trot out. Being a barren spinster and all.
@ 35+40
Alright then. My experiences of the public service are confined to NSW which is special to a rare degree having it’s historical roots in the Rum Corps.
As an aside, I’ve another mate who works for the C’wealth who, at interview of job candidates from NSW, on hearing of their successful career in NSW, routinely then says “tell me something good about yourself”.
Frankly Rudd is probably the only person in Labor who has a chance of winning the next election.
The entire Liberal campaign will consist of verbatim quotes from Swan, Conroy, Emerson et al about how unfit Rudd is to be PM.
Anyone who thinks Rudd could win the next election is on drugs. The problem is that anyone who thinks Gillard could win is on drugs.
Gillard will beat Rudd comfortably on Monday but that will solve nothing. It will all get much worse. They will turn to Shorten in about three months.
LABOUR OUTSIDER – All of Labor’s woes come from the dumping of Rudd (whatever his behaviour). You could shrink it to a quarter in size and it would still be the dumbest move in Australian political history. Yet you want to justify it on the basis that Rudd was unpleasant to deal with.
fine @ 58
“I’m also hating how he’s dragged out Therese and Jess to give him character references.” Yes indeed, Pukesville, USA. He’ll do a doorstop call at church on Sunday, jus you wait an see.
Well, whatever happens, Rudd is finished as a potential PM. I hoped that he might be able to win the next election, as Gillard appears to have no chance. But the personal attacks on him by senior Labor politicians in the last few days make it impossible for him to be selected. He would have to purge most of the front bench before the election, and not even a Stalin could arrange such a bloodbath in so short a time. No, we’re on the good ship Gillard as it drifts towards its inevitable encounter with the electoral iceberg. Perhaps she can enact some progressive legislation before the scumbags take over?
Firstly, it’s the Government who is to blame for the whitewashing of the story on saving the economy. As soon as they moved on from Rudd, they failed to keep telling the story of the Rudd Government avoiding recession through their stimulus package.
The ALP have filled the column inches and the airwaves with the story of their choosing – that is; the leadership.
And we’re in Drover’s Dog territory. Doesn’t matter who out of Rudd and Gillard will be leading.
I’m hating it too Fine, and Rein’s statement criticizing the party, aside from it’s hypocrisy about negative backgrounding, is an unprecedented intervention in the political process, not even First Ladies make such public statements, does the whole family suffer from the same messiah complex? It’s gone beyond dysfunctional and is firmly in pathological territory now, and this is supposed to be improving the democratic process? It’s astonishing.
JOHN J – Julia is too conservative to enact progressive legislation.
But I think you are being too pessimistic. Rudd would be able to bury the hatchet with almost all the ministers who are doing the appropriate thing and standing by their PM (though it will be interesting to see what happens in the secret ballot). Swan and Crean would have to go, but I think their language underscores that. But that would give Rudd some room to hand out a few promotions (Shorten for Treasurer, if he doesn’t make PM this time?)
All of Labor’s woes come from the dumping of Rudd
I call bullshit. Labor started hemorrhaging votes in April 2010 when Rudd dumped the CPRS. (Yes, yes, Gillard urged him to do it – but it was his decision.)
Dave @ 50 and 61, it wasn’t just that Rudd was “unpleasant to deal with”, most found they couldn’t get to see him at all. Conroy hopped on Rudd’s plane, flew to Dudai with him and then got off and flew back so that he could talk to him about the NBN.
During the GFC decision-making became concentrated in the gang of four. By 2010 even Gillard found it difficult to get access to him. Control was exercised through a few 30-year olds in Rudd’s office who he sent to meetings. At cabinet meetings papers were distributed in the room for the meeting, then left gathered up at the end.
He micro-managed some portfolios and pretty much ignored others entirely. You might say he was concentrating on weak ministers, but this doesn’t seem to be borne out by subsequent performance.
When Rudd was away and Gillard chaired cabinet the atmosphere was open and consultative. The contrast was chalk and cheese.
That’s from memory, it’s a while since I’ve looked at the detail.
I call bullshit. Labor started hemorrhaging votes in April 2010 when Rudd dumped the CPRS.
This is true, but compared to the subsequent bleedings, that was naught but a flesh wound, in retrospect.
Brian – that is exactly right. There seems to be a view here that if Rudd had been left in place things would have been just fine. But when decisionmaking and management has become as dysfunctional as it had in Kevin’s last few months, isn’t it at least possible (perhaps even likely) that things would have become worse?
Haha. I’d love to see Rudd offer Shorten the position of treasurer. That would be the icing on his hypocrisy cake.
PS: I’d also love for Shorten to be stupid enough to run for leader before the next election. I could just stay home on election day and enjoy that the one good thing about this for Labor would be that Shorto’s career ended so quickly.
We need a grassroots campaign to show people how to use their senate ballots to get rid of the right-wing, control-freaky Senators in the party.
Sam the more detailed story about deferring the CPRS is here.
Gillard has been consistent in saying that a public consensus is needed. Where she erred was in thinking that the consensus could be built after the conclusion of a deal with the Greens.
My thoughts whilst reading the FF (Fairfax Fishwrapper) this morning were/are:
I think the least-worst outcome of the ALP leadership contest is an outcome where Kevin Rudd is decisively defeated under circumstances where he would be perceived by the wider public as behaving unreasonably and disloyally if he didn’t quietly retire to be a loyal Labor backbencher. What the Gillard camp needs to keep in mind, but doesn’t seem to be keeping in mind, is how their concerted attacks on Rudd play in the eyes of the wider public, and how to avoid creating the circumstances where Rudd is seen to have been so humiliated and aggrieved by his Cabinet and Caucus colleagues that he could retire to the cross-benches, quit Parliament, or (worst-case scenario for Labor) quit Parliament and the ALP and contest the resulting by-election as an independent, with considerable public sympathy for whichever of these options he chooses. The probability of any one of these scenarios developing may be small, but I don’t think it is nil.
@45
No, I don’t think you get it. At certain times its “all hands to the pump” and you may have to work extraordinary hours. “a terrible management team– or are yourself managing your time badly” isn’t really the problem, circumstances can demand it and I would have thought the rapidity with which situations can develop in politics would make it all the more likely. This is not to say Rudd may not have had problems but it does seem to me that his staff may have been a little too delicate or lacking the fortitude to stand up to him.
Howard @64.
Regrettably, tend to agree that the situation is now drover’s dog territory.
Mind you, I’m trying to think of which kind of dog has big sticking out ears, our spoodle has the right size and shape but they are floppy down ears.
Maxine McKew on ABC Melbourne radio: “Politics is not a horserace.. it’s being… treated like that in the chamber..”. She was as concise and articluate as ever. Strong support for KR. Says Gillard good administrator, not good leader. KR is only one with broad appeal etc. Questioned why Gilard etc didn’t take Rudd in hand when things were going off the rails.
The rot set in before Day 1, when Rudd insisted on, and caucus granted him, the right to name his own ministry. At the time this hailed as a good idea because it power away from the factions and sub factions.
With any other PM it would have been a good idea, but the power went to Rudd’s head, and ministers, ever the careerists, became afraid to stand up to him. What made it even worse was his standing in the polls, and his effortless crushing of Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull.
Another think I have thunk this morning:
Some commenters on this and other threads have said, rightly in my view, that it would be best for Labor to have a leader who combines Rudd’s ability to communicate effectively with a wider public with Gillard’s ability to operate and communicate with her colleagues in the government and Labor Party. This raises the question of whether the ALP’s evolving organisational malaise means that it is no longer capable of producing people with both skill sets, i.e. that Labor’s membership is so small, and the percentage of Labor members with meaningful influence over decision-making processes so vanishingly small, that in developing the talent for working effectively in the exclusivist party and factional structures where the votes aren’t in play and not much participation or open debate is wanted or needed a person doesn’t develop the skills to be effective in wider public contexts where most of the votes are in play. This is one theme of Rodney Cavalier’s book Power Crisis.
Nickws way upthread:
Rudd is playing ersatz populist politics. In his Brisbane presser, Rudd implored the people of Australia to keep those cards and letters coming in. He is borrowing that rhetoric from American politics where millions of people are already Democrats or Republicans. On the other hand, in Australia, the Collingwood Football Club has twice the members of the ALP.
If Rudd were a genuine populist in an Australian context, he would be imploring Australians to get off their bums and to join the party. Instead, Rudd borrows cheap and contentless rhetoric from a foreign political culture.
Rudd is little more than a bubble of egotistical hot air. It is appalling to me that the polls suggest that large numbers of Australians either fail to recognise this fact or recognise it and don’t care.
Listening to talkback radio demonstrates the appalling level of ignorance about the role of the PM within the Australian Constitution. Her role is to guarantee supply to the government. Nothing more and nothing less.
their concerted attacks on Rudd play in the eyes of the wider public
True, but they see Rudd as the Undead, and they have to kill him over and over and over to make sure he is gone once and for all.
OK let’s say for arguments sake that Rudd was a workaholic, control freak egotistical bastard when PM as we’ve been told so many times by his detractors. It is still, as a justification for his sacking, pathetically inadequate, because:
1. Nobody has explained why his sacking was the only option available. Did any of these heroes who only did this for the good of the party, ever summon up the courage to approach Rudd the monster, and seek to find other solutions.
2. It ignores the fact that Rudd’s achievements were considerable, and he was well on the way to becoming PM for a second term. Of course this is the real problem, but we are being led to believe that his sacking was for the good of the party and the country, that the government had lost its way etc etc. Forced to airbrush the government’s not inconsiderable achievements achievements under Rudd, Gillard’s been on the backfoot ever since.
Obviously we are being lead to believe that the brains trust were so tired of working for Rudd that they couldn’t think through some of the basic consequences of getting rid of him.
3. If he was so bad, how come they made him leader in the first place?
4. This week’s events have proven the character of many of his detractors with idiots like Swan prepared to trash what’s left of the Labor brand and provide the coalition with free advertising for the next election.
By contrast Rudd’s supporters have chosen not to dump on the PM.
5. Once again the view of the electorate are ignored or dismissed by the political class and the insiders, whose implicit view that they know best is maintained.
With manuy of these clowns, electoral defeat isn’t their greatest fear, that’s losing their power.
The PM should be the preener, the media tart, and the DEPUTY the negotiator and the dealer. To me this all smacks of a play for longer term power within the ALP. Gillard is a great negotiator and a great organiser as she is a trained lawyer. Rudd is a media tart and a big picture person who ran a state premiers office where he learned to micro manage. Being a hard task master is not outrageous IMO, and if thats all they can throw at Rudd… Where were the rest of the ‘kitchen cabinet’ while he was supposedly single handedly getting OOC? Plotting. Swann was kicked out of QLD Labor for branch stacking and other devious activities!! He is no rep of Labor values. The speak through their arses. Rudd would do better against Abbott, though my pick is that Shorten is on the up and up. Mark my words he will be kicking corpses out of the way whatever happens to ‘calmly’ assume what he believes is rightfully his….
@46
You should really take a look at what you’ve written because it makes it look like you only function was to blindly carry out you bosses wishes even when you new they were a waste of time. I’ve been in similar situations and I’ve offered that critque. Sometimes it works other times it doesn’t but at least you have a go. As I’ve said earlier, the dysfunction of the govt may have more to do with the inability of other in the govt to think of a creative solution to the “Rudd administrative style” problem. Other that to launch a disastrous coup that is. Basically I think that the situation was allowed to to bad so that Arbib and Co could carry out there long term plan, to return someone to the top job who was familiar with and accepting of ALP factional power relations. What about that LO, is it completely ridiculous? I would have thought that given the unhappiness that you’d have some knowledge of how the coup against Rudd developed?
Rudd was useless from day one and completely missed the opportunity to destroy the Liberal Party for a generation with double dissolution election over CPRS.
He was rightly dumped, and since then the media have been inflating his ego by constantly harping on about non-existent challenges and phoney polls about who would be the more popular PM Gillard or Rudd (hey, guess what, Noni Hazlehurst would be more popular than either). Finally the delusional world breaks through and we have a leadership spill.
Free piece of advice to the Labor Party, you can easily win the next election by constantly repeating ‘Vote Abbott and your internet connection will get slower and slower and soon you won’t be able to download anything, as the copper network cracks up with age. We need the NBN. Vote Labor for cheap, very fast internet’.
I think much of the visceral hatred of Rudd stems from the fact that, the moment they stop hating him, they will have to face up to their own stupidity and wrecking of the party, which is not easy.
su @ 65 – not only Rudd’s wife but his daughter did an interview too (with JJJ I think it was).
Katz @ 78 said:
He (and his daughter) have been asking for the general public to ring/email/whatever their local (presumably ALP) MP and tell them who they would prefer as PM. He knows he has pretty good public support (well more than Gillard anyway!)
If I heard correctly on the radio this morning (I was in the process of waking up) he has now publicly claimed that during the last leadership spill that backbenchers were threatened with losing preselection of their seats by the factions unless they supported Gillard. And he’s now asked Gillard to give backbenchers a guarantee they won’t be punished for not voting for her.
Look. Punters are completely within their rights to think that Rudd ran government more effective than the Gillard government. But they have no legitimate grounds for the assertion that there is a special relationship between the PM and the people. People are entitled to their own opinions but they are not entitled to their own facts.
In his quest for a return to the limelight, Rudd threatens to warp people’s understanding of the constitution. In more educated political cultures, this is called Caesarism or Bonaparteism. And they are dangerous tendencies.
If he was so bad, how come they made him leader in the first place?
Because (a) they were desperate to defeat Howard and Beazley would have led them to a fifth – count ‘em, five – consecutive loss (b) there was no one else (c) while they aware of some of his character flaws, since he had never been leader before, the worst ones were hidden from view
If Rudd had behaved like the early Hawke (who had an ever bigger ego than Rudd), letting his ministers act like ministers, that is, trust them to run their portfolios it all could have been so different. And Hawke had real, seasoned professionals running his office, men like Peter Barron, not wet behind the ears schoolboys.
Sam @79:
Or, for a Russian/Soviet history wonk like me, they are the loyal Tsarist nobles who are inflicting a triple redundancy assassination on Rasputin when the regime has already passed the point of no return.
Katz @ 86 – well people also think they vote for a party, but they don’t. Even for the senate an above the line vote is really just shorthand for not filling out the whole ballot manually. And if a person on the party ticket gets elected and decides to defect there’s nothing the party can do about it.
Hey I bet there’s lots of people not in Rudd’s electorate who thought they voted for him PM in 2007 too.
calyptorhynchus – Yep, promoting the NBN will get labor out of this mess. You’re not a labor strategist, are you (maybe Mark Arbib)?
Dave @ 84, I want to make clear that I have no visceral hatred of Rudd, and I don’t think that everyone who tells it how it was has either.
In writing this piece I sought to understand how Gillard came to the point where she thought a challenge was necessary. It was multifactorial and understandable for reasons other than ambition. (I’m not saying that ambition was not an element, but not a necessary one.)
Last year I thought it would be best if Gillard simply recognised that she was going nowhere, resigned and handed over to Rudd. That wasn’t in her nature and was never going to happen. Unfortunately the way Rudd and his supporters have gone about things since then is unhelpful to say the least.
One issue that comes up with both Rudd and Gillard is the poor quality and/or immaturity of the staffers intheir offices. They not only compare poorly to those who Hawke and Keating had around them, but also – and this is decisive – to those that Abbott has.
Abbott has been smart enough to retian at least some of the old hands from Howard’s day. Whereas at the ALP, every leadership change leads to a purge from top to bottom. And there have been five leadership changes in a decade by now, with a sixth by year’s end still very possible whatever happens on Monday.
Paul @ 88 – they’re in for some disappointment then, Rudd will probably still fight even if the only thing left is his head.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/gaming/asuras-wrath-gamers-fight-with-just-their-head-for-revenge/story-e6frfrt9-1226277072055
Paul 88
Laura Tingle is calling this the Battle of Stalingrad, with each side taking out the other with snipers. Not a bad analogy.
Ya-know, this all goes back to that deal Labor did that got Fielding elected to the senate. In retrospect they empowered the Greens more than ever with that piece of shonk. Well done Labor strategists! Haha.
I am so angry and disappointed with the behavior and comments of the PM and her team. They are behaving like a team of rabid dogs tearing strips of Kevin Rudd. What does this say about the character of Julia Gillard. As PM she has been entrusted with the care of the ALP and to promote and cherish the brand, instead, all she does is walk all over it and trash it.
From the Four Corners report, it appears that she was plotting for over 2 weeks to get rid of Rudd. Now with her actions – by allowing her ministers such as Crean to commence this whole distasteful saga, she has completely destroyed the Labor party. She may have her colleagues cheering her on but the people have lost all confidence in her.
No one but Gillard is to blame for where she now sits, deeply unpopular and not able to win the election.
While Rudd may have been a negative influence, to suggest that he is the root cause of the Government’s problems is laughable.
Rudd is the only person with an outside chance of beating Abbott next election. For me, that’s far more important than whether he wasn’t very nice to some Cabinet Ministers a few years ago.
The extent to which ministers have come out in support of the PM indicates that (for the time being), any push by Kevin Rudd is forestalled.
If Julia Gillard does well, from this point Kevin will be eventually spending much more time back in QLD.
If Gillard and some ministers continue to fumble in the way that Bernard Keane has described at Crikey, Rudd’s career will revive.
Labor appear to have worked out that they can “bank” him. He can stay and demonstrate his claim that he is a team-player, even if this grates, or he can leave and be cursed for it.
Personally, I hope he stays, provided he allows Gillard her last/ best chance and with good grace. His continued presence could be a reminder for those currently higher up the food chain that complacency could be fatal.
Hah – Oakeshott says he might move to Turnbull, but not Abbott.
GOLD!
Well, I don’t think Rudd can win the leadership, or Gillard can win the election. So they are both stuffed.
But just to give you an idea of what these bright sparks in the ALP Caucus might be condemning us to:-
ALP Conscription Split, 1917- Labor not back in office till late 1929. (12 years.)
Lang Split – c. 1931. Labor not back in office till 1941. (c. 10 years.)
The Great Split – c 1955/6 – Labor not back in office till 1972 (c.17 years.)
The Hawke/Keating Challenge Once out of office out for 12 years.
Now, this ain’t sobering. Its chilling.
And the headkicking has hardly started.
Adrian, presumably you mean ‘in public’…constantly backgrounding journalists, how they would pounce, next time she makes a mistake, is not exactly honourable behaviour.
well, thats a pretty important difference, actually. It means they arent writing Liberal Party election ads, like Swan, Crean, Burke & Conroy have been the past days.
Nick Champion, quitting his role as secretary of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party
Sam @94, not a bad analogy at all, especially considering that the Luftwaffe blitzkrieg helped to create the conditions which made the battle such a messy affair.
Preach it, Nick.
@58
“Being a barren spinster and all”
Low blow, not to mention paranoid.
@67
Bullshit right back at you, you think the coup was the magic bullet? The facts don’t match you rhetoric. The govts polling pre-coup was in line with historical norms. As Dave said, it was the worst move in Australian political history and will be the largest single factor in us having to endure PM Abbott.
Sorry … @68
Well the Bracks/Faulkner/Carr report contained a whole section on the leaks (and counterleaks, both sides were at it) of the ’10 election and said that those responsible were to be condemned. The idea that influencing the press off the record is somehow praiseworthy is outrageous. Swan completely played into both the Opposition’s and Rudd’s hands, it was ill-conceived and completely counterproductive, but we all get to make that judgement as voters because he did it in public, he wasn’t subverting democracy by manipulating journalistic confidentiality.
So the Faulkner/Bracks/Carr report and it’s recommendations might get to see the light of day after the next election?
Thanks for the history Paul, 3 election victories in a row for coming up for Abbott- imagine that?
Paul 98
Predicting how long a party will be in opposition is always difficult, because things can so quickly, but four terms is probably about right.
What does this mean, LP readers?
It means that if you have a child just starting school, he/she will be finished school by the time the Liberals are out of power. Hoping for a better public school system for your children. Forget it. Maybe for your grandchildren.
It means that Australia will do nothing on climate change before the climate has really changed for the worse (and probably not even then).
It means that if you are now or about to enter the age where your health starts to deteriorate, you choice will be a crumbling public system or an expensive private one.
And a whole lot more.
@71
“here seems to be a view here that if Rudd had been left in place things would have been just fine”
This is bullshit as far as I’m concerned. My gripe is that all you best and brightest couldn’t find a way to deal with an allegedly difficult situation. To me it smacks of arse covering, a really poor decision was made for selfish reasons and now we, the public, are expected to believe the retrospective justification. Honestly, it’s juvenile.
I find the tone of these threads completely puzzling. I haven’t read LP for a long time but in the days when I did, I was under the impression there was more support for the Greens than for the ALP. Yet most of these comments are deploring the demise of Labor. Well folks you can’t have one without the other: Labor is not going to quietly decline into obscurity while the Greens supplant it in nice orderly fashion. Sooner or later the ALP is going to have to fracture if the Greens (or a new progressive party/coalition) are going to become a viable alternative to the Libs. Plaintive suggestions that perhaps (union hack) Shorten or (union hack) Combet can ride to the rescue just show how many people are unable to envisage an institutional future that isn’t pretty much identical to the past.
Rudd’s actions are unarguably a great development for anyone who wants the corrupt dysfunctional bunch of union hacks that constitutes today’s ALP to get out of the way and make room for a decent progressive party. Anyone who thought this could happen without a lot of trauma was living in fantasy land. It’s interesting to speculate about whether Rudd knows what he is doing (I am sure he does) and what the implications are but it’s not really germane to the important issues. He’s destroyed the Gillard Government and good on him – now let’s get through the unavoidable pain of building a new progressive movement as quickly as we can.
LO @ 55 and other talking about the factions. As LO points out, cabinet ministers are important factional players, in fact the most important part of their factions. It’s the cabinet ministers who make decisions in the cabinet, after all.
Bob Carr’s ‘genius’ (if you want to call it that) in NSW was to use Cabinet as a way to circumvent factional politics (i.e. to overrule them). Cabinet would make a decision, say to privatise electricity assets, and it was the job of Cabinet ministers to arm twist their relevant faction into obedience. That’s why after he left, the NSW party fell to bits – the factions tried to reassert their control of the NSW government and in their attempt to do so, did things like bounce policy decisions, or trash the leader when they could not do that.
I don’t see Rudd promising to reform the way party membership works, how conference works, how unions are affiliated and how much vote they get at conference. If you’re serious about “getting rid of the factions” (as if normal party members aren’t members of factions!) then those are the things you’ve got to be talking about. Not manufacturing subsidies. The last federal ALP leader to propose anything like this was Crean, BTW.
And Faulkner is no white knight either. He’s a leading member of (gasp) a Faction!
You’ll also note that the factions are split. Plibersek and Albanese support Gillard (I am counting Albo for Gillard if Tanya is also for Gillard), Cameron and Faulkner are for Rudd. The same sort of thing on the right.
@81
Good effort Adrian but I fear we are dealing with a zombie meme. The rush to endorse LOs somewhat insubstantial evidence of the alleged impossibility of dealing with the alleged dysfunction other than by a coup is a symptom of the rapture.
Looks to me like they are getting a few matters off their chest. I find it quite refreshing. Kev was let off the hook after the election for the part he played in subverting it and actually given a job and a chance. He has abused the trust he was given.
Everything aint about the next election and who will win it.
Isn’t this of a kin to those Trotskyites who used to cackle whenever capitalism did something bad to poor people, because it brings the day of revolution closer?
How is twenty-five years of conservative rule going to “fix” the left in this country?
“I believe that Gillard never got legitimacy because of the underhanded way she removed Rudd.”
But it wasn’t as underhand as is generally made out. Rudd had the opportunity to put his support to the test of a vote but was too gutless to do so because a vote would have shown how little support he had. By denying the party a vote and handing the leadership to Gillard he could pretend to be the great martyr who was ousted by the faceless men when in fact he was ousted because he lacked the support to win a leadership ballot.
One issue that comes up with both Rudd and Gillard is the poor quality and/or immaturity of the staffers in their offices.
That’s unfair on Gillard. It’s not as though anyone in Gillard’s office showed such poor judgement as to spread information that would ultimately lead to a riot*, trapping both the PM and Opposition Leader.
Oh, wait ….
* That’s how it was perceived, which is what matters
Another ballot in June, Gillard loses, Rudd wins, election called, Abbott wins. Replaced by Turnbull before two terms.
Garrett becomes next PM of drastically reworked ALP in yeah, groan, 7-10 years time.
Gillard retires after June, brokenhearted, career finished to mend her severely troubled soul (which she doesn’t actually believe she has). Cooks, travels and reads lots of books she wished she’d read many years ago.
Or Jacques sitting back with his popcorn and a fag.
adrian @ 81
“3. If he was so bad, how come they made him leader in the first place?”
So he could slyly impersonate Tony Abott and out vote Howard. Now we have Tony Abbott for real, an impersonator won’t work.
Kev was let off the hook after the election
Gillard should have left him on the back bench. Why didn’t she? Because she thought, probably with great justification, that he would have quit his seat.
Garrett becomes next PM of drastically reworked ALP in yeah, groan, 7-10 years time.
Comedy gold.
Garrett? Garrett? Mark Latham has a better chance.
Sam, ever thought she might have had enough compassion to give him a chance rather than crush him like you do in hairy chested manly politics?
KEN – L: Excellent analysis. And that is obviously why (it appears) John Faulkner is siding with Rudd.
Wonder if the fate of the Labor Party will be like the fate of the Liberal Party in the UK early in the last century when Labor (in this case the greens) appeared on its left flank. In that case, the Liberals drifted off into middle-ground irrelevance.
PatrickB if Rudd was such a marvel at politics explain the debacle over the minerals super profits tax? That was Rudd’s watch, after he abandoned the ‘greatest moral issue of our time’ and then introduced a crackingly good policy in the most cack-handed way possible, as badly as anything Gillard’s done, and created a shit-storm around himself and his government. He never explained himself clearly. He tried repeated to use the CPRS to wedge Turnbull, in such a way that brought Abbot to the leadership of the LNP and had his legislation utterly ruined in the Senate. And *then* he just fucking squibbed it, when he should have brought the Greens into the process, or just pulled the double dissolution trigger. No, but instead he veered wildly off like the space shuttle Columbia and picked another fight with someone else and acted surprised with – and looked totally unprepared for – the counter-reaction it set off.
It’s quite clear to me that Rudd’s policy process was completely dysfunctional.
The evidence is right in front of you.
Joe 2, if that was her thinking, more fool her. You don’t feed that hand that bites you. In restrospect, after the leaks during the campaign, giving him the FM job was madness.
Tyro Rex 127 nails it.
Well said Ken.
TYRO REX – Ken L’s point (which you totally ignore) is that the Labor Party isn’t on the left. True, it’s enacted some left-leaning policies (because it’s found itself in a minority govt), but Julia and her crew are basically right-wing.
The progressive forces will only have to wait 25 years if nothing is done now.
TYRO – REX: Last newspoll before Rudd got axed he was up 52-48. That is a superlative number from a mid-term, first-term PM (if you understand politics at all). Julia hasn’t been close in almost 18 months.
‘Isn’t this of a kin to those Trotskyites who used to cackle whenever capitalism did something bad to poor people, because it brings the day of revolution closer?’
Ummmm no. It is of a kin to those students of history who know that in order for a new political institution to grow, one of the existing institutions has to decline, and that this is seldom an orderly or painless process. Unless of course you deny the possibility of any change ever occurring to our existing two party system, presumably on the grounds that nothing like that has ever occurred before.
Of course we could just pin our hopes on a Shorten-led ALP opposition. I’m sure that will advance the interests of social democrats just as effectively as the Robertson-led ALP opposition in NSW. Talk about a Labor revival!
The ALP is dead. It is no more. It’s ceased to be. People who don’t like the idea of a Coalition government can either recognise reality and see what can be done to build a new set of political institutions, or write comments on the internet bewailing the incompetence and venality of the ALP while apparently waiting for it to go into spontaneous remission. Only one of those options seems sensible to me.
KEN – L: Hate agreeing with you so much, but I do. I envisage an ALP-Green coalition somewhere down the track. The ALP won’t be able to stand on its own, but centre-left voters might not want to go all of the way to the greens.
I’m a south Aussie and I’d never even heard of Nick Champion before. Without the ABC putting his pic up he would really have been a faceless man to me. Is he the only SA Labor pollie backing Rudd?
Interesting thing about Champion is that he has a background in the SDA.
Nick Champion holds an extremely marginal seat. Interestingly enough, he was also a long time employee of the SDA under one Don Farrell. I suspect that Nick’s decision is related to the fact that if Gillard remains leader he will almost certainly be turfed out whenever the election takes place. Although I have a strong preference for Gillard personally I think there is little doubt that Kevin would have a better chance of beating Abbott (well, at least that was the case until his public roasting over the past few days).
@137 SNAP!
Dave @ 133. I did not mention polling. It is irrelevant to my argument.
As for the ALP not being to the left. If you define “left” as “progressive”. Which the ALP isn’t – and it never was and nor does it pretend to be so. It is a party of the Labour Movement. Which the Greens are not.
And the Greens are neither without their reactionary elements, nor factions. And some of their allies in some of their battles are not people I’d stand up on stage with; as Bob Brown did with Katter and Jones. Not only did he stand up on stage with them, he said the same things too. This is CEC territory. The Greens could express their opposition to CSG without the ‘lock the gate’ invented property rights rhetoric of the extreme right. But, they do not. No thanks on that. And what about their national organisation. Or complete lack thereof. States right’s, much? Where does that ideology come from?
As for Ken’s students of history, of which I am actually and very literally exactly one of, I don’t buy it. Well I understand the argument. But I do not agree its inevitable or desirable. “Things have to get worse before they get better”. OK, then, I vote we let international capitalism totally fuck the country over. Then we’ll get to nationalise the banks! Well, what’s left of them.
To fix the problem the ALP needs membership and administrative reform. But it’s ok if you want to put that into the too-hard too-much-work basket, and just gloat over twenty years of Prime Minister Abbott, if you like. Because that will really fix the country’s problems once Prime Minister Larrissa Waters finally takes over the smoking hole in the ground that’s left and appoints Bob Brown president.
In fact I think that lower-house proportional representation would be a good step in the right direction in loosening the two-party system without just handing over the country to a reactionary B.A. Santamaria acolyte and his know-nothing dunderheads colleagues.
Oh. And just uow I see the connection to the ‘shut the gate’ rhetoric. Is there a faction of the Greens party that wants Prime Minister Abbott?
Btw, have people taken a look at the lists of likely Gillard and Rudd voters? I wouldn’t say that the list of Rudd supporters is exactly made up of Labor’s best and brightest….
Ken_L is right. In the long run this may be beneficial, just that some of us still cling to the wreckage of what the ALP once was or could have been.
With all due respect, what Labour Movement?
TR I don’t put ‘membership and administrative reform … into the too-hard too-much-work basket’. It’s already there; the ALP put it there without the need for my intervention. So I conclude it ain’t gonna happen. If there is evidence to the contrary I’ve not seen it. Why would union careerists voluntarily sacrifice the only institutional source of power they still control? The person who said “Out of a sense of public duty” please STFU, this is too serious to make jokes.
And ‘lower-house proportional representation’?? I mean this is just desperation. If you are a student of history you must know the chances of any such change are precisely nil, at least until AFTER the current duopoly on law-making has been broken. Let’s at least try to deal with the situation as it is without resorting to “First assume a can opener” type arguments.
JEREMY – You mean John Faulkner isn’t one of Labor’s best and brightest, and Mark Arbib is. Hang on while I stop laughing.
Btw, have people taken a look at the lists of likely Gillard and Rudd voters? I wouldn’t say that the list of Rudd supporters is exactly made up of Labor’s best and brightest….
Quite the opposite, which really is a testament to how much of a pain in the arse he must have been to work with, largely. But this said, caucus needs to consider if they are voting for themselves, or for their voters?
Because, at the moment – much like the incredibly stupid decisions to roll him in the first place – it seems far too much to be the former not the latter.
It is indisputable that Rudd is both more popular with the electorate, and more likely to beat Abbott in an election, even with their pursued nuclear option.
Every day that goes by makes an eventual third candidate more likely in my opinion. The question is whether they will be a PM or Opposition Leader, i.e. how much are the cretins that deposed Rudd willing to sacrifice in order to pretend it was a good idea, and how long before they cede to reality?
Well at least The Shun* is helping
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/contacts-for-federal-parliamentarians/story-fn7x8me2-1226279909276
with a list of MPs to contact.
*Post paywall moniker?
Breaking on the ABC, Gillard has announced that she’s standing down and won’t recontest!
Wow.
I don’t know Jeremy Lawson, I’ve always regarded John Faulkner as a person of great integrity and ability.
He also knows more than most about the workings of the ALP, apart from Labour Outsider of course.
@127
“such a marvel at politics”
I didn’t say that, I don’t know how you actually measure it. The point is the cackhandedness is largely on the part of those members of the govt who were unable to stop the plot against Rudd. It was far too risky and almost guaranteed to fail as a strategy for creating a period of ALP ascendency. An alternative should have been worked out that saw Rudd to the scheduled election after which more drastic measures could have been taken less dramatically. I would say that Rudd’s failures on policy are far outweighed by the handing of govt. back to the Abbott lead LNP. And it’s not as though the current ALP govt. has a flawless legislative and policy CV.
Breaking on the ABC, Gillard has announced that she’s standing down and won’t recontest!
Wow.
Can anyone confirm this? Went to ABC 24 website, nothing to this effect.
The ALP is not a working class party any more. It now is controlled by union hacks with the collapse in membership in factions. With the narrowing of gene pool in the party. They have stop Rudd from getting the top job and keep Gillard in.
Tyro asked of Lovell’s remark:
He’s destroyed the Gillard Government and good on him – now let’s get through the unavoidable pain of building a new progressive movement as quickly as we can.
That’s a caricature of Trotskyist approaches to politics. We were absolutely opposed to anything that subverted the capacity of workers to act expressly in their own interests as a class, though we did not fail to note when the logic of capitalism ended in harm to the class.
In any event, applying that to the vicissitudes of the ALP, a near moribund political structure in which layers of the labour bureaucracy jockey for the role of arbiter between one fraction or another of the boss class and working people is quite wrong. The relationship between the parliamentary ALP and anything recognisable as the class interest of working people is for all practical purposes, dead, and in my experience is rarely asserted these days even by ostensible ALP advocates. Neither composition of the caucus, nor their declared perspectives are in any meaningful way different from those of the offical boss class party, the LNP. The party itself has been in serious membership decline for two decades and one suspects that even some of this membership is of doubtful standing.
Essentially, the ALP is an exercise in political marketing aimed at largely middle to slightly lower middle income people trading on centre-right populist visions of authentic “Australia”. The only real contrast with its more reactionary LNP rivals is the willingness of the ALP to tolerate more liberal elements within its ranks and pretend to interest in milque-toast liberal concerns. When push comes to shove though, the boss class always gets its way.
That’ll teach you to believe anything Sam says!
April fool.
Agree with Tyro regarding the problems for the Greens if they pursue the CSG issue down the property rights path. It’s a similar problem to the difficulty I have with what Greens reps were saying at a biodiversity and the law conference I was at this year. Tying more privileges to non-indigineous land title is an extremely problematic area for me, and as a consequence I am becoming less and less likely to vote Greens again.
Y gotta hand it to Rudd, he’s an effective campaigner.
Fed MPs are shocked at the number of calls they are getting urging them to back Kev in the vote.
Funny thing is some of the MPs are Lib/Nat.. hahaha
Oh, sam, good one!
@patrickg
nothing on twitter and my source in Canberra says ‘rubbish’. Seems like you are the lone voice atm.
@furiousbalancing – if you have time and inclination to go into further details about privileges/land title on a Sat Salon thread I’d be interested to know more.
“Rudd’s popularity” is almost entirely an artifact of the media and its stupid false polling (“Who would make a better of the ALP, Gillard, Rudd…. or Mickey Mouse”).
You can bet that if Rudd was leader again the media would destroy his popularity just as it manufactured it to destroy Gillard.
Sam @ 80: Rudd as the Labor Undead. First bellylaugh I’ve had out of this!
furious balancing and tyro rex – re CSG and alliances with landed conservatives: it’s all about the politics of the united front and position.
That said, however, genuine Australian fascism will come from that direction if at all. That is, an alliance of conservatives and social reactionaries who manage to capture a fraction of environmental credibility. See the “landscape guardians” as a start. So, instead of 4×4′s with ugly maps of Australia on the back of them stating ‘fuck off we’re full’ we’d be more likely to see a Dombrovskis style photo with the script ‘no thanks, we’re full’. Or a man mounted on a horse, sitting on a headland peering out to see, the three ought clearly visible, with the script ‘ours to defend’. Tall gum trees and a rising sun would help as well.
And no, I’m not kidding.
You can bet that if Rudd was leader again the media would destroy his popularity just as it manufactured it to destroy Gillard.
Oh this is just nonsense; I wish people weren’t so blindly partisan. The media don’t give a shit if it’s Rudd or Gillard; they go hard, when and how they can. The fact that Gillard gave terrible media performances – for better and worse it’s an important skill for politicians – and the public is not keen on her is not Rudd’s fault, not the media’s fault, etc. It is her and her cabinet’s fault. For better and for worse.
Further, who are these gullible fools blindly drinking in media lines? Honestly, the influence some lefties put on media, it’s like Invasion of The Bodysnatchers territory. They’re not omnipotent, and they can’t click their fingers and put thoughts in people’s heads. Media influence is far more nuanced than these kind of narratives allow.
Do you expect the media to go hard and when they can on Tony Abbott patrickg? I haven’t seen any evidence of it so far, except for the one occassion where Abbott had so much trouble keeping himself in control he was shaking. That’s a good look for a PM, not.
Mindy @ 162 – every now and then the media try to poke the Turbull/Abbott leadership fires. If Abbott becomes PM he’ll get a lot more attention and scrutiny. Rudd didn’t get a whole lot as opposition leader, if anything the media loved him.
I know that this is a bit meta but a commenter called Jeremy Lawson posted on the 1st spill thread claiming to be Labor Outsider, I don’t mind if that is the case, but since LO has commented here under his old ‘nym I’m now confused. If they are both you LO do you think you could reintegrate for the sake of clarity?
Do you expect the media to go hard and when they can on Tony Abbott patrickg?
Yes, I do, and they have. Goodness, think of how much (deserved) ridicule he cops for parading around in his togs, and his silly hard-hat photo ops. There is no conspiracy, honestly.
Unfortunately this is not about Tony Abbott anymore.
The media has always been biased against Labor and presumably always will be. This is a fact of life. Rudd managed to overcome it for a while, but then allowed himself to become spooked by the relentless negativity and started apologising for things when he should have gone on the attack.
Unfortunately Gillard has been spooked from day one, and never has had and never will have the connection with the people (you know the mob that vote) that Rudd has to this day.
The fact that most of these Labor insiders seem to think this inconvenient fact can be overlooked or ignored tells you all you need to know about them.
Certain electoral defeat v the possibility of success and working with someone you can’t stand and admitting you were wrong.
You know which option these fools will choose every time.
Yeah, sorry. I’ve been going back and forth about whether to retain the pseudonym. I guess it is a bit redundant now!
Oops, didn’t mean to force the issue, I was concerned there may have been an impostor!
This glosses over several issues, not only Gillard’s media performance which patrickg has raised.
At the moment the negative statements about Rudd emanating from every Gillard supporter in her Cabinet are so personal that even if they win power, the reputation of the whole will be damaged in the electorate’s eyes. The point is not whether or not they are true; they are politically suicidal.
Labor can’t blame the media for firing the bullets if its own ministers keep giving them the ammunition.
No problems. As I said on the other thread, I worked for Kevin for 4 months in the run-up to the 2007 election and wrote quite a bit of the climate change related policies. After I left Rudd’s office I went back to work for the Reserve Bank and it would have been inappropriate for me to post under my own name there. It was similar when I moved on to the OECD. Now that I’m working in the private sector it doesn’t matter quite so much. Unless anyone objects, I think I will keep posting under LO just to make things a little less obvious and potentially create fewer problems for me with future jobs..
@adrian – it’s more than not wanting to work with someone you can’t stand. Senior ministers should not have to get on planes to get some time with the PM. They could not work with him and they tried. Instead of trying to protect him when he was rolled, they should have just told the truth at the time – Rudd was a bully and a micromanager. Kim Carr supports him now because he lost out quite publicly under Gillard. He’s out to get his own back, and I don’t blame him for that although I do wish that someone, anyone, would put the party first. But we are well past that. As someone clever said on twitter or FB – the Labor leadership is like a circular firing squad at the moment.
I know people have been saying that John Faulkner is supporting Rudd and this means something – what it means is that John Faulkner and Julia Gillard have not liked each other for a very long time.
The Greens could express their opposition to CSG without the ‘lock the gate’ invented property rights rhetoric of the extreme right. But, they do not.
Yes, the whole “Lock the Gate” movement is overturning the old property law model, where under certain circumstances, mining leases could be considered independent from agricultural/pastoral leases over the same part of the land. But that’s because the model’s seriously flawed, because CSG is one situation where the byproducts from one resource is damaging another. It’s not like getting diamonds 2km down.
When the facts change, I change my model. Perhaps getting a new model from the LaRouchites is not the best idea: do you have a better one up your sleeves?
Further, the startling level of political ineptitude shown by Gillard and her supporters since day one, has reached (hopefully) its height with the unprecedented public dumping of a colleague by senior ministers.
The point isn’t whether or not these allegations are true, but what it says about the people that are making them, and what the consequences of making these statements will be. Just as these idiots failed to realise the consequences of dumping a popular PM before an election, they have again failed to realise that the vitriol directed at Rudd will have the potential to destroy the party.
Whomever devised this brilliant strategy was no doubt the same person/s who devised the coup in the first place.
Mindy, see my point 1 @ 81 above. I don’t care how bad it was supposed to be, I refuse to believe that the coup was the only option.
It was obviously a post-coup rationalisation because the whole thing makes no kind of sense otherwise.
John Mendoza interview about Rudd.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-24/john-mendoza-interview/3850764
He’s running on Monday – confirmed.
@adrian I’m not trying to convince you anymore, I’m just curious what you think they should have done and why you don’t think they might have actually tried it?
Interesting – he says he is not going to run a 2nd time.
(Ill believe that when I see it.)
He’s running. Looks like you were all right and I was wrong. He’s going the Latham wrecking ball thing to see if he can break through.
Egg on my face much. I’m going to go read that David Marr piece in this morning’s SMH and see if there’s anything I can learn.
David Burchell.
I will go out on a limb, here, and say that we are very lucky with our system of government ; a P.M., who has been found to have lost his marbles can be despatched by his colleagues. That is the great advantage of not electing the executive directly.
The Liberals should switch from Abbott before he gets another crack at the top job. It would not be good to see a repeat of the Rudd meltdown, because it is very clear he is similarly populist with no substance and not just a bit loopy.
@180 tssk, and I sincerely mean this with affection, but whenever I want some idea of what is likely to happen, I read your predictions and assume the opposite. This usually sees me right!
Burchell is correct. The more out in the open the Rudd story becomes the better. They have been far too protective of this malicious man.
Could we keep the fanboyism to Pollbludger commenters thanks.
I thought that was your stamping ground Paine, the other.
Lefty E @ 179 – I don’t believe Rudd either on whether he will run again or not, especially after commenting this morning on making unbelievable promises. If the numbers start to look good (and I expect he’ll lose by a fair margin on Monday) then he’ll try again.
Monday will not put an end to ALP leadership speculation.
Well usually you get a less emotional and more thoughtful comments here, which I like to read and find interesting. I don’t often comment as I can’t add much to what is being said.
Anyone running a book on how long the media will wait before ramping up the leadership speculation again?
Mindy @ 189 – I’ll take a bet on Tuesday
That’s mighty unfriendly, by way of implication, Thomas. I think it just that you have a rather high and mighty regard for your own opinions.
Chris, you beat them to it.
Yeah joe2, amongst the other crap we’re supposed to believe is the notion that the likes of Swan saved us from the details of Rudd’s alleged dysfunction out of a sense of regard for him, they wanted to protect him after all.
FFS, how stupid do you think we are?
adrian, did you listen to John Mendoza @176? Swan is not the only one.
And frankly, it is not easy, when you have worked with someone in a senior position to your own is falling apart and incapable of keeping up with the job. I think it is clear they should not have been so protective.
But you obviously see things quite differently to me.
I thought his presser this arvo was very good. Fluid, conversational, and did a better job of spruiking his government in about 15 minutes than they have in a year. Interesting contrast,
Rudd: I can beat Tony Abbott we should be proud of our record.
Gillard: Rudd is a poopy-pants and my our record is mixed cause he ruined everything.
His positivity is alluring I contend, and I was most surprised to see him say he would stand down if he lost – because I think he will lose, but equally I think there is no way Gillard will lead the party to 2013 election. His ability to handle the media remains so much stronger than the rest of the party, imho, whatever his other flaws.
Agree with you Joe 2, that
It’s good to hear that somehow Rudd has been persuaded to front up to the vote on Monday, and agreed to the same terms as the PM and to accept the result as final. Presumably he has been convinced by someone that he’s in with a chance.
Interesting – he says he is not going to run a 2nd time.
Anyone who believes that is an idiot.
Rudd believes his own lunchbox legends. He dodged the question re whether he would challenge again, instead intimating that he will only need to wait until the caucus file into the back bench and restore him to his rightful position after the untrustworthy PM has further failed in implementing policy. Very dodgy presser.
Thanks patriciawa it is nice to get a favourable review, here, for a change.
Very true generally, patrickg. But it’s not part of the narrative, so let’s ignore it.
Mindy@178. I don’t know what they should have done because I don’t know how bad it supposedly is. But there are always other options than the worst one, unless your objective is something else entirely.
Look, my take is that neither Rudd nor Gillard are covering themselves in glory here. Especially not Swan. Rudd should never have been rolled in the first place.
But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a policy chaos zone.
And that doesn’t mean I don’t think he should be challenging for the job now. He’s an idiot for doing so, and for backgrounding the media on the issue. So I don’t support Rudd now, just as I didn’t support Gillard then. So Gillard it is, they made the bed, they have to lie in it. And in policy terms, apart from one or two areas, I agree with the thrust of what they are doing. So politically I just have to hope that good policy can win out in the end. I see burning no reason right now to dump Gillard, especially not in this manner. Two wrongs do not make a right.
And what I won’t do, is celebrate this whole grubby affair by celebrating that a minor third party might end up as the major centre-left political group, and perhaps one day hold executive power, after 20 years of conservative rule have passed. If you were really committed to building a Labor alternative, then build it. But don’t hope that the rest of the country is in the fucking sewer while you do it.
It’s a tragedy. It will fuck the country for a decade.
Hang on is he running or not? I can’t get a clear answer from the media.
Mercurius @ 183. I still think Abbott will be PM shortly. I hope my pattern continues and I’m dead wrong!
@Tyro Rex 140
Oh, come on.
Didn’t Michael O’Connor (Labor, mentor of JG) literally share a podium with John Howard back in 2004?
Some of us greenies do have memories, you know.
Kev: “I will serve as member for Griffith” … he could do that as an independent, pourrait-il pas? Griffith burghers would still vote for him, no wukkas, his super would stay intact, not to mention …
On a side note: police just raided the the Palm Beach house of the “graphic design and printing business …reported to have provided credit cards to the to HSU former general secretary Craig Thomson and the union’s head Michael Williamson”. Talk about a swinging carcass…,
I like the way he got stuck Into Abbott.
There’s no comparison between him and Gillard in this respect.
Nick Champion is a big fan of welfare quarantining:
http://news-review-messenger.whereilive.com.au/news/story/mps-campaign-to-control-northern-welfare-payments/
joe2, I usually seek out your name and Brian’s among others when I come here to browse. I have a feeling that Brian has come to a similar p.o.v. as ours as the story has unfolded.
Let’s trust that both of us are right here, and that sanity will prevail on Monday, not through good luck but good management. I think we can have a reasonably worry free weekend now.
adrian @ 205 – Rudd in the last couple of days spoke very well about his handling of the GFC. Something the ALP was unable or unwilling to do at the last election, presumably because it was too close to dumping Rudd.
And on a different note Stephen Smith, although firmly supporting Gillard has been very moderate in his criticism of Rudd. Is he keeping out of the dirt with an eye on a challenge himself before the next election? There we are, I’m speculating on the next leadership spill before this one is over….
People in the Gillard camp who have been smart: Smith, Plibersek, Combet, Shorten, Albanese.
People in the Gillard camp who have been stupid: Swan, Conroy (no surprises with either of them), Crean (surprised me a bit, at least at first), Roxon (only one to offer to sacrifice her Ministerial position if Rudd wins).
Even Swan, Crean and Conroy appear to be planning to retain their Ministries. Shorten may even gt a promotion.
Paul @ 181
Why on earth has David Burchell weighed in? Talk about someone who keeps misreading his Gramsci.
There is no way on Gaia’s green earth that Swan stays as Treasurer if Rudd wins.
But since Rudd has got 32 votes max in a caucus of 102 it’s all rather academic.
@195
I heard him this morning, I think it was the Brisbane airport press conference and he laid into Abbott. It was great stuff, Combet has in fact taken a similar rhetorical line but gets no coverage. If Gillard and co were capable of putting the Keating-que boot in they might find that they endear themselves to us a little more. Even David Marr said that Gillard’s effort in Adelaide “a stump speech of staggering tedium”.
Why on earth has David Burchell weighed in?
The same reason Eva Cox has. Because he can.
Sam, what if he gets to 40?
they endear themselves to us a little more
Yes, the LP rusted-on Greens are a key constituency.
Terry, If he gets 40, he still loses, and Swan is still Treasurer.
The normal narrative with these things is that the challenger needs >x votes to stay credible for the next challenge. Not with the Undead Rudd, however. Even if the only vote he got was his own, he’d still think that it was only a matter of time before caucus realised the error of his ways and re-installed him to his rightful place.
This is why nothing will change after Monday until a third candidate emerges and both Rudd and Gillard are disptched.
Helen :”Didn’t Michael O’Connor (Labor, mentor of JG) literally share a podium with John Howard back in 2004?”
Howard is no way equivalent to the Citizen’s Electoral Council.
Rudd has offered the caucus the right to elect the ministry, as evidence that he has changed.
Ho, ho, ho. “Too late”, she cried, “as she waved her wooden leg”.
Mind you, I don’t know what Gillard has to offer, other than she isn’t Rudd.
Rudd offered the caucus the right to elect the ministry because the left faction demanded it of him in return for support.
Didn’t Michael O’Connor (Labor, mentor of JG)
I thought they were a tad closer than mentor and protégé.
Fairfax has Albanese as “leaning Rudd” and Plibersek in the Gillard camp. I would have to say that is very surprising.
Not surprising about Albo. I think he has publicly backed the loser in every leadership contest since he entered the Parliament.
Gillard’s 4 pm EST presser was very impressive. Finally, she has dropped that pandering tone that dripped with disingenuousness. Instead, she was hard-edged and candid.
This crisis may be the making of her as an effective leader in a mature democracy.
Keep it up, Gillard.
Not surprising about Plibersek, either. Although she has not been as foolish as Roxon.
I also think Craig Emerson was a “mentor and protege” of Julia’s, back in the day.
Yes, its hard not to see Gillard’s job application interview as the best available by far.
Bernard Keane in Crikey today:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/02/24/keane-labors-rotten-core-needs-the-leadership-implosion/
Rudd offered the caucus the right to elect the ministry because the left faction demanded it of him in return for support.
The left faction includes Wong, Plibersek and Macklin, who are all backing Gillard.
Over looking the real questions and quite likely situation.
What if in 6 months polls are 45/55 or worse, in 8 months, in 12 months.
What if in 2 months polls are 42/58 – and Rudd’s support levels are still stellar.
Is the right faction going to pour petrol over itself before an election? Well yes I guess if their power is safe.
We live in a post-ideological age where performativity is the prevailing norm.
So getting things done, as opposed to endless press anouncements, conforms to the norm of outcome-orientation.
On current polling, they’ll suffer the sort of defeat likely to leave them out of office for two terms.
That must be two terms in dog years. They’ll be in opposition for well over a decade.
What if in 6 months polls are 45/55 or worse?
They will be. Enter PM Shorten.
Gillard herself is from the left but look at Rudd’s core support in NSW and Victoria and you’ll see the leftists I’m referring to.
JdM@206: thanks. I rang
And what I won’t do, is celebrate this whole grubby affair by celebrating that a minor third party might end up as the major centre-left political group, and perhaps one day hold executive power, after 20 years of conservative rule have passed. If you were really committed to building a Labor alternative, then build it. But don’t hope that the rest of the country is in the fucking sewer while you do it.
I hear you. But most progressively-minded people these days see the ALP as only a means to the end – often conceded grudgingly through gritted teeth. That they are often a means against the end is not lost on a lot of people in the community. Look at the Nick Champion info provided by JdM@206.
I’m not celebrating the Greensapocalypse, whether it’s imminent or arrives after a 20 year delay. They’re also a means to an end. Unfortunately for the ALP, they seem to be more certain of where they want to arrive than either Gillard or Rudd.
People talk about the infinitesimal policy differences between the pair of them; it’s all irrelevant. The only policy differences involved are whether their policies have to pass the Greens in the Senate or not.
[ I think we can have a reasonably worry free weekend now.]
Good, Patricia. I will tune out of radio and tv and listen to my new Beatles box set. Ya know Kevin reminds me of a dentist for some reason. Just saying.
The Ferguson brothers are split, which is sort of interesting. Marn is for Rudd and Laurie is leaning Ranga.
There’s a Nielsen poll in the Smage tomorrow. Is there going to be a Newspoll? Where are these things leaked first? Pollbludger? Possum?
Hey Lorax, are you the same Lorax who posts at macrobusiness?
I’m loving Plibersek. She left a tweet late night asking whether Eleanor Dashwood was the greatent female character in literature, or something like that.
Eleanor Dashwood, sensible, hard-working under-valued. Could that be code for Gillard?
Kate Ellis also tweeted; “Did someone call me a ‘faceless man’ this morning?”.
Sam @ 237: Perhaps, but my persona differs depending on the blog
Gillard; :” This is not Big Brother”
True, it’s Biggest Loser.
Retweeted by Tim Hollo about 1/2 hour ago: “Morgan Poll puts Greens at record high of 14.5 % of national vote. Coalition on 41.5 and Labor on 37. 2PP 52/48 #auspol #respill”
I don’t understand this obsession with “Rudd is the only one who can beat Abbott”.
The next election is not due for 18 months…anything at all can happen.
To change leaders now based solely on opinion polling at the mid point of the electoral term is insanity.
I thought this was a great site and read it religiously and commented a bit.
I got put off this site by the cowards that run it giving up at the last election and you have never forgiven that damn woman who went on to win it then introduce al the reforms Rudd squibbed and more.
Apparently you are all rooting for Rudd. Rudd the autocrat and micromanager. If he wins we will have an election in a couple of months and not only will Abbott be PM he can unwind and rescind all the reforms with ease.
The worst-ever Australian PM vs the second worst.
Hmm.
Nice choice! Hope Gillard wins: better the ALP has a totally and completely worthless blithering numpty than a mere completely worthless blithering numpty.
They’ll spend longer out of power that way and be unable to squander $100 million a day on nothing. Hope Abbott has the sense to pass the baton after four terms in office, though.
it seems each generation has to relearn the lesson Whitlam taught us about the ALP.
Yikes! The ALP has lost Barrie Cassidy?
Andrew Probyn says…
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/opinion/post/-/blog/andrewprobyn/post/205/comment/1
Cmon joe2, this is getting tedious, and I admit that I’ve contributed to the tedium.
It’s not about Gillard great, Rudd terrible or vice versa, it’s about the future of progressive politics in Australia. Whoever’s side you’re on in this little stoush there’s little doubt the ALP’s stuffed.
The ALP ‘lost Barrie Cassidy’ about 1992. Do try to keep up.
I think even the ALP decided they couldn’t be bothered finding him.
Apparently you are all rooting for Rudd.
Really?
It’s about the future of progressive politics in Australia
No it isn’t, because the future of progressive politics in Australia has nothing to do with the ALP.
“They are in government, but it’s all about some Opposition Leader.”
And that’s about as neat a summary of the last few years as you could ever hope to find.
d
You’ve got to be kidding me if people cannot see that Rudd wreaks of having an egotiscal and condescending attitude. This guy is unbelievable. I’m a staunch Labor person, but will be totally honest with you that if this guy was to win the ballet my vote would unequivocally go to Abbott who seems significantly less egotisical than this fool. He unanamously lost the PM’ship, not solely due to Gillard wanting the top position but because his own caucaus didn’t want him. I believe she has done an excellent job, especially in challenging circumstances but is constantly undermined by not only the opposition but this fool who would rather cut off his nose to spite his face. McClennan lost his position as attorney general and a place in the cacaus due to incompetancy, therefore has also placed his own interests in front of the interests of the party and aussie people, fulfilling a nasty ploy to get back at her. He voted against Rudd the first time around and you can’t tell me his own interests and nastiness are not playing a part here. When the party eventually unites around Gillard I’m certain she will go down as the most influencial, competent, gutsy prime minister the world has ever seen.
That’s kind of what I mean Sam. What will emerge from the ashes, if anything?
So I take it that Rudd didn’t need to swear an oath to the Government or whatever and feels totally okay with undermining the Government while taking his Ministerial salary.
It’s a neat line from Cassidy, but someone’s got to point out Abbott’s negative’s because the media sure as hell isn’t going to.
Political Animal @ 243, whatever.
MK @ 250, John Howard was the worst PM. He did the country serious damage. Billy McMahon second. He was just a joke. PM Abbott would beat them all, with daylight second.
Tyro R @ 241, 2PP 52/48. Really? There is hope!
Yeah, cause undermining a leader from within is such a virginal experience in Australian politics.
Never happened to Rudd, Howard, Beazely, Peacock, Keating, Hawke….
Keating was on the back bench wasn’t he?
Gillard will win, obviously, but Rudd can never be an alternative to Gillard as he is anathema to too many in caucus. He would be undermined from the beginning to the end of his second term.
The only alternative to Gillard is a ‘third man’.
OK Adrian direct me to the undermining of Rudd through the media by Minister/s in his Government.
It would seem party political infighting, chaos and uncertainty, dirty linen, and over the top slagging is really good for TPP.
Given recent events and the relative calm of Abbott I wouldn’t take much hope from this at all. But I think tomorrow there is a poll out and another Sunday as well I believe.
But it will take a few weeks for results of this episode to appear in polling.
Adrian,
the current spat is a manifestation of what has been eating at the Labor Party for years. It’s been very well documented. Mark Latham, Rodney Cavalier, the late John Button and plenty of others have all written about it extensively.
It’s a well known story. The Labor Party doesn’t stand for anything any more; certain individuals might, but not the Labor Party itself. Organisationally, it is moribund with an ageing and shrinking membership. With few exceptions. its parliamentary representatives are career hacks, moving from university activism to parliamentary staffer or union official then pre-selection. Consequently, like the royal family, it is in-bred, complacent and stupid.
The shrinking of the working class and rise of the blue collar contractor causes it to lose votes to the Liberal Party as these people no longer worry about the Boss and start to worry about minimising their tax bill. At the same time, for the first time, the Labor Party has a credible competitor on its left, and it is bleeding votes there.
So what happens when a party stands for nothing? You get a really vicious Seinfeld leadership contest based on nothing but personality spats.
The Labor Party won’t disappear overnight, but it will gradually shrink into nothingness. There really is no reason for it to exist, apart from historical inertia.
Or a breakaway party. Is the blood between some bad enough, are enough fed up with the way Labor works?
You don’t need to convince me, Sam. It’s just for a moment in 2007 I was stupid enough to believe otherwise.
It’s just for a moment in 2007 I was stupid enough to believe otherwise.
Me too, but only very fleetingly . Do you remember Rudd’s election night victory speech? It was designed to disappoint and deflate.
Time to go home – I’ve even got errant apostrophes flying all over the place.
Or a breakaway party
What would be the point? We’d have a party that stands for nothing breaking up into two parties that stand for nothing.
“The only alternative to Gillard is a ‘third man’.”
Or a third woman.
The Morgan Poll does say that. It’s beyond weird.
They didn’t make a film called the ‘third woman’.
And the third man turned out to be the victim himself who was of course not a victim of a car accident.
So maybe Rudd is the ‘third man’.
All right, truce, adrian. I should never have said Kevin reminds me of a dentist. And I hope you find the apostrophes when you get home.
Yes Sam, the withering away of the working class is the real issue. Unfortunately very few members know anything at all about historical materialism. Hence the current farce. The opportunity for the ALP to remake itself as a broad party of social democracy rather than the historical agent of the working class depends on ending union dominance of conferences, factionally controlled preselection etc and so on.
Now, of the two complainants, which is more likely to follow the party reform agenda? I’m assuming JG will roll Rudd come monday and the real lost opportunity will be that one – reform oriented to reconstructing the party as broad based, social democratic, reflective of the social movements.
Not only are the unions a dead hand on the ALP they are a dead hand on what is left of the f/t employed working class. My own very recent experience of the NSW PSA saw them consistently act as the provisional wing of the HR Dept. Mainly because they were too lazy to bother and too stupid to understand the issues at stake. And I’m not Robinson bloody Crusoe either.
BTW: yes, the corpse is rotten when carrion like Burchell start circling.
Isn’t the Morgan poll traditionally biased Labor ‘cos it’s face-to-face?
Morgan f2f has been over estimating ALP votes for ages. Wait for the others – wont be long, later this weekend
Could not resist passing this on. Hat tip rishane @PB.
From Rudd’s conference:
Says it all, really.
adrian @265
You’ve been at work?!!? Good grief !!!
If Barrie Cassidy has turned to Tony Abbott, then Rudd’s numbers must be better than is thought. If there is one constant in the world, it is Barrie Cassidy’s hatred for Kevin Rudd.
Truth vigilante:
I think if Rudd wins the ballet, it will truly be a Black Swan event…
CHARON ENTERPRISES: presentation of item, invoice & report.
Parl’t Labor Party: find enclosed report of work and (att.) specifications, invoice.
REPORT: Votive vessel as advised constructed with attention to finest details, and (revised) larger capacity.
Constructed of high quality silver and precious metals; trad. decorations (gum leaf, kangaroo, emu, spear, flag, acacia leaf, Southern Cross, continent outline inc. Tas., etc.)
Incorporated also dashed hopes of millions, bitter tears of thousands, exasperated sighs of countless others.
Delivered some days ago so that a full complement of bile, spite, venom, curses, platitudes, blood, sweat, and poison could be poured in and mixed. Unprecedented numbers of contributors of above contents required increased capacity, as noted.
As the vessel was delivered to the Parl’t Labor Party, a low murmur was heard: ask not for whom the Chalice is filled, it is filled for Thee.
LeftyE @ 273 – even as an overestimate its pretty good given previous polls though isn’t it?
One issue to ponder is if the two party preferred vote would not go up as much under Rudd as his public popularity might indicate because the ALP would lose some of the women voters. And have any female MPs come out publicly in support of Rudd?
Justine Elliott and Janelle Saffin and Senator Ursula Stephens, that I am aware of.
I must have been thinking about Christoper Pyne at the point of writing ballot.
But what about Rudd, he comes out in Mexico and does his little ratta-tat-tat-Tantrum, “I just can’t stand it no’more! I’m so un-loved!” (I’ve been telling all and sundry what incompetent fools all my government colleagues are and they don’t seem to like me because of it.)
And then his wife and daughter immediately come out on twitter with, “way to go, dad-dy” etc. I mean it’s sickening. And Theresa Rein’s suburban back-gate interview– I mean there’s a certain professional pride, that some opinion-makers have in manufacturing these types of situations, but do we want to live in an American political system, centred as it is around financial and media influence? Joe2′s quote above of Rudd’s response to allegations of undermining the government is a keeper, he has no ethics with regard to playing the media to get what he wants. None.
This is a dangerous precedent, because Pauline Hanson was able to use the same techniques to advance her position. If Rudd can get away with this, the next person to do the same will be worse. This isn’t media sophistication this is untruthful and unethical behaviour.
Can we just send Rudd and family as convicts of her majesty to Virginia, US? It would be pretty well, win-win, I reckon.
What should shock the caucus into action is that Gillard’s supporters in the parliamentary ALP are happy to fight over the spoils of the pending election loss. Their power in the party, not the government is what they are defending. There is no other outcome from their nuclear option. It just makes Gillard even more unelectable. These hacks have infected one of the world’s great political party and are rotting it from the inside out.
Trish Crossin is also a Rudd supporter.
Rumours are that Albanese may go with Rudd. That’s a pretty significant move if it happens, as Albo stacks up very well against the likes of Swan, Crean and Conroy as the Gillard support base.
In the most laughable contribution so far, Barrie Cassidy has described Swan, Crean and Conroy as “the future of the Labor Party”.
Whatever Cassidy is smoking, I’ll have some of that.
If its reflected in the other polls it’d be very positive Chris. Im afraid Morgan isnt taken very seriously these days.
Who know, maybe punters think Rudds back in charge already.
Keep in mind Terry, Cassidy smokes it by the kilo. Still so bitter about Rudd refusing to go on Insiders for so long.
Poor interview by Crean on 7:30, not one mention of the bogus leaks and backgrounding to journos by Gillard & Co when Rudd was PM.
Terry, are Wong, Plibersek and Roxon not relevant to the discussion for you? Finance, health and the attorney general…. insignificant. But what Albo does is crucial, eh?
Hear Hear Joe
Tho’ I fear the prole’ hear nought.
Here, for example, is a classic Morgan f2f from August 2010: ALP 57.5 – LNP 42.5
(*product may differ from actual vote, in same month, by up to 7.4%).
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/08/12/morgan-face-to-face-57-5-42-5-to-labor/
Like I say, any other (Nielsen, Essential, Newspoll) and it’d be great news.
Let the primary source “journos”, you mention, come forward Jacques.
They have been “absolved” from “all off-the-record confidentiality restrictions” by the P.M.
Yeah if Cassidy ever had a clue it was a long long time ago. It’s indicative of the state of the Australian media that he can front a TV show that’s not a comedy act.
Yeah, that’s basically a threat: don’t spill your guts about my briefings over the past fortnight or I will freeze you out forevermore when I am Supreme Overlord.
Bernard Keane over at Crikey gets it right again:
The Gillard camp can only posture as some sort of good process obsessives and lament that Rudd had profound managerial flaws, sounding like the bureaucracy-minded managerialists and technocrats that is all they now aspire to be.
For all that Labor MPs and supporters fear this is ripping the party, perhaps it’s for the best. They can start to replace the rotten structure that’s falling around them.
That’s a long-term task, but they’ll probably have time for it. On current polling, they’ll suffer the sort of defeat likely to leave them out of office for two terms. Something to consider at 10.30 on Monday when they find that Labor’s biggest problem, Julia Gillard, remains prime minister.
joe2, You’re not an idiot so stop pretending you are.
So you believe Laurie Oakes when he says Rudd doesn’t leak to him?
Rudd doesn’t have flaws. He is all flaws. He is in the same mould of populist conservativism that he learnt from Bjelke-Petersen, albeit with a patina of labourism or managerialism, depending on which chooks he wants to feed.
And a great post from Piping Shrike. Better than anything I’ve read so far:
Their power in the party, not the government is what they are defending. There is no other outcome from their nuclear option. It just makes Gillard even more unelectable>
Yep, pretty much. I’ll be surprised if either of them lead the party at the next election, and I’ll be even more surprised – gobsmacked – if Labor wins, or if it’s even very close. Who will valiantly steer the ship onto the rocks? Smith? Shorten (JFC I kinda hope so, and kinda hope not)?
I don’t want what Cassidy’s smoking; sounds like a bad trip.
Its not that Rudd is not nice to work with, although that’s true, but that he can’t run a government because he is inattentive, erratic, prone to attention-seeking press conferences with no desire to actually follow anything to fruition.
Mendoza said it all in his comments on mental health policy and when asked about his comments Rudd positively fumed before steadfastly ignoring the question.
Yep, spot in from the Shrike
spot on, even
You can go on and on about how dreadful Rudd was all night Cartesius, but you’ve missed the point. Nobody out there in voter land really gives a stuff. And aren’t they the ones that matter?
The voters don’t matter. What matters is who governs. And the Labour Party in choosing Gillard over Rudd in 2010 chose good government.
This was the only decent choice to make, and I don’t even like Gillard’s politics, but really Rudd was and is seriously unstable.
Sounds like Abbott.
Until now the most extravagant example of complexity theory in common use had involved butterflies in the Amazon rainforest and typhoons in Tokyo, but that has now been surpassed by the resignation of a minister in a Labor government causing Australia to endure 25 years of rule by Tony Abbott.
How far the levels of discussion at LP have fallen, and how sad to see any talk of long-term institutional implications quickly buried under gossip about personalities and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. Once upon a time the left could take some pride in being intellectually superior to the conservatives. On the evidence of these threads that is no longer true.
Abbott possesses a large degree of zealotry that Rudd simply does not, so someone in his government would be following things to an unfortunate conclusion.
After this is all over I’d like to see Turnbull challenge Abbott. He’d probably win, as people have started to see that Abbott is far too shallow, a Catholic whose religious beliefs inform his politics. Turnbull made a few mistakes, but he’ll have learned from them. He has correct views on many issues. If we can’t have a leader from the ALP (or preferably the Greens), Turnbull would cause less harm than the likes of Abbott.
The political left reached its apogee in the social-democratic experiment of the early seventies, much decried at the time as mere right-wing reformism, but in retrospect as good as it gets.
Ken_L
Anything of substance to say on the topic? A theory or prediction?
Or just having an empty, down the nose looking,worthless whine?
Cue from Ken L: please go back and read my previous pearls of wisdom. They have been ignored and what I said was terribly clever .
Should an Abbott government come into existence it is worth remembering that it almost certainly not have control of the Senate innits first term (and I would be surprised if such a government inspired such confidence that it was rewarded with control of the Senate in a second term).
It’s also worth pointing out how quickly things change. In early 2008 the columns were full of predictions of the conservatives being out of power for a generation. Just four years later it is the ALP that will apparently suffer this fate. That’s not to be complacent about these things happening by themselves but I do take predictions of the state of the parties in a decade’s time with a grain of salt.
Well I will say that Ken’s comments were the most optimistic analysis of this whole sorry situation that I’ve seen…
Yes, su, I believe Julia Gillard subordinated herself to a form of sexist politics from the very beginning, and when the current crop of daleks came around they found her still very willing to subordinate her values to their culture, even if it was a ‘nicer’, less self-aware sexist culture than what was around in 1980.
Her basic strengths as a leader seems to has never included the ability to overcome this dynamic, and if she ever wanted to challenge it, well she ain’t going to do it now that she has the endorsement of Joe DeBruyn in the fight of her life.
It’s transactional politics with confirmed sexists all the way for our JG, I’m afraid.
If you want to argue the toss about pro-Gillard Labor factionalism not being intimately associated with macho culture…
(BTW, I’ve know for a fact that the last Victorian ALP head of government, Joan Kirner, never ever, ever let any of these jokers—daleks—think they could lead her by the nose. They’re were no Arbibs in the Kirner government. Plenty of Arbibs in the Gillard government from what I can see. This goes to the heart of my argument about Gillard having the personality of a lifetime compromiser in these things.)
Katz @ 79, you must be responding to some other Nick, seeing as I never said Rudd was populist.
He’s a good government reformer, and he was a good government reformer in cleaning up the last outpost of 20th century Australian conservative demagoguery.
That means something in today’s battle.
Martin B, you could never go past Ken L for optimism, even in the old days at R to S.
And never overbearing, dismissive and arrogant. Those were the days, I can tell you.
Jacques @ 286, the main point about the Crean interview was that Rudd had quoted him as saying how good Rudd was at chairing cabinet, which was the opposite of what Crean had said. So Rudd was effectively telling lies by cherry picking and quoting out of context.
Crean BTW was said to be excellent at chairing shadow cabinet.
I see lots of people saying “oh, it’s the end for the ALP”. Doesn’t it just mean Labor-Green coalition?
Joe2- nice of you to illustrate ken’s point so clearly
Your welcome Dave. Always looking for ways to give something back to the community.
” In early 2008 the columns were full of predictions of the conservatives being out of power for a generation. ”
And a couple of years before that people saying that the next Labor PM probably wasn’t in Parliament yet.
d
Yes, nice concern troll from Lovell. It is quite incredible that people still genuinely believe that the man who is universally described as; chaotic, dictatorial, personally abusive, unable to consult, having limitless self-belief even in areas where he had no expertise and simultaneously unable to make decisions, represents the best hope for the ALP and I certainly hope they never have the misfortune to come across a narcissistic abuser because they will be very readily taken in. I just listened to your link to Mendoza’s interview and I hope they will put up a transcript but here’s an excerpt:
Asked whether, in his time working with various state and federal governments he had experienced anything like this before, Mendoza said:
Nah, the Labor Party isn’t the great train-wreck that people are painting it as. Realistically, large policy and significant institutional changes require not only crisis but also significant periods of time to implement. Keating didn’t just become PM and start doing all these radical things, but was much more like the last major iteration of Labor ideas. We now rightly like to focus on the tips of the icebergs– Mabo, economic and industrial reform, closer relationship with Asia, taking environmental issues seriously, a general focus on and respect for the arts and academia (for everyone.)
And that’s what you need to develop the country, the stability over time to make national changes. We can never get that from Rudd, he’s all tabula rasa, all surface and no depth. There’s no system to his furiousness.
Howard destroyed the concept of ideology in Australia– even though he himself was an ideologue, you all know the story. And even though you can’t base policy on ideology directly, ideals are not only what we measure the results of our actions against but they also represent the direction that we are moving in. So, for example, Howard completely trashed the Keating legacy of arts and academia and replaced it with his version of rugby-union aspirationalism. Keating promoted an openness (generally) to the international community and Asia in particular, Howard restricted that to business oppertunities. They’re not just political differences, but together they kind of say something about the atmosphere of the nation– somewhere in between policy and ideology. It’s about how our leaders behave, what kind of role models they are. These are significant issues for a society (think about gwbush).
Anyway, there’s not a chance that I’ll vote for Rudd in an election– I’m with Roxon on this one, I just don’t like him.
After this debacle of a leadership spill this is the big problem that the ALP will have to overcome if they have any chance at the next election. There’s now a bunch of people who will refuse to vote for the ALP with Rudd at the helm, and a bunch of people who will refuse to vote for the ALP with Gillard at the helm. Whoever wins on Monday, their job has got a whole lot harder over the last week.
Well…
Galaxy Poll Preferred ALP Leader (ALP Voters): Gillard 39 (-10) Rudd 53 (+5)#auspol
Galaxy Poll Preferred ALP Leader: Gillard 26 (-4) Rudd 52 (0)
Rudd is the only chance at all of wining votes from the Coalition.
Rudd now holds in his hand a number of Labor voters who would be lost if he is rolled, how many are these will be the scary unknown number, but I cant imagine it will be pretty.
Rudd is now an electoral time bomb for the factions.
TP @ 322 – the ALP voters view of who should be party leader is quite strong. No wonder Rudd is lobbying for the public to call their local member. But will it move any caucus votes at this stage?
Full galaxy results are here: http://t.co/V8TQEvk0
I want to write something that’s neither pro-Rudd nor anti-Gillard, as it’s about trends that are bigger than a couple of Labor pollies who’ve only hit the bigtime this last half dozen years (!)
But here goes: Hawke and Keating might have buried the older managerial, socio-economic order, but they did it in conventional process-y terms. John Howard was Australia’s Nixon—he came along and began to work outside those processes. He turned peacetime, affluent-era politics into ideological warfare, in a way no previous conservative leader thought seemly, and that includes even the ones who were considered to be fairly standard reactionaries. Certainly no Labor leadership figure had ever deliberately sought to validate inherent political confrontation like Howard did (though Evatt & Calwell sort of did inadvertently wander onto that terrain, but even then they had Whitlam to rectify their misguided strategies as a matter of course). Howard was all about opening up political wounds that go far beyond a few measly variants on socialism versus non-socialism. He opened up Pandora’s Box, and he did it in peacetime and with no looming economic collapse at hand.
John Howard, in tactical and strategic terms our only revolutionary PM. Only for Nixonianism, not Trotsky or whatever.
And regardless of whether you’re a flaming Lefty or a mainstream ALP hedger or a bourgeois Green you have to realise that the whole point of that kind of politics isn’t about setting out a nice comfortable plan of technocratic action for the next generation; maybe that’s what O’Farrell or Bailleau are happy to do, but that’s not what the true Howard conservative Liberal enthusiasts are looking to do, that’s not the political battle they think they’re inherited.
Mark my words, if Abbott gets in he will try to up the ante, he will want to become like an Australian composite of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove—he will burn up every last piece of electoral capital he wins just so he can allow this bigger-than-ideology, kulturkampf confrontation to grow and last for decades to come. And he will look to game the system so that his project isn’t as easily minimised by conventional wisdom as Howards eventually was. Give Abbott a strong enough election victory and the likes of the gallery will take at face value everything he wants to do, everything. They’ll coronate him as the new normal, the new median political ideology, so much so that when Shorten takes Labor back to office he’ll only be able to do so after whispering quiet nothings to the MSM about how he really only wants to continue the new cross-party consensus of the Abbott era.
Like I said, technically an argument that has SFA to do with either the member fo Griffith or the member for Lalor.
On a personal note, I grew up in a liberal household in SA, but have voted Labor for over 20 years now federally and in 3 states. I used to argue for Labor to friends and family. Now I’m struggling to argue for Labor to myself. I just can’t vote again for that talentless and vision-less hack Gillard. Don’t get me started on the Greens and how they were wiling to blow up a bipartisan chance to address climate change when principled Libs crossed the floor. Once someone gives up on a party, is it ever likely they’ll win them back? Is this why well-intentioned folks drift to the Tories over time? Is it that the left just eventually becomes too unappealing to vote for?
From GhostWhoVotes on Twitter:
Newspoll:
Preferred PM: Gillard 34 (-3) Abbott 43 (+3)
Preferred ALP Leader (ALP Voters): Gillard 41 Rudd 58
Preferred ALP Leader: Gillard 30 (+6 from September) Rudd 53 (-4)
Nielsen:
Preferred ALP Leader: Gillard 34 (-1) Rudd 58 (+1)
Gillard is rather fortunate that ALP voters don’t get to choose the party leader.
dear Ken_L @ 304
hope you haven’t left for good. here’s my take on “long-term institutional implications”. i see democratically elected popular governments, in advanced first world economies, in the province of alberta & the nation state of australia, both seeking improved deals on royalties for their people, removed in a superficially democratic manner, outside elections, by their party machines, at the behest of big oil & big coal, within a year and a half. corporate coup d’etat by proxy. i see in this a further weakening of the democratic nation state vis a vis undemocratic corporations & i dread what that augurs for chances of civilised life on earth enduring, as we enter what’s sure to be a rough patch for the planet’s climate. that more than anything underlies my feelings on this subject & the personalities involved – i’ve felt like cassandra ever since the events of that night in july 2010; the shock of it has never left me, i doubt it ever will.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
I think the country is fortunate ALP voters don’t get to choose the party leader.
@324
I’m not quite as pessimistic as that….There are so many internal contradictions in Abbott’s current policy platform that when he tries to reconcile them in government it will make Howard’s problems with core and non-core promises look mild. Abbott’s style is very suited to opposition, but much less so to governing. Unless he has control of the Senate – which he won’t initially – he will have a lot of difficulty passing legislation. In those circumstances he will become quite unpredictable. From a policy perspective, I’m also not convinced that Abbott’s ideology will become the new normal.
I’m always wary about long-run prognostications about political parties. At the state level the Libs were in the ascendant for much of the 1990s, then Labor the next decade, now things are swinging back towards the Libs. The 2007 election was supposed to herald a decade or more of Labor in power at the federal level. The future is highly uncertain. Who knows how Abbott will deal with the shocks that come his way. Or how a new generation of Labor leaders will stack up.
dear Nickws @324
hypothetically, do you think, if he secures a decades to come kulturkampf & emergent new median political ideology, abbott would move to repeal compulsory suffrage? i remember howard intimated doing that when he was elected first time, saying stuff about freedom to choose – i was gobsmacked. of course it turned out to be a non core promise. if abbott were to secure a long ascendancy would such a move entrench his advantage or weaken it? hypothetically.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Rudd’s been talking today about backtracking on the current ETS, how does that gibe with this idea that it is the current Labor government who are the ones controlled by big oil?
Link
So I guess that means the Greens are in the pocket of the polluters too, nothing else will serve to resolve the cognitive dissonance.
And on the carbon start price, which had commentors howling insults at me: Link
See my comparision of his objectives to the, ahem, agendas of both Gingrich and Rove.
Look at how seriously Rove’s proclamation that America Is A Center Right country is treated by the US mainstream media; look at TIME being willing to consider the possibility that Gingrich could be the new FDR.
Yet it’s not like either of these assclowns won over the coventional wisdom through shear staying power. 4 years in power for the one, 6 years at the top for the other. They won their lasting influence through shock and awe politics.
I reckon the contradictions of an Abbott government would be swept under the rug by the gallery if he gets in with a majority bigger than what Rudd pulled off. Tony winning a majority starting from about the size of the 2004 Howard result going northwards, without the burden of a ‘small target strategy’ to distract from his achievement? He’d make awesome claims of having a mandate for NEW POLITICS, and a lot of his bullshit will stick; by the time it wears off he’ll have changed the common wisdom of politics too much for a simple rollback like we saw under Rudd.
Then it’s only a matter of time before Uhlmann and Grattan are telling us about how Shorto is working to make Labor come to terms with the new political reality of Australia being a centre-Right nation.
I foresee a bad Gillard federal election loss being too big of a thing to just blame on Rudd’s ‘stabs-in-the-back’. It will have to be interpreted as Labor losing it’s way by not being ‘pragmatic’ enough. Think of it as the the collected Dalek’s, in a fit of second rate political historicism, finally imposing that damnable uneccessary Blair model over the post-Hawke/Keating party they inherited from their betters.
su, when Gillard loudly uses these non-committal platitudes from Rudd against him in the partyroom ballot/after (I’m referring to the Canberra Times article, I have no desire to try and read between the lines of this Business Spectator hit piece) and declares them to be a set of things that she would never ever do, then you’ll have every right to feel smug with yourself.
alfred venison, i’m sorry, i do not speak mental illness, nor do i understand considered abbott liberal supporting satire.
For what polls are worth:
From Possum:
https://twitter.com/#!/Pollytics/status/173047655067435008
NickWs there is no point engaging with you, anyone who can describe a somewhat uninspiring but nevertheless proficient PM as the sexual plaything of her male masters is so far down the road of utter misogyny that there is likely no return. Look in the mirror, one of the enduring problems with the Labor party is staring you in the face.
@333
I live in the US and I am afraid to say that the average voter is further right on the political spectrum than is the case in Australia, the UK and nearly any continental European country you can think of.
And I’m still a bit puzzled by your Gingrich reference. I don’t think many people would here would say that Gingrich represents the conventional wisdom on many things. That Time piece was put together when Gingrich was going through his shooting star phase. It looks pretty stupid now…
The polling is almost irrelevent to this contest in that few members of caucus are making their decision on that basis. Most simply don’t ever want to work with Rudd again and don’t think the way he governs and administers is good for the party in the longer run, even if that means losing the next election.
I think youre right there LO, and some people apologising for Team Gillard’s recent excesses need to realise this is the truth.
They’d rather have Abbott.
My view is that this means: they must be stopped. These people must be beaten, if not Monday, then in 2013.
I don’t know Lefty – I do think that Kevin is bad for the party in the longer term. The most divisive person in a party can’t be the leader, at least not sustainably. And I’m not sure that his power to the people schtick is healthy either. Aren’t we in a parliamentary democracy? Isn’t the PM supposed to be merely first among equals, rather than first, second and third?
The following quote is from Hartcher’s latest piece:
“Professor James Walter, a political psychologist at Monash University, has researched the operation of Australian prime ministerial offices since World War II. He describes the Rudd show, as he learnt it from senior public servants he has interviewed in the course of his work:
“He set up a process where all information had to be funnelled through him. He asked for urgent reports from public servants and then nothing further was heard.
“He had so much information, and so many decisions to make, that his system was the enemy of decision. It was a logjam. It seemed to boil down to indecisiveness and timidity when it came to making decisions.”
These problems run much deeper than the issues Kevin had with the caucus. They go to the heart of how a government functions. It is hard to argue, as Dave and others were earlier with respect to the caucus, that the senior public servants’ concerns had their foundation in their own ambition. It is therefore much more powerful than anything Wayne Swan or Simon Crean might say.
My concern is that if Kevin won, nothing would really change. I don’t see much evidence that his decisionmaking skills have improved. We would still get government through media. Many people in the existing cabinet would probably not serve. And it is not unreasonable to expect that a lot of senior public servants would reconsider their positions as well.
The party has to reform and rebuild, there is no doubt about that. The question is whether the best base for that is with Kevin as leader and having some chance of keeping Abbott out of the lodge, or with Julia as leader and a much smaller chance of winning the next election.
Many people, such as yourself have noted that minority government has been a healthy thing. But don’t you find it telling that besides Katter and Wilkie, the Greens and other independents are so vehemently anti-Rudd?
Btw, I urge people to read James Button’s piece in the Age today (he was a former Rudd speechwriter). It really says it all…
LO – when button described the mining tax cave in and the gonski review (wtf) as major labor reforms I realized the article said nothing
But I come back to my original proposition. The thugs in the ALP would have a baboon as leader if it suited their purposes. Ergo, having Rudd as leader didn’t suit their purposes. Why not. Because he didn,t fit into the factional system. Therefore he was extruded. The rest is window dressing (even if true).
Personally, I can’t see why if the cabinet/caucus can roll Rudd, as they did in 2010, why they can’t control the way he deals with them.
That was my unanswered question of that bizarre year.
NIckws @333, that’s my fear too. As proof witness how part of Rudd’s victory was to try and present himself as John Howard but a little less of a dickhead.
If John Howard is our version of Nixon then I think in years to come if Abbott gets in he will be seen as Australia’s Reagan/Thatcher.
Oh great. Just when we thought we’d got a clear outcome on carbon pricing legislation, Rudd wants a fecking ‘review’ before the next election. What the fuck?
But no, lets focus on the polling. I wonder how Abbott will go when he’s got oxygen on carbon pricing again?
So very sick of this issue being Rudd’s plaything.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-20120224-1ttxx.html
You supporters of Team Gillard just don’t get it, joe2. Nobody cares about your post-coup rationalisations.
Like David Marr, prattling on with his cheap pop-psychology dressed up as profundity, the whole facade only makes sense if you don’t think about it.
It’s like someone said upthread, the electorate don’t matter it’s caucus that counts. As LO pointed out, they’d rather have Abbott than Rudd, hence the unprecedented trashing of the Labor brand. These are the kind of people that you’re supporting and you’re welcome to them!
Missed that adrian, thanks….
,
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3439364.htm
I dont find either candidate very appealing. But geez folks cant peoples see that this is about bigger stuff than those two? This is about ALP heavy weights. People with a strong vested fiscal reliance on the machine continuing to operate as it does. Elected pollies and the advisers they employ are part of a highly paid gravy train which allows mediocre and often not very imaginative people access to a lifetime of pay and conditions far superior and reliable than most paid employment outside the political sector. The Labor party has been run by and for these relatively few, mostly men for decades now.
Sure they allow a sprinkle of ‘independent’ minds to redirect the gaze of the fourth estate and the general public, but the core remains stable, protecting its own and feathering its small but collective nest.
They don’t give a shit about social safety nets, or public health or mental health or refugees. Not if it means losing their ‘entitlements’, their six figure pay, their lifetime pensions and benefits, the free lunches and their acolytes. its akin to celebrity culture in many ways, and just as addictive for many.
I’m all for Rudd, not because I think he is great, but because I could see he was rolled because he (not even that strongly) threatened the status quo. He is one of only a few to openly question the workings of the party, thats why. He wasn’t even THAT much of a threat for gawd’s sake, and still they eliminated him.
Gillard is a part of that structure. She may not be as cynical and manipulative as some, as she possess talent, which accounts for much of her success but she has consented to play the game their way. She is their woman.
Rudd isnt their man. And this time round he is louder in his criticism of the heavyweights and their vested interests. He has called them on the undemocratic and underhanded behaviours. This is why they are trying to destroy him.
I am hoping he succeeds, while assuming he wont, because its actually very important to me that I have a social democratic party to vote for in the future (hopefully more than one!). Workers in this country need accountable and representative voices speaking for them in parliament. Rudd is the only person offering some inroads into breaking apart the gravy train of the mediocre, and encouraging reform of Labor. I have no idea if he would do this if elected, but he is the only one promising or even identifying these issues.
PLUS… Dougie Cameron and John Faulkner support him. I have great respect for both of them, especially the judgement of Faulkner.
It disappoints me the way this thing has been seen and presented by so many in terms of a Manichean dichotomy and by other wise intelligent people, also.
Either it’s St Kevin versus the Devil Woman or Heroinic Julia pursued by the Evil Shadrach, vis a vis old music-hall vaudeville.
It’s neither is it? And much more to boot, as to what goes on behind the scenes.
But too late now, unless some thing intelligent unexpectedly happens shortly.
Like FB once again, am in awe of the inability of intelligent people, not just the two main protagonists but others close to them, to bring about sane resolution based on what’s good for the team and the country as well as for themselves.
What a resulting waste of careers, talents and intellects there will be and what misery when Abbott gets up because they can’t sublimate their egos or rein in their ambitions and venality, for a while.
One thing that has become clear, no one could expect you onside in the removal of any tyrannical leader, adrian. You would run a mile rather than brief yourself on how many heads he’d had chopped off.
dear Nickws
“i’m sorry, i do not speak mental illness, nor do i understand considered abbott liberal supporting satire.”
and here i thought you weren’t an asshole, just tin eared for satire. thanks for the clarification.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Oh look, I agree that there is a lot of amateur diagnosis going on and I find that quite disgraceful. If someone has a mental health problem, publicly shaming them is appalling, if you don’t think there is a problem and you’re psychologising is for political gain, then it’s equally appalling and disrespectful and hurtful to people who actually are suffering psychologically.
But I’ll also call bullshit on any so-called lefty, or so called progressive who wants to gloss over Rudd’s comments regarding carbon pricing.
Thank you verity violet, that explains exactly how I feel about this whole sorry mess.
I’ve always thought of Faulkner as a person of great integrity, and it means something that he’s supporting Rudd.
Well, thank God the truth is now out there. Rudd was a maniacal brute and the Labor caucus threw away its natural disdain for conflict and nobly threw itself on the Rudd live grenade.
That makes life a lot simpler for me, because now I can put away the crackpot theories I had that Rudd’s downfall was due to:
1. The overt and covert campaign of the mining companies (thank God, we can now give those eminent corporations a big tick);
2. The ambition of ALP factional bosses who lost power under Rudd (we can now assume they are political virgins);
3. A desire for advancement among some (many) in caucus. The fact that many MPs have prospered under Gillard is, obviously, a pure fluke.
Indeed, we can now take comfort that this was the first entirely altruistic leadership coup since 500BC and the foundation of democracy in Greece. As a result, I think the future prospects for the labor party are excellent.
How do you feel about Rudd’s comments on a review of the carbon pricing policy 6 months after it starts, Dave?
So far as I can work out, he’s said that he is going to move quicker to an ETS. So what’s the problem?
For those of you confidently predicting the death of the Labor Party etc etc.
In the mid 1950s during the Great Split, R. G. Menzies described the ALP as ‘this once great party.’ After which the ALP went on to form the Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard Governments. Just sayin’.
Mind you I do think they’ll be in the wilderness for quite a while and everyone in the PLP is to blame for that, I reckon.
Apologies if this is duplicating another comment, b/c I haven’t quite caught up with the long thread this morning.
Nicking over to the supermarket for bread & milk, I noticed the HUN was pushing Rudd with “It’s Rudd or Doom” or some shit.
I then noticed via Twitter that Rudd has said he’ll call off the media enquiry, something I wasn’t aware of.
Coincidence, huh?
(Oh, dear. Thinking of the HUN seems to be making me write like them.
You know.
One pithy (or pissy) sentence per line.
Punchy.)
I’ve said here repeatedly that I’m no great fan of JG, but I think anyone who thinks the Ruddster’s integrity is any greater is dreaming.
You don’t think it’s problematic to review a policy that has been negotiated and agreed upon by independants and the Greens? The legislation gives some certainty in terms of the implementation time frames. You don’t think that kind of clarity is important? Really?
Ahhh, can people not read? He is hinting that he will shorten the fixed price period because the projection is that the market will value carbon much lower than that price. Christine Milne gave an extensive comment on why this is an appalling proposition.
fb @ 362,
The Great Bureaucrat will not defeat Gillard. And, much as I luv ‘im he is making some fearsomely bureaucratic noises I suppose that would be a concern if he did win. Have resigned myself to years of OZ being medieavelized [God, how do you spell that word!] by the Mad Monk.
FB, I think it’s a bad sign, too.
More broadly, I can empathise with the desire to turn back the clock – Rudd should never have been dumped in the first place and this is just the chickens coming home to roost. I also find the disingenuous of the Gillard camp at least or more nauesating than Rudd’s “who me?” schtick – anyone with a memory longer than a goldfish remembers the leaking of western suburbs polling etc at the time. Every other excuse is post-hoc rationalisations that ignores the fact Rudd The Notorious Arsehole was apparently a great choice as opposition leader, and PM for quite some time before it apparently became all too much.
But you can’t turn the clock back, and I think in some ways bringing him back – though his popularity with the public, especially in QLD is undeniable – will not resolve all the problems that getting rid of him engendered, the stupid, stupid bastards.
Which is why I think someone else will end up leading them to election in 2013 – someone without any of this baggage that the media will have to find something else to talk about.
So the solution is eassy: Rudd gets re-elected on a new leash from caucus, with conditions. At this point, I expect he’ll sign up to the deal.
People need to move on, and also to defeat Abbott. This is how to do it.
I think the ALPs big problem is that the public is geting wind that supporting Rudd means causing some major headaches to faction leaders.
And they like it.
That said, I want another year of this awesome minority govt, in which the ALP cant be as shithouse as they clearly want to be.
So Im for Rudd getting 30-40 tomorrow, then dislodging GIllard in about a year. Dream outcome!
Christine Milne’s media release on the carbon price.
It’s not extensive, su @ 363, but it says what needs to be said.
From Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/24/labor-australia-leadership-julia-gillard-kevin-rudd
Why did Rudd give factional power back to the factions by reneging on his guiding principle that he should control everything, including the ministry, if not because he’ll do and say anything to get power and do and say what he likes once he’s in power.
Yes, David Marr and James Button got it right; and we saw it all in the video.
“Her errors have been perceived as more grave, her missteps as potentially fatal, struggles sometimes as catastrophic crises.
I’m the first to admit that Gillard has suffered directly from broad misogyny, but statements like that are unknown and unknowable. Talk about the dreadful, disrespectful television show; the endless press about her haircut, her dress, her ear lobes FFS; the “ditch the bitch” signs and what-not – but not these nebulous accusations about her record in govt. You don’t need to go looking that far.
“Her takeover was not perceived as a sign of strength, or even brutishness, but as being the puppet of ‘faceless men’ behind her,” she said.
Of course, it is possible that Paul Howes announcing the execution on Lateline first, and the role played by luminaries of the NSW Right such as Arbib and Bitar might have had *just a little something* to do with this, but no, it’s far easier to portray misogyny as kryptonite to Gillard’s Superwoman. If it wasn’t for that pesky misogyny, she would be cruising! I contend this is not true. Misogyny has certainly contributed and continues to contribute to her difficulties connecting with the public but it is not a gunman on the grassy knoll.
PS The poverty of news journalism could not be more apparent with the ABC regularly covering what other networks and papers are saying, journalist tweets, and interviewing other reporters as news items. What a circle jerk.
HOW COULD THE LABOR PROBLEM SOLVE?
The power challenge between PM Julia Gillard and former Foreign minister Kevin Rudd is going to the end, on Monday February 27, 2012, the Australia people will know who is the Labor leader.
The chronicle radically problem of Labor couldn’t be solved, that is the Labor habit, it creates by the faceless persons and the former union leaders who set up the factors and fighting against each other, the most reason is individual ambition, neither national interest and even for the working class.
The union leaders who behave as the working class bosses of Karl Marx’s theory, that has been applied into the democratic country, the power comes from the worker contributed fee . However, the union likes the other organizations, even the biggest organization as R.S.L ( Returned Services League), but there is only union fee is eligible for tax deduction, it is unfair. Therefore the free fund has made the power for union leaders, then the Labor has been facing the frequently power struggle.
Moreover, the employees could claim the tax deduction as the work expense by law, that reduced from the government budget, this money is not a small amount for public services needing for the hospital, age care, homeless, education, aborigines health and the others… when million workers pay few dollars a week, so annually, the union could earn up to multi- hundred million dollars, but they have not much to do. However, the big money being held on the hand of the union leaders as Mr. Craig Thomson, who used the free fund for prostitution and his private purposes.
The constitution has turned ugly while the support Mr. Kevin Rudd is nearly double to Julia Gillard, but the Caucus, the members and senators of both houses should have the number opposes against the opinion poll.
Hoa Minh Truong.
( author of The Dark Journey & Good Evening Vietnam).
That idea, though not often explicitly articulated, is foundational to the misogyny that attends the campaign against Gillard. It certainly helps explain why the “Bob Brown’s B|tch” slogan resonated so strongly on the right (though the misogyny had homophobia and red-baiting as allies). It’s also partly (though not entirely) why Rudd’s resort to the phrase “faceless men” — stings so much. Ellis and Roxon have bobbed up and declared they are not faceless men to mock the claim.
Of course, it was the factions who put Rudd in and sustained him before pulling the plug. Rudd knew full well that he had no group within the caucus to which he could turn in June of 2010 for support. That was as true then as when he triumphed late in 2006.
Putting aside the 1960s misogyny of the term for the moment, it is true that “faceless men” manipulated Gillard to the top job. As far as I can tell, that has been true of all ALP leadership battles for as long as I have been paying attention. That’s always how it’s done. That Gillard happened to be female was neither here nor there. Focusing on this truism as damning Gillard is what is misogynistic.
Yes, Joe2 and when Julia says “I worked damn hard as Kevin Rudd’s deputy. I worked very, very hard, in days of chaos and paralysis to keep his government running. That’s the truth, that’s the history.” (23 February 2012) she is not being self-indulgent, she had been overloaded, one might say very deliberately overloaded with a superportfolio that had everyone shaking their heads and asking why, but she managed it.
I find it extraordinary that the same story, emanating from unrelated sources from former staffers to diplomats, public servants and politicians as to why it was necessary to remove Rudd from power is dismissed as fiction, while there is no documentary or verbal evidence anywhere that speaks to the theory that this was purely and only a power play by the factions. Undoubtedly the manner of his removal was ugly and undoubtedly factional politics and the lack of democratic input from the broader ALP membership are problems, the ALP as a whole recognizes this, even if the steps to remedy it are so far infinitesimal but it remains the case that apart from Rudd’s own self-serving account, there is not one single piece of corroboratory evidence that the reason for his removal was factional politics, rather than his utter unsuitedness for the job. And everything that I have read now from multifarious sources from Diplomatic assessments of his Foreign Minister-ship to the many identical reports of his behaviour in the role of PM leads me to think we have dodged a bullet and that nothing is more important than making sure he does not get his hands on the reins of power again, if it means Gillard is demoted or sits on the back bench too then so be it.
Brian @ 368 – perhaps I’m being too cynical but I think that if the international carbon price was higher than the fixed price then Milne would be supporting Rudd’s suggestion, and Rudd would not have made it in the first place.
It does look like Rudd is willing to sacrifice a lot for a chance at the leadership.
the awesome minority government doesn’t seem to share your view on Rudd, LeftyE. How do you feel about his comments regarding a review of the carbon pricing legislation after 6 months? how do you think the minority government that negotiated that legislation feel about those comments?
So if Rudd is saying he will lower the carbon tax, do people believe this will be unpopular with Labor voters or the Labor caucus? I suspect it may be Labor policy in 3 months time, whoever wins on Monday.
The other Indies may well find themselves facing “Wilkie’s choice.” or will everyone rely on Julia Gillard keeping her promises to them?
Rudd is elected leader Monday morning.
Abbott moves vote of ‘no confidence’ in Parliament on Tuesday.
Vote is successful.
GG dissolves Parliament on Wednesday.
Polling Day 10th May.
Abbott wins in a landslide.
………………and then I woke up in a sweat… after all it had been a hot night!
Albo declares for Rudd. Just got a lot more interesting.
He’s making all kinds of sense:
“I argued against a challenge, I argued against “bringing it on”, I believe events of the last few days have done a lot of damage to our party. I also argued against a challenge in 2010.”
Eminently sensible.
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-world-according-to-rudd-an-insiders-guide/
—-”It was through the negotiations over carbon pricing that “we learnt that Kevin Rudd would never have that ability of all successful long-term leaders and that is to go into a defensive crouch and absorb a few days of punches to hold a position that would serve him well in the longer term”
—“The PM had a reflexive fear of even momentary unpopularity, so that he became an easy target for every lobbyist in town”.
Albo sure makes a lot of sense. And he sounds so calm and reasonable compared to certain others.
He strongly makes the point that a leadership challenge was not inevitable (as most reporters seem to think), but that Rudd’s position as FM was made ‘untenable’ by forces within the party.
This is not an insignificant development.
As mentioned above, the Left in general, and now Albanese, has sold out good government in return for the right of the caucus – or its factions – to elect the Ministry. Or, at least, the worthless Rudd promise to do so.
Holy shit – Albo jumps to Rudd!
This is on, people. Its actually going to be close.
Not close, at all, Albanese was always counted as leaning to Rudd and we know why – he thinks the Left will gain greater control over the Ministry.
Just seems to be the blokes on the left, Cartesius.
or did Plibersek and Wong change factions when I wasn’t looking?
@381
And this surely is why the whole question of Rudd’s prime ministership has such broad ramifications. It is as much about socio-political knowledge as political leadership. Rudd was hopelessly dysfunctional but is simultaneously the most popular politician. He exists in two worlds, in the medias and the real, and as the media has come to dominate the production of social knowledge a master manipulator, indeed a product, of that world has come to the fore of politics. And yet, the real keeps intruding. The whole week has seemed like a collision between the social world captured by polling in which Rudd is popular and the real world in which he is insane, and a media that is turning itself inside out trying to stitch the two together.
And what the reps from Team Gillard never seem to be able to explain is why, if the Rudd govt was even half as dysfunctional as they claim, would intelligent people who have worked with him in the past, support him in now.
Doesn’t make any kind of sense, but we’ve been played for suckers ny these people right from the start.
How do
Their best chance if Rudd becomes leader is to stick with him for the duration of this term. The package has passed parliament, and it would be tough for a new leader to undo it.
If they cash in and go to election, of course, all is lost.
People know my preference though: Gillard till 2013 to keep this minority parliament upright, then Rudd to beat Abbott. said it many times.
What I would add is this: I very much doubt the cross bench will cash in their power if Rudd becobes leader.
The factions have factions, including the left faction.
But that’s what the rump of the left want – a Rudd promise to give them power.
I think the debacle in Copenhagen may have been a critical turning point as I outlined here.
Yes I’m sure he spent several hours hitting and kicking the floor when he realized that they weren’t going to solve the AGW thing at a single conference. He was so sure that one would lift him up high on the Geopolitical Stage..
Where he belongs.
Like Kissinger and the Clintons and other nice people like that.
Meantime, team Rudd and Team Gillard battle it out on the net and in all insincerity.
I won’t comment further*. Not allowed. I haven’t read Manne’s book.
*This is not a core promise.
Rudd will never lead the Party to electoral victory – it will be implosion 2.0.
Go Albo. Brave call.
Surely the gig is now up for Gillard and Swan in the House. One third of the Gillard support base are Labor right types whose beef with Rudd is that he’s interrupted their timetable for disposing of Gillard and Swan.
“The true mentality at work in the Government was exposed in this leadership contest.
They bellow about who is best equipped to beat Tony Abbott.
Can you believe that? They are in government, but it’s all about some Opposition Leader.
Truly pathetic.” Barry Cassidy
MK50@245 your quote by BCassidy reminds me of an Insiders episode soon after Tony Abbott had taken over as Opposition Leader. Barry was looking to build on a couch consensus that the Labor govt. are obsessed with TA and instead should be talking about themselves because after all they are the govt. Barry began in an exasperated (aren’t they pathetic!) tone and gave as an example a brief clip of a Lateline interview Albanese did the Friday evening before where he seemingly did nothing but pour a bucket on poor pitiful TA. I watched the full interview that night and when AA could get a word in from a constantly interrupting Leigh Sales he did list, at length, the governments achievements and particularly in his portfolio of infrastructure loudly and proudly. Barry never broadcast any of this part of the interview. For Cassidy to try and suggest the government was unwilling to talk about themselves and their achievements from this cherry-picked / edited footage was an attempt to deceive viewers. If the ABC had a scintilla of public broadcasting ethos left in them Cassidy would have been sacked first thing Monday morning. The fact that despite incidents like this (or because of them?) Cassidy’s star continues to rise says an enormous amount about the ABC in 2012.
So tell me…how are the Greens doing in Grayndler? And ya know, much as I hate to harp on about it….how about those comments of Rudd’s on reviewing the carbon price?
I mean this “whatever it takes” perpetual campaign stuff is fine, but there doesn’t seem to be much connection with reality here.
I really feel for Albanese, I think he’s in a terrible situation no matter who leads the Labor party at the next election.
Albo is an interesting character and while prominent in the left faction, he is not a hack. I’d take him at face value that the major reason for his decision is his view that Kevin has the best chance of beating Abbott. Who knows whether people will switch camps after Albo’s decision, but he is a pretty respected guy within the caucus. When I left Rudd’s office he was one of the few shadows whom I had a greater respect for than when I started.
Barry Cassidy is part of the new stable of ABC ‘journo celebrity’ (see Annabel Crabbe’s awkwardly embaressing ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ ) who have cultivated their own ‘star’ status with a nod obviously from the board. This adds tp the dumbning down of political discourse and detracts from any chance of a national conversation on any important political issues in favour of grandstanding and opinionating. Give me the likes of Waleed Ali, who initiates fantastic discussions from all sides of an issue, over any of those hacks.
To quote Cassidy or to refer to the Insiders is to invoke a sick joke these days IMHO.
Sorry, bit off topic….
Don’t forget Bandt can make the existing CO2 package a condition of his support. So can Oakeshott for that matter.
Kevin has no chance of beating anyone. He’s finished. His only chance was to wrest the leadership toward the end of term and coast in on a wave of sympathy and ignorance. He’s gone too early and this is his second go. He squibbed the first by not standing in 2010 and he’s bought parts of the left with a promise to elect a Ministry. Without that promise, he’d have no support.
But actually they have no say. The Governor -General has to dissolve parliament on the advice of the Prime Minister (well, council of Ministers, but in practical effect, the PM).
So Rudd (or Gillard, or Abbott, or whoever) just drives up to Yarralumla and says “kill it” and the GG kills it. And if it’s Rudd looking to put the question to the people (and for this we must assume that the cross-bench gets wind of it, and there’s also a sitting day in progress in which to get a vote of no confidence up), what can they do? Switch to Abbott? Who will likely do the same (unless polling shows a PM Rudd v2.0 as so massively popular that Abbott dare not, in which case he looks like a bigger hypocritical liar than Gillard ever did).
I think Albo should be made deputy – whoever wins.
They need a bridge builder.
Gillard has kept Ablanese so there’s no bridge to build as his support of Rudd is merely nomiinal/factional in orientation.
That’s not quite true Tyro. Rudd can advise he has the confidence of this parliament ( if he does) and he’ll be appointed PM. Then call an election at his leisure.
LeftyE – so we will have Rudd trying to sell the success of a policy having been forced by the Greens and Independents to maintain the existing policy that he has publicly said he was going to review? You don’t think Abbott is going to have a field day with that during an election? We will be right back where we started and he’ll squib again – I don’t care about his ‘difficult’ personality, I don’t trust him on that issue. I can’t understand why anyone would.
su @ 258: “I find it extraordinary that the same story, emanating from unrelated sources from former staffers to diplomats, public servants and politicians as to why it was necessary to remove Rudd from power is dismissed as fiction, while there is no documentary or verbal evidence anywhere that speaks to the theory that this was purely and only a power play by the factions.”
su, I respect you and Brian’s views, and I’d be reluctant to ever dismiss them without a lot of consideration. But that James Button piece comes across as just more of the same to me. Again and again, from LO or whoever: ‘I only ever met him 4 times’, but ‘people I know have said…’
Where are these people? Why is there *still* nothing from (non-MP) horses’ mouths to corroborate any of this? Why are we still reading hearsay? I haven’t read the books Brian mentioned in the OP…should I have? Are there names to be found in there nobody is bothering to reprint for some reason?
Button also makes the hypocritically dubious claim: “Yes, she has made mistakes. All beginning prime ministers do: look at John Howard’s first 18 months”
So Gillard and Howard are to be allowed their mistakes, while Rudd, for all the good measures Button acknowledges he accomplished in his half a term, couldn’t be permitted anything like the same understanding…
su: “And everything that I have read now from multifarious sources from Diplomatic assessments of his Foreign Minister-ship to the many identical reports of his behaviour in the role of PM”
Where did you read these? I’m getting to the stage where I’ve read far too many ‘identical reports’ with nothing but other ‘identical reports’ to substantiate them (eg LO/Button…it’s almost word for word, fcol). As someone wrote in the Age yesterday:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/run-on-baseball-bats-as-labor-descends-into-viciousness-20120223-1tqr5.html
“Rudd’s prime ministership had been chaotic, a bad joke, a dysfunction on wheels. He wouldn’t listen to anybody, couldn’t make a decision to save himself. He was a disaster.
No one explained how these attributes had been judged a suitable set of job skills for the job of foreign minister at a time when Australia was becoming more reliant on the rest of the world than almost any time previously. Why, hell, couldn’t he have turned us into an international laughing stock?”
Indeed…if he was that bad and impossible to work with, and, as we’ve been led to believe – ostensibly in nervous breakdown territory – why on earth would you risk appointing him Foreign Minister?
And, only now, right out of the blue it seems, we’re asked to believe he performed dreadfully in that role too? I could have sworn I’ve just read three threads worth of Gillard supporters *crediting* him for what a fantastic job he did as our Foreign Minister.
My being unconvinced aside, that a Rudd return may come at the cost of compromise on carbon pricing is a scary prospect. At its most favourable reading, it seems that’s just part and parcel of the ugly reality of what it takes to usurp sitting Prime Ministers…a hell of a lot of policy two steps backwards to gain the numbers…
Don’t sweat it furious – Gillard is likely to win tomorrow, replaced by Rudd (or 3rd party) later this term.
At the end of the day, here’s the reality : Gillard and Rudd have the same CO2 policy. It’s called emissions trading. The fixed price is an artifact of the minority govt and the GRNs power in this parliament. It’s worth defending – but don’t pretend the particular choice of ALP leader is a major factor here.
What disingenuous poppycock this statement is. First, the problem is a little more than “the resignation of a minister in a Labor government” isn’t it? Second it’s Mr. Lambert himself who’s celebrating the destruction of the ALP at the next election, ensuring two decades of conservative rule (OK, Abbott won’t be in charge that whole time but he’ll certainly set the bottom-of-the-barrel Tone [boom-tish!]).
I think you’re dreamin’, LeftyE.
Nick, I’m not sure if you’ve seen John Mendoza’s comments regarding Rudd’s leadership. Like I said, I think the amateur diagnosis and public shaming of Rudd is a disgrace, but Mendoza is well qualified and he is a non-MP who has worked with Rudd.
Rudd is a disgraceful, dysfunctional back-stabbing individual who people have every right to criticise publicly. McMahon on steroids.
Yes that’s true, but I meant, if the ALP elect him as leader then the indy’s can either anoint him or Abbott. And if either of those then want to get an election done there’s nothing they can do about it.
If Rudd becomes PM I would expect that he will call an election as soon as the polling improves. But sort of poll-driven is what got us here in the first place. That’s one of the reasons I’m no longer supportive of Rudd. We just have to full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes. Hope that good policy* wins the electorate over, and if it doesn’t, well, you get the Government you deserve.
* I know, its nowhere near perfect policy, but Rudd’s not actually promising to change any of that. In fact in some areas I think he’ll be worse in policy terms, even discounting the ‘policy chaos’ argument.
Rudd has no policies other than vicious rage or anger, as David Marr put it all too mildly.
Tyro Rex said:
Except that Gillard refuses to do this. Eg. Pokies reform.
You don’t seem to be holding back on the viciousness, rage and anger either, Cartesius. Just sayin’.
I have had to live with these people and I know what they’re like.
Nick, how is it hearsay? I worked for Kevin. I talked with him countless times. Heck, I even gave you my name. Perhaps the stories all sound alike because they are actually true? And as FB said, what about people like Mendoza? It looks to me like you are rejecting the evidence that is out there because you don’t want to believe it, rather than there being nothing to it.
Cartesius wouldn’t by any chance be Swan, Wayne?
Well, I for one am sick of Marr’s reductionist pop- psych take on all this.
Caucus puts Rudd mk 2 on new leash, condition of appointment. Unless theyre all wimps , it won’t be that hard.
The numbers must be close if the Labor staffers are coming onto blogs such as this
Gillard should hold a Labor Party inquiry into the leaks in the party and expulsion/s should result.
Given the vitriol being poured on Rudd, it is surprising that Rudd has as much support as he does.
Albanese is no martyr. The fact that he has declared for Rudd suggests that the forthcoming vote will be close enough to render untenable Gillard’s claims to leadership.
James Button’s eye witness account of the Rudd administration makes clear why few were willing to defend Rudd last time round:
http://m.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-20120224-1ttxx.html
–”I have had to live with these people and I know what they’re like.”
Jasper?
“Caucus puts Rudd mk 2 on new leash, condition of appointment.”
But what’s the sanction, LE?
Nick, I count Mendoza’s interview as a first hand source, David Marr’s piece in 2010 was based on his conversations with, particularly, Diplomatic staff. There is an assessment of Rudd’s ability as FM in the wikileaks cables which mirrors some of the assessments of Mendoza ie that he was unwilling to listen to the views of others, was abrasive and had a very inflated sense of his own ability to arbitrate, even in areas where he had no expertise – these were reported in the SMH back at the end of 2010.
Marr copped a lot of flak for his Quarterly piece, I believed then, as I do now, that he was unfairly criticized, the psychological speculation is indeed distasteful, but nobody could say that Marr was a sloppy researcher or that he would analyze on the basis of unsubstantiated hearsay or trivial personality conflicts.
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a credible threat to me. You be nice or else we’ll roll you again?
Hopefully bitter experience, Wbb.
The best argument I’ve seen against changing leaders now is that everytime you do it (knock over a PM, especially in early in the job), the easier it becomes. See NSW as an example. So say we get a new PM on Monday or more likely before the next election. How long will that person be given to establish themselves before getting rolled?
btw I don’t see how Rudd would get the updated carbon legislation through the parliament. The Greens won’t support it, and its very likely that Abbott will just say no (as he likes to do) insisting that its either abolished or nothing. So it can’t get through the senate.
I notice that Rudd’s response to Mendoza’s claims is to say that he didn’t work with the man and that Mendoza mainly dealt with the Minister for Health. That would be Roxon.
Stay classy Kev.
Convenience and a desire to prevent an ALP rift trump the national interest. Why is this in the least surprising?
Chris – it’s the thought bubble that bugs me the most, it just gives Abbott a chance to run with: “Rudd doesn’t have any faith in the policy, he wanted to review it”.
The one good thing about the last couple of days is Gillard actually has been reported when she’s given a strong defense of the reforms. Yeah, she squibbed on pokies, but your comment that she “refuses” to pursue good policy is unfair. Means-testing private health rebates; community sector wages reform; tax reform; carbon pricing; mining tax; structural separation of Telstra etc.
Albanese was always likley to support Rudd. He also said that he expects Gillard to win comfortably. Albo will be alright – he’s everyone’ s mate now. Thinks they are both great PMs.
fb, couldn’t listen to the Mendoza interview at work yesterday…thanks for reminding me. I don’t doubt the sincerity of a man who resigned because mental health was left dormant on the back burner for too long. I am still interested to know: if all these high up public servants he spoke of will resign en masse anyway, what is stopped them coming forward too?
LO, because it came across to me that, while you’d worked for Kevin, you (I think) said you hold no personal grudges toward him, and it seemed were still relying on the accounts of others for a lot of the ‘the really outrageous bad stuff’. Not to dismiss your personal experience – I was just after more evidence.
Thanks su, also. Will follow those up. Generally speaking, I have no problem accepting multiple truths on this. Rudd was exceptionally difficult to work with, and rubbed too many people who couldn’t get their agendas through the wrong way.
And that certain people were happy to take full advantage of the obvious ill-feeling, and fuel and fan the growing media hyperbole against Rudd to further their own interests. ie. he’d gifted them the rationale they required, and there would be little sympathy for him when he was gone.
I will continue to take a lot of the ‘for his own good, poor man’ and ‘good Labor heart’ stuff with a massive dose of salt. It reeks of the kind of can’t talk straight for a second nonsense which sees us back in this mess. They really are nothing special, these people. Too many of them anyway. I’m not surprised for a second they’ve so underwhelmed the Australian public.
Just a few brief comments today; we wil know the answer on Monday and the rest is speculation.
1. The polls confirm what the Rudd camp has been saying – Gillard cannot beat Abbott
2. Gillard might still win on Monday, but that will be Labor choosing defeat
3. If the Gillard bloc ignores the polls, it further damages their own redibility, due to their use of polls to justify the Rudd coup. They can’t see that, but most voters will.
4. Also has made the best speech on the matter by anyone so far.
5. The irony of the vitriolic public comments being made about Rudd’s vitriolic nature is clearly lost on the Gillard bloc. For a double gold in irony they should next call Rudd “out of touch”.
6. The suggestion of Shorten taking over as a “compromise” leader would make the destruction of Labor as a democratic political party
complete. Then it truly would be nothing but a union fiefdom. What next, Paul Howes as Minister for Education?
“Convenience and a desire to prevent an ALP rift trump the national interest. Why is this in the least surprising?”
It’s not surprising, Katz.
But for a year now we’ve been telling you how proud of Kevin we are, and what a great job he’s been doing representing us abroad…our mouths opened on television and they were the words that came out.
Over and over again.
But now, because of said convenience and national interest, we have to admit we were in fact lying to you on that account…
Too depressingly familiar is what it is.
And this is supposedly a pro-Gillard/anti-Rudd argument? Rudd has now confirmed what most suspected that Gillard advised him to backflip on the CPRS and are we forgetting Gillard’s back down on the original mining tax & the pokies reforms agreement she signed with Wilkie?
I’d challenge the assertion that Gillard cannot beat Abbott. She has already done so once! And can do it again. She is PM today, not Abbott.
Last year’s reshuffle put Roxon, Pilbesek, Shorten – all good TV communicators – up front. How good was Pilbesek talking about the rebate… ‘now the Parliament House cleaners don’t have to subsidise the members health cover’.
In a paranoid way, perhaps Rudd sensed that things would improve over the year for Gillard and so he had to intensify his rodent-like activities now, rather than wait. That doesn’t matter anymore really.
If you throw enough mud, some will stick and that is what Abbott & Co have successfully been able to do. Reapeatedly. And they get the air time to huff-and-puff and their BS gets accepted as fact. OMG. They even blame Gillard for the Federal Police stuff-up at the Oz Day restaurant ‘riot’. They call it a ‘riot’ often enough and then it becomes accepted as that. If the AFP acted honorably, they’d fess-up to their balls-up.
If Gillard is given the opportunity not to have to watch her back all the time, she and her team will be able to achieve quite a lot over the next 12 months. She will have the opportunity to present her ‘team’ of known Cabinet members and Ministers to the electorate come election time. Abbott is his own worst enemy and if the MSM ever bothered to actually ask him some focussed questions then things will change.
fb @ 429 – I don’t think Rudd’s comments were a thought bubble. They’re intended to try to sway caucus votes.
Re Gillard’s willingness – I’ll give her means testing private health. Carbon pricing was forced on her by the Greens (as mentioned if there was a majority we were going to have a people’s committee which would have been used as an excuse to delay action).
Although the fed gov supported community sector wages reform she didn’t have to take the heat for it – public responsibility was delegated to the fair work commission.
Structural separation of Telstra hasn’t cost her anything (indeed its probably popular in the general community).
And she came up with the Malaysia solution. Fundamentally she has the same problem as Rudd did – not willing to use any political capital and sees it disappear anyway.
I do think she has negotiated well within a minority government context, but it may well not have been necessary in the first place if she hadn’t rolled Rudd. And after reneging on a written agreement with Wilkie, her future ability to negotiate is tainted. Also she wouldn’t be in nearly such a vulnerable position (Rudd resigning causing a change of government) if she still had Wilkie’s support.
I’m actually most annoyed about the pokies backdown. Because unlike the other reforms this is something that will only get through in a minority government situation because it is bad for the ALP financially. Everything else has a decent chance of at least some change with a majority ALP government.
By the way, in terms of right-wing governments, lets not forget that Hawke-Keating were not exactly left leaning.
Sorry to hogg, but what future Bruce Hawker after this is over??? One can wonder.
Who cares about Bruce Hawker he’s just an ALP spinner/lobbyist who used to have direct access to the PMO when Rudd was there and then was frozen out after Gillard moved in. That’s why he’s so keen to see Rudd get back in.
I’ll never forget him saying the Left/Greens should be ignored as they’ll always preference the ALP over the Libs so Labor should continue it’s rightward march.
He might not have Hawker Britton anymore but the guy is a millionaire so he can blow up and bust for all I care.
In party by mobilizing lobbyists. The Mineral’s Council certainly heard the dog whistle in there, and they responded immediately.
Oops unwarranted apostrophe: Sorry Fran, if you’re reading!
Oh, gods, please make it stop!
Yep. That is the nature of popular politics in a context of sensationalism, celebrity, limited attention spans and short memories.
Both political heavyweights and media organisations have a vested interest in ensuring that these rules don’t change.
It is tempting to believe that there was once a golden age when these features of popular politics did not exist. This is historically incorrect. The only things that have changed are the reach and pervasiveness of media and the skills of the professional spinmeisters.
Just head Albo’s speech in full.
My conclusion: at least someone in the ALP is sane.
I’d really love to hear PJK’s take on the whole thing.
Fine @ 445 – and Tanner too since he was there……
Albanese is fence-sitting.
Don’t stop it at all. Break out the popcorn.
Team Gillard: the gang who can’t shoot straight. Who set out to finally assassinate a heavily outgunned Kevin Rudd – with no regard for how their shenanigans may affect Anna Bligh’s prospects in the QLD state election – and have probably mortally wounded themselves. They will be a formidable force to face Tony Abbott when the day comes. Sure!
Socrates above has got it on their complete lack of irony. Stating that Rudd is abusive, unhinged and a bully through abusive, unhinged and bullying media releases (Swan’s on Tues night was in a class of its own) and TV performances (Stephen Conroy unleashing under the heavy questioning of Karl Stefanovic on the Today show, which all the political heavyweights are watching at 6am).
Declaring Rudd to be “out of touch” would indeed be the coup de grace. Anyone remember what happened the last time Julia Gillard went into a Brisbane shopping mall?
Perhaps they could offer up Simon Crean as the “compromise candidate”.
Its taken Albo to finally call B.S. on them. How the next sitting of the House of Reps goes could be extremely interesting.
And Mendoza was lined up by Nicola Roxon, who may well have done herself some long term damage with this debacle.
I wonder how many, here, would be calling on the various factions, within the Liberal Party, to dispense with the mad monk, if perchance he managed to bluster his way to the top job, began frothing at the mouth and wishing to introduce his own version of religious law and anti-environmentalism?
(None of which was made completely clear in the two weeks before the election because that policy mix was only then announced, briefly, because the msm had generally agreed that was fair because ‘they are only the opposition, after all’)
Its an interesting, but basically academic, point because the Liberal Party are not public unravelling. Unless we count the call for new leadership from the Rob Oakeshott faction.
The readout from the polls is more complex than some headlines are suggesting. In the Nielsen poll, for example, as Mumble notes in his blog, some 58 per cent prefer Rudd as ALP leader and 34 per cent prefer Gillard. But only 48 per cent actually want Labor to make the leadership change and 47 per cent want them to stick with Gillard
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/rudd_gillard_polls/
Virtually a dead heat. Would be interesting to know what the “I’d prefer Rudd to be PM but I think Labor should stick with Gillard” respondents think.
Highlight of the day: Anthony Albanese’s speech. Should help his colleagues focus on the main game after Monday.
Lowlight of the day: The un-elected Bruce Hawker suggesting the Prime Minister shouldn’t run in the ballot.
Terry, it’s not the popcorn you reached for but the hyper bowl.
Cartesius@307 Rudd is off the Planet by 180 degrees imo:Kamikaze Kev has come back from Washington via Dallas (KR has morphed into JR or just got Bushed) with a diplomatic bag full of riding instructions on our future direction,task one reinstate the 2 party only Lib/Lab cabal,take back the turf,Greens are an impediment to objectives I could go on,suffice to say the Joke is back on track, it happened in 1975 when we Colonials imagined for a moment this was our country,no conspiracy theory, when you have lived it the first time It’s much easier to recognize, the future has returned to the past,as a Labor supporter of 50 yrs standing I’m gutted with them having learned nothing other than laying down and copping it sweet again,sad times.
Terry, it’s not “academic” but about the right of colleagues, who have elected someone to a critical job, being able to replace him or her if they feel that person is no longer up to the job by way of failing physical or mental capacity.
joe2 @ 450 – and just how would he get the changes through the parliament?
So apparently Rudd was really bad to work for. How many ministers resigned to the backbench in protest because he was handling things so badly?
I like to call Rudd’s flight home the new ‘march on Rome’, both in the sense of a repetition of Mussolini and with the US as the new Rome to which he always marches.
I wish people would stop accepting this meme that Gillard and Swan convinced Rudd to give up on the CPRS. There was lots of different positions being put quite forcibly, as I detailed here. There were about a dozen people at the critical meeting, one of the times when Rudd actually did consult.
Rudd came to the meeting with this position:
And that’s what he decided. Having consulted, he was of the same opinion still.
Gillard has been consistent in the position that there should be bipartisanship and broad consensus. There is no evidence that she was looking for an excuse to do nothing.
She signed up with the Greens to do something because it was an essential part of the deal. She thought she could build consensus afterwards by selling the idea and through the Climate Commission.
That was a total miscalculation and she’s paying the price.
The citizens assembly proposal is the evidence. There is no way that unless they stacked it they would get consensus from it. Public views are way too polarised. Lack of consensus would have been the excuse to do very little.
Call me deluded if you wish fanciful maybe, “In my guts I know their nuts”
I followed your link Brian and found the following post of mine in the thread:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/06/28/rudd-gillard-the-cprs-and-public-opinion/#comment-320388
I wouldn’t change much (if any) of that at comment at all, if I had the chance.
Interestingly, I also found this from Adrian:
8 months is a long time at LP, it seems.
“joe2 @ 450 – and just how would he get the changes through the parliament?”
Indeed, Chris….checks and balances, by another level of government are great but why should it need to go there, anyway, if those closer to action can see the concerns and intervene?
One part of the executive may become dysfunctional and why shouldn’t the rest call him/her on it?
Fran maybe you never change your mind, but some of us do.
Besides, that was then and this is now.
Apologies for cutting and pasting such a long post, but once again a great analysis from the Piping Shrike:
Well I know I have changed my mind about Rudd.
I had been very supportive of the bloke, thinking he was copping a hard time from media because they would pick up every word and make it into some kind of challenge to Gillard.
I realised, recently, I have been duped by a very manipulative individual who has been doing everything he can to destroy the governments chances of recovery. He was given a big chance as Foreign Minister to get on with his life but his own ego has turned him into another opposition leader.
As if Tony wasn’t enough.
The problem with defining the difference between Brilliance and Insanity is the fear of being wrong,Kevin’s Conundrum.101.
“Moving Backwards” motivated by Fear does not a PM make.
Maybe Kevin Rudd should break away from the Labor Party at this point and form the Kevin F111 party. That way, he can garner all the Kevinista voters who would be at this point reluctantly considering voting for Mr Rabbit because they would definitely not vote for Labor. La Gillard can hold the present minority government together in her capable way long enough to get the Carbon Tax bedded down. Then come election time Kevin will be in the perfect position to form a minority government with La Gillard and Mr Rabbit will be left fuming and flailing impotently on the sidelines once more.
I haven,t commented much on LP, so can some one tell me which day I can slip on without there being too many political staffers
Your taxes at work. The guy used to be Craig Thomson’s PA.
Ah ye participants of rational thought I share my sideways edict, alcohol as a panacea for the state of pissed off-ness is a folly and no enabler for online interaction, may the ensuing slumber cast off this malady and the morn no hangover tolerate.
Dave?dave’s not here.
Did I miss the note about a presidential election? Rudd and family visiting the Queen St Mall. Here.
“At one point Mr Rudd climbed onto a park bench to thank crowds for their support”
Fuck me….
Can’t wait for QT next week.
Where to begin?
Permit me as a parting gesture, I call on Mr Abbott,Kevin Rudd and all the other perpetrators to give all Australian citizens a heart felt kiss,because like the people all over the world ,we like to be kissed when we’re being Fucked!
Yeah Darin, the ‘people power’ Presidential stuff has bugged me from the start. But don’t worry, Peter Slipper has made an infomercial [no kidding] to help people better understand parliamentary democracy:
I withdraw,no Slippery tongues,go to bed Brian.
Look like Gillard still, which is excellent.
That will guarantee a ‘government’ split four ways (ALP-Gillard, ALP-Rudd, Greens, Indeps) with the worst PM in Australian history in charge of the ongoing rockshow.
With her record of deception, backstabbing, dud calls, fumbling, failure, waste and blithering incompetence, we can look forward to a multi-term Abbott government. After all, it will take at least a decade for an Abbott government to return the country to the fiscal position of 2007 before these incompetent squandermonkeys blew $250,000,000,000 on nothing.
Maybe, during that decade, the ALP can rebuild some relevance. And find a Hawke.
What the hell happened to the party of Hawke? (and yes, I voted for Hawke every time as his program was the best for the country)
So Rudd may be merely reprising his pre-2007 campaign strategy of courting
‘The Australian’ undoubtedly the most influential print publication in Australia.
But this time, I dunno. FWIW I think Rudd is mentally ill and in the grip
of a narcissistic Mutually Assured Destruction revenge bender. Never again
will power be stripped from him. He’s leaping into the pocket of the organisation
most guaranteed to protect his power and therefore ego – News Ltd., the faction
you have if you want the support of Capital.
Excellent. Australia ruled by two narcissists (Rudd and Mitchell), both
bankrolled by Murdoch with brain-dead support from ALP factional parasites
who believe that they themselves in power, at any cost, is preferrable to any
alternative. Cheering them on are the truly soulless like Arbib and Bitar, feasting
at the public purse with shameless abandon.
And supporting all this, according to the polls are the electorate,
justifiably disgusted by the coup of the soulless, but shockingly deceived
by Rudd (as I was). Had I known Rudd’s idea of government is for him
personally to run the country I would not have voted for him in 07.
Probably would have gone informal in the Lower House.
Rudd is anti-democratic. His call out to the public is, as Katz said,
merely Caeserism or Peronism in action. Its the call of the dictator to
be anointed by the masses.
In regard to the polling and Rudd’s rapturous welcome in Brisbane -
hold your nerve!! If we stumble in the day of trouble, how small is our
strength. Have confidence in policy, not populism.
Rudd is Fool’s Gold.
Nice comment from Mindy on that 2011 thread too.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/06/28/rudd-gillard-the-cprs-and-public-opinion/#comment-320389
And it still is.
However Albo was all class. Someone had to demonstrate that position. Transcend the moment and remember that Tuesday will arrive very quickly. (Faulkner, for all the good publicity he gets – doesn’t seem to warrant his reputation.)
“and Mendoza was lined up by Nicola Roxon, who may well have done herself some long term damage with this debacle.”
did she line him up to say it way back in June 2010 as well?:
http://www.ballinaadvocate.com.au/story/2010/06/24/rudd-punished-ignoring-advisers/
Mk50 is that like a Rhodes Scholar with an AK49 I know Hawkie blew the Unions away and you blew it out your…….
Adrian said:
Disappointingly defensive, Adrian.
Of course it’s open to people to change their minds about important things. I certainly have. Rather than feeling guilty or embarrassed about it, one should, IMO, reflect on how one came to form the view that one now disavows. What (if anything) did you overlook then that you now know? Did you attach too little importance or misunderstand the significance of some factor at the time? How rigorous was your inference-making process at that time? Reflecting on your view now, in what ways (if at all) is it more rigorous than before? What continuities (if any) can be identified in both inference-making events?
It sometimes helps to workshop this out with others.
One continuity that I see is the way you express your emotional investment in your position. In the above quote, you claim that it would be sheer madness to reinstate him now and that the same people that were telling us what a great PM Gillard would make are now trying to convince the ALP to go with Rudd, and their agenda is transparent..
Yet above in this thread you speak of Team Gillard – a characterisation that back last June you’d surely have rejected as a strawman. You say:
Unfortunately Gillard has been spooked from day one, and never has had and never will have the connection with the people (you know the mob that vote) that Rudd has to this day.
Day one occurred a long time before June of 2011.
You might benefit from reflecting not only on the apparent differences in the two positions, but also on their structural continuity.
Didn’t Saddam’s last appearance involve climbing on a park bench and thanking his supporters?
If you say so Fran. I’ll reflect on what you said, minus the pomposity, which unfortunately doesn’t leave much at all.
And BTW, I’m not the slightest bit defensive about it, so that’s a misreading from you.
Thanks for the gratuitous advice.
And you’ve got a well practiced line in condescension too, which makes it difficult to take you seriously.
Operating a keyboard under the influence,?probably causes offense,power terminated in anticipation of sanctions,preemptive apologies apply.
Stingose helps.
Giles @ 479, I’m weary of fishing your pearls of wisdom out of the spam bucket. I suspect you’ll never escape it if you keep the second part of your name.
Not sure, but something is attracting the beast.
Well thanks for the light relief Brian62.
I like Kevin. I think he (along with others) did many good things when he was PM. He was a very good Foreign Minister. But he is flawed and at the end of his time as PM, government was in chaos, due to his flaws. I think with time he could change and come back, like Menzies did, as a good Prime Minister. But he hasn’t had the time to get his psychological house in order, so to come back now would be a disaster for him and the party and the country. And to imagine that his flaws could be controlled at this stage by putting him on some sort of Caucus leash is unfortunately wishful thinking.
That’s an interesting and disturbing thought.
Faustusnotes @ 484 – I think you mean Hitler
Yes, Brian62, all the best and lots of water, now, will help.
Should the Australia top job recycle?
As routine in the political arena, the most fallen prime minister or premier resigned and have never returned.
Labor party trends to protect the climate, actually the pollution, so the materials recycled purpose is its essential policy. However, the prime minister position has not recycled yet.
If on Monday 27, 2012, former foreign minister, MR. Kevin Rudd re-selected his former top job, so Labor should make a history.
Hoa Minh Truong.
( author of The Dark Journey & Good Evening Vietnam)
First part of my post @479 was inadvertently omitted. Here it is:
If you falter in the day of trouble, how small is your strength (Proverbs 24:10)
Rudd may be descending to truly horrible depths. His apparent willingness to call off the media inquiry and to again dilute Carbon pricing to complete ineffectiveness in conjunction with his treacly concern for ‘business confidence’ in his Washington resignation announcement shows that he reaching out to the Murdochcracy for approval and support.
…which is working, because the Murdochcracy is behind him 100%.
…unless Rudd is again trying to hoodwink them.
Robert Manne is his ‘Bad News’ Quarterly Essay describes quite convincingly how Rudd tricked Mitchell (Oz Editor-In-Chief) into believing Rudd could deliver the ALP into Rupert’s pocket. Mitchell’s subsequent crazed and personal campaign against Rudd was powered by Mitchell’s indignation that Rudd had tricked him, Rudd remaining basically liberal in orientation.
So Rudd may be merely reprising his pre-2007 campaign strategy of courting ‘The Australian’ undoubtedly the most influential print publication in Australia. (continued @479)
Fran Barlow, @ 483, don’t you realise that it’s ill-mannered to offer unsolicited advice? Especially when delivered in such a pompous, rude and condescending manner.
@308
I think you prove Ken’s point. And he is right, there seems to be a strong partisan flavour to the comments most of which, like Jumpy’s, are pretty much worthless. Jumpy is a relative newcomer of course and probably has trouble looking at things analytically given that this was once the dominant discursive paradigm of LP (and it may well still be, there’s a good chance that the ALP leadership poison is a bit like Mercury, it accumulates as you consume).
A Billy Joel Gem gender altered that fits the bill as a Public Service ode “He can kill with a smile
He can wound with his eyes
He can ruin your faith with his casual lies
And he only reveals what he wants you to see
He hides like a child,
But he’s always a Nutter to me
He can lead you to love
He can take you or leave you
He can ask for the truth
But he’ll never believe you
And he’ll take what you give him, as long as it’s free
Yeah, he steals like a thief
But he’s always a nutter to me
CHORUS:
Oh–he takes care of himself
He can wait if he wants
He’s ahead of his time
Oh–and he never gives out
And he never gives in
He just changes his mind and he’ll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then he’ll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you’re bleedin’
But he’ll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause he’s always a nutter to me
–Mhmm–
Bridge
CHORUS:
Oh–he takes care of himself
He can wait if he wants
He’s ahead of his time
Oh–and he never gives out
And he never gives in
He just changes his mind he is frequently kind
And he’s suddenly cruel
He can do as he pleases
He’s nobody’s fool
And he can’t be convicted
He’s earned his degree
And the most he will do
Is throw shadows at you
But he’s always a nutter to me”
–Mhmm– Guess who
Its just, profoundly disappointing.
Hark I hear the Sirens roar,goodnight sweet prince,omega.
My peers I plead Insanity, I’m just crazy about my recently deceased Labor Party,not to forget Democracy and freedom of expression,obsession is not an exclusive right of the polity.
okay, if Maxine Mckews version of events is true, they are both as craven as one another and I have ceased to care entirely.
proportional representation would be great around about now, I reckon.
Fine said:
It’s no more ill-mannered than to offer unsolicited assistance to those who appear to need it. Nobody need accept it of course.
As always, YMMV. Adrian seemed not to have a problem with robust banter — I found the tone of Adrian’s first response to be seeking it –, and he made accusations of bad faith into the bargain in his remarks in June. Yet I chose my words to be on point and not ad hominem. The advice was constructive.
If one receives a gift that is of good quality, one ought to waste little emotion on the how pleasing the packaging is — still less reject it because it offends ones aesthetic sense.
It seems there is going to be an arms race in slagging each other between Rudd and the Gillard’s forces. As always the factional thugs will over egg the pudding with the accident prone Gillard, and Rudd will end up walking and taking half his supporters with him.
Expect Labor to be halved if there is an immediate election.
If they are true then we must begin to wonder how influential corporate
Australia is with some of the faction heavies, and if they can produce actions such as this to protect profits and markets. That is the implication if you follow the thread for the ETS and the mining tax.
So how similar then the Labor Party to the Liberal Party who had their carbon policy written by the coal industry.
Gillard of course comes out looking terrible. Undermining central policy, that was the second most important battle ground after Workchoices against Howard. Actively undermining it, threatening the govt (a challenge?) then directly benefiting from it.
All very disgusting. Make you wish Rudd go create another party with some principles. I guess he is supposed to have the personality traits to actually want to and be able to do stuff like this.
fb @ 481, on why Roxon didn’t say what she said now in 2010, this is from my 2010 post:
Rudd seemed to be aware of this issue when he said he would change back to having caucus decide who would be ministers.
@ 503, I don’t think Maxine McKew is a reliable reporter on this one, much as I generally admire her.
Generally though, I think Rudd lacks one of the essential qualifications for the job – the ability to manage a large ministry. It’s not an easy task and most journalists have no conception of what it would involve.
Gillard is weak on leadership, policy and political nous, but I don’t think Rudd is particularly strong on those factors either.
Someone said (it was Steve Austin on local radio) that the further you are away from Rudd the better you like him whereas Gillard is the other way around. She’s apparently very personable up close.
Always contended that Gillard would make a great departmental CEO, but their her skills end. Vision, most of the governments came from Rudd, leadership, depends what you mean, but is tied in with vision which she is to bland to have. Political nouse, almost none.
Gillard probably thought all her wheeling and dealing with union heavies and other back-room MPs qualified her to lead a government. But I think her concept has mostly been the running of a department. Probably she reached her level of incompetence at deputy pm, and should have stayed there.
Rudd does the vision stuff well, is passionate and driven. Can connect with and understand the people as ordinary individuals and a collective, something Gillard is mute on.
I still don’t buy into the meme being put about in many various forms about Rudd. There are too many vested interests involved and personality conflicts around to know the truth of it all. But it doesn’t gel with what he was able to achieve before being knifed.
People are or were willing to over look Rudd’s fault because of his other attributes. But people will not be willing to over look them with Gillard, especially if the include such duplicitous behaviour. Maybe the people sense this in her personality type.
Great piece of journalism from Guy Rundle at Crikey:
While Kevin woos Labor, Therese embroiled in UK labour scandal.
And here’s the link to McKew’s article, United we stand, divided we fall.
What has Therese got to do with the challenge to Gillard? A bit Rupert Murdochish. It is topical because she is his wife, but not relevant to her husband’s business.
I notice there was another article, The Age? that had in it the statement that Rudd and Reine were the sort of people that chase status, according to one person’s view, because they already have money.
Scraping barrels, or assisting Gillard, hard to know how it is journalism of any kind.
At this stage of the game Thomas, some people might be interested in context– you may not be, but after Therese Rein’s repeated public intervention in her husband’s tilt for Labor leadership this week, information about her business, especially insofar that it reveals the businesses political connections may be of interest to others. I found it very interesting.
In fact, I find her business more interesting for political reasons, that mainstream politics. But perhaps you can’t see why?
okay, if Maxine Mckews version of events is true, they are both as craven as one another and I have ceased to care entirely.
Pretty much, FB. The whole thing is just too, too depressing. They care more about destroying each other than Abbott and it seems both squibbed on the most bloody important issue by a mile. At least Rudd has admitted it was a stupid mistake. Gillard had to be taken hostage by the Greens to move on it.
McKew on Gillard:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/united-we-stand-divided-we-fall-20120225-1tvur.html#ixzz1nQy5sC3j
Unless you believe McKew is a less reliable source than Gillard (I don’t) this article destroys Gillard’s credibility over the central issue that saw her rise to power. If Gillard wins, Labor will be dead in 2013.
I have read Maxine McKew’s account of what happened with the cPRS decision and my post on what Pamela Williams wrote. There are significant differences, for example in the approach that Mark Arbib was recommending.
I would say three things.
First Williams gives a more complete picture of the range of views being put and identifies that Rudd also had a view, which is what he eventually stuck with.
Williams piece was written nearly two years ago, closer to the events.
McKew is emotionally involved in the case. She had served as junior minister to Gillard with special responsibility for early childhood education and worked hard on developing the policy they took into the election, which was effectively dumped. That’s another story.
I’m not saying that McKew is wrong in her account, but we can’t be sure that she is 100% right.
By far the better option would have been to go to a double dissolution. Rudd has to take total responsibility for not doing that. The second best option was to negotiate with the Greens. Again Rudd has to take responsibility for not going down that track.
SOCRATES – Come off it. What would Maxine know? Doesn’t she understand Julia’s political life was born, by immaculate conception, on the day she became PM.
The biggest irony in all of this is that Julia’s right-wing backers are obviously trying to save her from the Rev Kev so that they can knife her themselves and install their own. Bet they think Bill Shorten (aka Fred Kite) is the way to lead the party forward.
Dave,
Of course, I thought that back in 2010. Shorten’s widely reported ambition for the PM job despite having even less experience then Gillard is emblematic of the hubris that percolates through the ALP factions.
I agree. Even better though would have been refusing to negotiate the package with Turnbull — simply saying take it or leave it or we go to a DD by November 2009. The LNP would have caved under the pressure.
I agree that the buck stopped with Rudd.
No, patrickg @513, Rudd is still trying to use the issue as a political football, I don’t think he has learnt anything at all.
I doubt I’ll vote at all at the next election.
Oh and Thomas Paine and others, Rudd’s comments about Gillard being a “childless, atheist, ex-communist”, whilst talking to the SDA types here in Adelaide a year ago, suggests to me that the only time Kevin Rudd has a problem with factional thugs is when they aren’t backing him.
The problem for Labor is a problem that exists in the broader community, that the organisational structures have ceased to serve their function, and the only people who bother with them, do so for personal gain. We can access information and feel a sense of community via means other than local organisational structures and we will encounter much greater diversity and usually much less discrimination. So GenXers and younger will run a mile from community organisations [doesn't matter if it's the local branch of the ALP or your local community garden] because we know that anyone under the age of 50 who walks through the door of a group that is an incorporated body will be pounced on to become an office bearer and be dragged into structural politics.
Agree, said same at the time, but its obvious Swan and Gillard were up to their eyeballs in the bad politics of this moment. At least Rudd has owned it.
McKew goes as far to say “Prime architect”. This, eg, sounds highly believable given what we know of the Arbib, and Gillard’s own absurb subsequnet (and electorally inexpicable) footsies with a dead NSW govt:
Maxine McKew:
http://m.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/divided-they-stand-20120225-1tv9v.html
False premise, McKew. Rudd’s assassins viewed him as a psychopath, not as an autocrat.
Clearly, Gillard had the polls in mind when she insisted on sinking the ETS. Rudd agreed. Gillard got what she wanted. But this U-turn didn’t cure the underlying flaw of the Rudd government, which was Rudd himself.
And despite revisionist attempts to deny it, the Caucus were in broad agreement on this matter.
It is a sign of panic and lack of confidence in Gillard that many Caucus members who sat on their hands when Rudd was assassinated are now prepared to vote for Rudd.
Only a credible third candidate will prevent the ALP from imploding on Monday.
The great Fred Kite
KATZ – There aren’t be a credible third candidate because then the Australian voting population will know it’s business as usual and the ALP has learnt nothing. They would be better sticking with Julia than going to a third candidate.
What is so terribly dangerous about this myth of Rudd being sacked because of his personal dealings with colleagues (which fortunately, the Australian population know is crap) is that it tries to sweeps under the carpet the responsibility of mining companies, factional leaders, the NSW Right, etc etc for Rudd’s dismissal. It’s a convenient bed-time story that ignores some real threats to our democracy.
KATZ – In other word, if labor goes to a third candidate, voters will know that the party has only replaced the chief engineer on the gravy train, rather than trying to slow it down.
Dave, in what sense was Rudd a threat to mining companies? He agreed to dump the ETS!
You are drifting perilously close to a Black Helicopter version of History.
Were most of the Caucus party to this alleged conspiracy?
Andrew Elder…
http://andrewelder.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/gillard-and-labor-leadership.html
You say this as if the marginal voter views it as a Bad Thing.
Labor has been handmaiden of corporate interests dines the day Hawke assassinated Bill Hayden. Since that day Labor has been the natural party of government.
Coincidence? I think not.
Dines = since.
Stupid iPhone.
KATZ – I thought that the mining companies ran a huge advertising campaign against the Rudd govt. Are you saying that had no impact?
It had a huge impact. Rudd caved. The miners got their man. Why change anything?
KATZ – I have not expressed myself clearly. I think there is a big attitude out there that the ALP dumped the PM that the electorate voted for, and they will continue to punish labor until it makes amends. May sound naive, but it is strong.
KATZ – That is a truly bizarre interpretation of history. Rudd didn’t cave. He got dumped and Julia caved.
Dave @ 523, you say Rudd’s “personal dealings with colleagues” was a myth and crap. It was an issue which went far beyond “personal dealing” to the heart of how the government functioned. I think this was central to why Gillard moved, which is the important thing, just as Bush’s choice in the end is what got the US into Iraq.
Have a look at Laurie Oakes’ latest column which is one of many. Managing the ministry is an important function, which goes to much more than technocratic management. It goes to policy development as well as implementation and how the whole government performs and communicates.
I think there is a fair bit of mythology in the other stuff you mention which is vastly over-rated.
Anyway, mercifully I’m out for most of the day.
BTW, Dave, I think you are right @ 531. Some citizens on the street have been saying that the people choose the PM, which is not strictly true, but there you have it.
http://m.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rudd-confirms-blunder-in-dumping-ets-20110405-1d1i6.html
Learn some history, Dave.
KATZ – If you don’t even know when the Govt inked an agreement with the mining companies, you’re not worth having a discussion with.
I think Dave’s referrring to the mining tax Katz.
Four Corners as good as said there were behind the scenes moves with the anti-Rudd camp in caucus.
Now the MRRT gives away more in deductions that it takes, and only applies to two minerals.
Ive always suspected this was an under-rated factor in Rudd’s demise.
It beats me how Dave thinks a party choosing, who it wants to lead, is “a threat to democracy”. He might do well to look at the Peter Slipper trainer video @476.
How many times does it have to be said we live in Australia, not the USA, and do not directly elect our leader?
Beat me to it Brian. I type very slowly.
JOE2 – Why don’t you go out into the electorate and explain that difference (which I well understand) between Australian and the US to the average voter. I suspect you will have a hard time getting a hearing.
More to the point, Dave why do you, if you know it so well, try a fool us with that kind of nonsense?
Ultimately, so what if many of the population do not understand the point of difference. They are still wrong.
New leadership thread – this one’s getting too long. Labor leadership roundtable IV
No excuses,bad behaviour, suitable embarrassment,sincere apologies to all offended,terrible hangover,self inflicted all.
tssk @3, I agree with your sentiments about Swan.
This guy is like human wallpaper, no-one notices him so he’s been getting away with doing a lack-lustre job.
He’s like the guy who almost wins Big Brother because he flies under the radar, and manages to stay in the house longer than he should, given his bland personality and ability. (he then gets beaten by the smiling, dorky guy who the public love, but that’s another story)
Swan is the guy that cannot sell one of the best economies in the world. The fact that we’re spending like Greeks, meaning ‘cautiously’ and not quite enough, is all due to him.
This is the guy who is so unsure, and insecure, and so down-right uninspiring, that he crushes a water glass in his nervousness, while being interviewed about the subject that he should be an expert at.
His job. The economy.
This same gutless wonder who cannot string two sentences together, – the guy who has Australians so deeply worried about our finances because we think he is asleep at the wheel, becomes completely animated and gregarious when he is bitching about his former boss.
At last something he shines at!
If Wayne ‘does anybody else see him’ Swan,
was half as good at his job, as he is at putting sh-t on Kevin Rudd, we could restore some much-needed consumer confidence and people would start spending again. What a no hoper!!!!
@372
“I find it extraordinary that the same story … as to why it was necessary to remove Rudd from power is dismissed as fiction”
I’d say that’s because you’re missing the point. I for one haven’t dismissed the premise, although there hasn’t been a really convincing body of evidence put forward just heresay and anecdote. The main problem, and one that you repeatedly ignore, is that the ALP was incapable of coming with a solution other than the one that has seen them descend into unprecedented level of chaos and sink much further in the polls than they were pre-Gillard. Can you please lay of the coy, faux-outrage?