Those who’ve been around here for a long time, and have long memories, might recall that I was backing Gillard enthusiastically when Kim Beazley’s leadership was on its last legs.

I welcome and celebrate her as Australia’s first woman Prime Minister.

I don’t welcome the way she got there. But more than enough has been said already on that topic around here of late. Later on in the week, I’d like to take some time to ponder the significance of her leadership for the feminist cause. But in the meantime, I’ll just recommend reading two interesting perspectives – from Anne Summers and Shakira Hussein.

So, as we adjust ourselves to the shock of the new, I think it’s worth taking some time to reflect on Kevin Rudd.

Andrew Elder writes of a big social change in Australia and other countries – the rise of insecurity at work and the fall of jobs for life. I don’t agree with the conclusions in his post, and politics has always been an insecure profession by definition. But a prevailing climate of insecurity encourages a culture of individualism and negates an ethics of care, which must have complex and profound implications for politics.

To me, watching Kevin Rudd’s farewell press conference on Thursday reminded me of the way we increasingly experience all manner of adverse experiences in our personal and collective lives, fluid and risky as both are. They come to us as the embodiment of our forebodings, as a nightmare made flesh, and the more we are disconnected from our fellow humans, the more disaster seems like a traumatic and inexplicable verdict on our endeavours.

In a workplace culture, for instance, where suspicion reigns, and goalposts constantly shift, organisation charts morph manically around us, people come and are disposed of at will, and trust is at a premium, we often don’t know how our performance is really perceived, and this lack of genuine dialogue can inspire a looming paranoia we try to put out of our minds.

I think Kevin Rudd may have been the wrong person for the job of Australian Prime Minister in these mad and maddening times.

I think, without equivocation, I was wrong to see Julia Gillard as best placed to lead the Labor party against John Howard in 2006 and 2007. Kevin Rudd, whose persona was reassuring at a time of insecurity and fear, proved an expert and successful campaigner. He also unlocked a Pandora’s Box of hope. The sentiment of anticipation and the euphoria of change was the leitmotif of the summer of 2007 and 2008, culminating in the Apology to the Stolen Generations on February 13.

There were some fine moments for our country, and balm for our collective soul.

The tragedy of Kevin Rudd, and I think it is a tragedy in the truest sense of the word, was that he was probably not well equipped, despite his image as a methodical bureaucrat, to manage and bed down change. The oscillation between poetry and prose wasn’t the old saw of “campaign in poetry, govern in prose”. Instead, moments of rhetorical (and I think, sincere) ambition resolved into a mountain of paper and procrastination.

In the end, it would seem that Kevin Rudd withdrew within himself and sought to retreat to a comfortable inner sanctum. That indicates, I think, that he fell victim to fear, and perhaps to recrimination over his failure to seize the moment on a climate change election. I think his experience at Copenhagen must have also been very frustrating for him personally.

I think the job he set himself, and that we who supported him wanted him to perform, may be beyond anyone’s capacity. The socially disconnected political machine can indeed keep itself ticking over, but the problems modernity has created really are diabolical, and incapable of being resolved easily through the governing modes of modernity.

I feel for Kevin Rudd because I think in the last months of his Premiership, he was deeply alone and no one reached out to him as a person. All this stuff about lacking ‘Labor mates’ ignores the fact that these ties are mostly surface deep, and that the culture of politics is a disposable one, a machine that rips up its cogs, rearranges them and recomposes them according to forces greater than any one agent can control.

When we can’t trust each other, when loyalty becomes a slogan, when commitment gives way to convenience or the narcissistic needs of the isolated self, we are all truly islands. In a world where many social ties are fluid and lightweight, we have created dysfunctional and deeply dehumanising structures which threaten to crush us.

The cynicism of the “hard heads” is a protective and defensive mechanism. They too know, in some corner of their being, that orienting oneself according to supposed pragmatism provides no safe haven. The Real will have its revenge.

I don’t think any of us, no matter how strong our character, could have stoically endured the relentless drumbeat of negativism and personally hurtful press hysteria Rudd faced, nor the feeling that all we had worked for was as nought compared to the next poll. I hope something changes before Julia Gillard confronts the same insane pressures.

If we really look into our hearts, we are all Kevin Rudd. We are all unable, to greater or lesser degree, to manage the competing demands of our lives, and to close the gap between the desire to do good and the realities of a chaotic and unmanageable world. And it all takes its toll, which can be a terrible one in the true sense of that word.

We can only achieve anything if we start to care more.

Often, we only know what we have when it’s gone.

I want to wish Kevin Rudd all the very best personally. I’m not proposing him for “canonisation”, but I think he’s a good man and not some sort of ambition-bot. I think that should be very clear. And I hope that Australia will continue to benefit from his undoubted talents. I also hope he takes real solace in the good he has done, and can attain some peace outside the maelstrom.

Gillard nails it:

“When you say you are going to vote against something, what is left to talk about?”

What’s going on here? As far as I can tell, while The Greens and Steve Fielding have been dealing, Nick Xenophon hasn’t disclosed his hand yet. Is Malcolm afraid that his vote might actually nix the stimulus, and of the consequences? Does he have some private polling that’s more reliable than a sample of Andrew Bolt and Dennis Shanahan or Liberal staffers voting a million times on News Ltd online “polls”? Or is he just (a) blathering about bipartisanship as usual while being partisan (b) unable to shut up and/or (c) off message?

Elsewhere: Possum on how to read tonight’s Newspoll in light of the Beazley analogy.

Update: There goes Malcolm’s key argument:

THE Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, conceded yesterday that his alternative plan for an economic stimulus package would still require government borrowing of up to $177 billion, compared with the Federal Government’s proposal to borrow up to $200 billion.

Mr Turnbull has argued that the Government’s $42 billion plan would saddle taxpayers with an unsustainable level of government debt and has proposed a scaled-back package.

THE Opposition will vote against the Government’s $42 billion financial stimulus package, Malcolm Turnbull says.

“Someone has to stand up for fiscal discipline,” Mr Turnbull told the House of Representatives. “Someone has to stand up for levels of debt for future generations.”

Whatever the House Republicans can do, we can do better? Conciliating his own party? Trying to be relevant?

Turnbull’s decision reminds me of the biggest mistake Kim Beazley made – trying to block the tax cuts in the 2005 budget. The argument about fairness was complex. The then government said “he doesn’t want you to have money”. Eventually Beazley caved, but his poll numbers never recovered, and the rest of his career was a short prelude to its end.

Update: Turnbull makes his case.

Update: Bernard Keane on Malcolm Turnbull committing political suicide.

Poor old Guy Rundle was lampooned a while back for having the audacity to suggest that conservatives in the public arena in Australia had to find at least some point of contact with reality in order to continue to have influence. But he was right. It’s interesting to see some American right wingers, including former Bush acolyte David Frum, realising this – which you can read about in this review by Michael Tomasky (who isn’t confident that the factions that control the GOP will actually take any notice), and this column today from Daniel Finkelstein, a former adviser to the British Tories. As Andrew Elder remarks, the Reaganite right and their antipodean counterparts just don’t get that the public would rather pay for basic services efficiently delivered through tax than often infefficiently and expensively delivered through the private sector:

… there is the waning appeal of small-government rhetoric. In the 1970s, speeches about government being the problem, not the solution, resonated. Now this language is much less potent politically. Government remains often inefficient and too large, but winning support to change it is harder. Conservatives need to show that they can run government, providing services, not merely talking about shrinking them.

And the American right, or at least sections of it, is starting to realise that just blathering on about tax cuts has also lost its appeal. It didn’t win Howard the election, did it?

The significance of Obama’s rise is that people are tired of increasingly pointless debates whose terms were set by those who came to political life in the 60s and 70s, as argued in The Economist, and as Andrew Elder also notes in a quite withering attack on Gerard Henderson. The right needs to stop living in a fantasy world where the times will change to suit them, and start changing to suit the times – and Finkelstein’s comments on moral righteousness are very much to the point. The problem for Australian conservatives is that Brendan Nelson shows no particular sign of understanding any of this, is beholden to the far right anyway, and probably doesn’t stand for anything much himself apart from himself. The early months of his leadership seem characterised by carping negativism, which wasn’t a good look for Beazley, and Beazley had the advantage of being likeable and well known. What the Australian right should do is up to them, of course, but a failure to understand that the political climate of the late 00s is different from that of previous decades won’t see them return to power any time soon.

Howard’s behaviour throughout 2007 can only be characterised as hubris, and he can only be personally blamed for this. Whom the gods would destroy … This is a pity, since the former prime minister’s record remains permanently stained, and his record in government only able to be discussed through this defect.

I wonder if Howard still thinks this way?

Its free and sceptical spirit has contributed enormously to intellectual and political debate in this country. It has displayed in relation to each of the great philosophical challenges that have come along through their domestic manifestations here in Australia in my lifetime a tenacity towards principle, a consistency in advocating basic values and beliefs, and a broad-mindedness and an eclectic gathering of people from different backgrounds that does this magazine and the values that unite it great credit indeed.

As to the “free and sceptical spirit”, what’s quite bizarre is that the Quadrant crew appear to be the only mob left in Australia who actually believed and even more bizarrely, still believe, Howard’s dire warnings about the sky falling in under Rudd. You might well be sceptical as to whether this constitutes an enormous contribution to intellectual and political debate in this country. But – in a free market sense – I suppose that’s up to its tiny readership and its sponsors in the nanny state Australia Council to judge. Hang on…

But although the Coalition’s message was conveyed quite crudely, it was all the same correct about the heavy emphasis in the new government on people more or less directly derived from the trade union movement. From the beginning the ALP caucus will be dominated by unionists (especially in the Senate). More importantly it will contain a substantial number of heavyweight unionists who will soon insist on making their voices heard. Many of these are temporarily parked as parliamentary secretaries, but will be expecting to see radical promotion within a year. That will be the first big stir amongst the new government, when a good deal of the remaining dead wood of the old Beazley regime will be finally shed.

It remains to be seen what Julia Gillard’s role in all this will be. It may be that Rudd has deliberately overloaded her with work: education, employment, workplace relations and social inclusion will be a heavy burden. Either she will have to slide some of it off onto others, or she will escape Rudd’s control altogether. Either way could have a chaotic result, and unless Rudd is a really first-rate bureaucrat it could be the beginning of his government sliding into chaos along the lines of the Whitlam government.

Oh noes! The union bosses are back! Julia Gillard is a commie! Whatevs.

Judith Brett’s Quarterly Essay on Howard’s demise is out, and it’s very much in her typical style. Psychoanalytic interpretations of the electorate, and to some extent the leaders, abound. One assertion that I found considerable room to quibble with, however, is her claim that the seeds of Howard’s political demise were sown with the ascension of Rudd to the Labor leadership. While we’ll never know, I suspect Labor would have had a pretty fair shot of winning this election with Beazley – or Julia Gillard – as leader. Perhaps the scare campaign about union influence might have more effect given a Gillard leadership; perhaps the It’s Time factor wouldn’t have been as great if Beazley had still been in charge. And Brett, in an almost throwaway manner, states that Andrew Bolt has been crucial in keeping Victorian working-class votes in conservative manner. Does Bolt really have any great influence on swinging voters, or does he just preach to the converted, a shock jock of the print world? In any case, there is one particularly good reason to read this issue of QE: an extraordinarily insightful and beautifully-written piece of correspondence at the back. I agree with every word the author wrote…

On a much lighter note, Richard Woolcott has pulled his typewriter back out for Undiplomatic Activities, tongue-in-cheek look at the world of diplomacy. Aside from a short blast at the previous government in the last chapter, the tone is light, the writing is excellent, and the anecdotes genuinely amusing, if occasionally ones that have appeared before in print or elsewhere. When being serious, Woolcott can be an insufferably arrogant defence of realpolitik, but this is excellent time-filler for a short plane flight.

Future Perfect is a series of essays about the near future by ABC broadcaster Robyn Williams. While not as bad as the excreable Future Files, I couldn’t help lamenting what seems to be a certain shallowness in Williams’ thought. On his piece on the future of transport, for instance, he swiftly dissects the numerous ills that the private car inflicts on our cities, and speculates of a future laden with mass transit and ubiquitous short-term vehicle rental. But, as he notes, private car ownership is exploding in the rapidly developing countries. An analysis of how to solve our issues with transport for the future is going to have to unravel the reasons as to why people are so wedded to their cars. To pick another example, Williams’ piece on the future of innovation spends substantial time complaining about the lack of “big bang” innovation over the past few decades, missing that myriad tiny improvements over time can make as much difference as any “big bang”. Regardless, this one is worth a read, even if only to crystallize one’s own arguments in disagreement.

Finally, if you’re prepared to pay to order it from overseas, is Gwyneth Cravens’ Power to Save The World, an extended tour of the American nuclear power industry. Cravens has written several books, and for magazines like the New Yorker and Harper’s, so this is if nothing else very readable, and an excellent summary of the case, as I see it, for giving this technology consideration. Particularly interesting is the discussion of waste disposal technology, including the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Thoroughly recommended.

What else have people been reading in their pre-Christmas downtime? Any recommendations?

Cross-posted at PollieGraph.

Originally posted at LP in Exile.

Government sources have told the Weekend AFR that Mr Turnbull argued the government would gain kudos and lose nothing by ratifying the international climate change agreement.

But cabinet decided such a backflip would not look credible to voters given the vehemence with which Prime Minister Howard had argued against Kyoto for a decade, even though it was looking for ways to redefine the coalition’s image in the electorate.

It is understood that Mr Turnbull was not the sole voice for ratification at the meeting, held about six weeks ago, but that a clear majority of cabinet did not think changing the government’s stance was a viable political position to take.

Turnbull is not denying the story, so it’s probably true.

Howard is taking a similar line, saying he doesn’t comment on cabinet discussions.

Taylor got an interesting comment from Turnbull on 2050 targets.

“The general consensus is that we need to cut emissions in the order of 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050, that’s what the science suggests,” he said.

“Australia’s commitment is going to be something in that order there and it may in fact be higher than 50 per cent. (Emphasis added)

” My objection to Labor’s target of a 50 per cent cut in emissions is not that they have picked 50 per cent. It is that that they have picked it without any idea of the cost and they are going to meet it regardless of what the rest of the world does – that is really selling Australia short.”

This raises the question as to whether there would be more than a struck match between the two majors after the old fella departs the scene. A few short days ago Turnbull was downplaying nuclear.

The Climate Institute has an Election Report Card Online for the political parties where the coalition gets 23% to the Labor’s 40%. (The Greens get 90% and the Democrats 83%.) According to the detailed report card if the Coalition ratified Kyoto the difference in the scores would largely disappear.

The Institute’s Pollutometer shows that under Coalition policies, in 2020, greenhouse pollution would increase by 20.8%, or 114 Mt CO2e, on 1990 levels, whereas under Labor the increase would be 18.5%.

The top three most effective reduction policies by 2020 are energy efficiency standards for appliances (ALP), which reduce emissions by more than 11 million tonnes CO2e per year, phasing out electric hot water systems (ALP) which reduces emissions by almost 5 million tonnes CO2e per year and phasing out incandescent light bulbs (Coalition) which reduces emissions by 4 million tonnes CO2e per year.

Hardly inspires confidence! Pathetic, in fact. Meanwhile Lenore Taylor thinks Cabinet made the wrong decision politically in rolling Turnbull. I tend to agree.

In both cases there is no certainty as to who will have the carriage of policy. Garrett may not be environment minister. Turnbull is ambitious and will almost certainly look for a different portfolio under Costello. While we can be reasonably confident of continuity of policy under Labor since they have had a very similar policy stance since March 2005 when a comprehensive set of policies was announced by Beazley. With the Coalition, much depends on who carriage and what emphasis Costello gives the issue. There are well-known climate sceptics on the Coalition front bench.

If you see on the night that Labor’s share of the so-called two-party preferred vote is about 52 per cent, you will know it’s really on; much less than that and the Government will be returned.

If it’s up anywhere near where the ALP has polled in the opinion polls this year, there won’t be huge numbers of Liberals left.

But about 52 per cent, then what happens is Stirling, Hasluck, Swan, Cowan and maybe Kalgoorlie will determine the outcome.

Apart from looking at the moving aggregate of the vote on the night, here’s a few tips for WA poll-watchers seeking a cure for WA relevance deprivation.

Look to the result in Dobell in New South Wales. It is the 16th seat on the list most likely to fall if the Government is to change.

If the ALP is ahead, change may be on.

It requires a 4.8 per cent shift to fall. The sitting member doesn’t have much of a personal following, so it is likely to reflect nationally applicable political preference.

Then take a look at Bowman in Queensland.

It requires 8.9 per cent. Such swings are not unusual in states such as WA and Queensland when movement is substantial. I picked up 9 per cent when I first won Swan.

If Labor is winning Bowman, then expect another dose of relevance deprivation.

If Labor is just behind, prepare for all eyes in the east to focus on us.

Itâ??s also unleashed a veritable flood of leaked party polling. Itâ??s worth demystifying both Galaxy and the motives and significance of the leaking of â??privateâ?? polls.

Galaxy is designed like the â??tracking pollsâ?? the parties themselves run â?? usually on a sample (not necessarily representative) of marginals or safe seats. These polls are repeated on a regular basis and are used to discern things like the effectiveness of messages and to track leadersâ?? images as much as to measure the vote in the seats concerned. Theyâ??re like focus groups writ large. Similar polling was leaked in enormous detail last year by Sussex Street to help Rudd oust Beazley.

Because the sample is spread across several seats, the margin of error in each seat would be 7%. But as Iâ??m emphasising, theyâ??re not used by the parties primarily to measure voting intention. The other problem we have with interpreting Galaxy is that weâ??re only seeing one poll, whereas party strategists have a succession of them (hence the terminology â??Track 33â?? in the infamous leaked Crosby/Textor research).

So Galaxy honcho David Briggs is quite right to say the good numbers for Rudd from their poll are good news for Labor.

The parties sometimes also poll individual seats with a proper sample (which is about the same size as a national sample for statistical reasons). This is very expensive, which is why the newspapers donâ??t commission them, and why leaks of such polls should be poured over for their motivation. There always is one.

Labor leaked polling in one state seat, Redlands, last year, showing a lineball contest to suggest Beattie wasnâ??t home and hosed. But, of course, that was one of very few seats where for local factors the vote was close.

Yesterday we could read in The Australian that Labor has â??written offâ?? Longman, and the Libs have been touting polls which show them in contention in Moreton for yonks. No one Iâ??ve spoken to believes that, though maybe Gary Hardgraveâ??s anti-Sudanese ramblings (which began long before Andrews came to the party) have had their impact. Sometimes the parties give journos actual figures (as with the Senate polling I was leaked a while back) but most of the time itâ??s just â??this is what our polls sayâ??, with no numbers. Access to the polling data itself is rare.

Who gains? is the question that demands an answer. With Moreton, the Libs are probably trying to ensure that their troops are geed up to fight the good fight, and donations keep trickling in. With Longman, Labor is playing the opposite game â?? trying to depress expectations and drive away complacency about any Queensland Ruddslide.

Itâ??s also very important to note that these polls and leaked whispers are being seen as contradicting the national trend. That may be so, but it might also be a way to play the misinterpretation of the national polls as static rather than dynamic. Just because they havenâ??t moved much doesnâ??t mean theyâ??re frozen. Queenslanders are going to be bombarded with Rudd parochialism, and voters in Longman (for instance) are the direct targets of â??working mum tax cutsâ??.