A dire warning was provided to the Coalition by the Secretary of the Immigration Department and senior officials:

MORE than 600 people could arrive by boat every month, leading to the collapse of Australia’s detention system and European-style unrest in its cities, if there is a return to onshore processing of all asylum seekers, according to a bleak assessment from senior Canberra officials.

Isn’t this just indicative of the extreme degree to which this issue has been framed in terms that are sheer fantasy?

There is actually no good reason why 600 arrivals a month could not be processed onshore in an orderly way. If capacity is lacking to perform the required checks, surely some of the immense sums spent on offshoring could be rediverted.

I am puzzled as to how such capacity could magically appear on Manus Island or Nauru, or if one were to take the Gillard position rather than Tony Abbott’s, how we would be justified in effectively dispensing ourselves of any responsibility for the processing of asylum seekers in Malaysia or elsewhere, and still remain committed to the Refugee Convention.

But rationality seems to have fled.

The dark fantasies of “European-style social unrest” among policy makers are even more disturbing.

I am not aware that such “social unrest” (what unrest? London? Paris?) has any particular or compelling connection with refugees.

What are they imagining here?

On another note, Abbott’s goal appears to be to humiliate the Labor Party and force acceptance that they were wrong to oppose Nauru in the Howard era, and that the increasingly ubiquitous former Prime Minister was right.

If, and I don’t know that it’s very likely, because it continues to seem to me that the Coalition’s incentives are for the issue to continue to hurt the Gillard government, there is some sort of “bipartisan” legislation, how would this sit with many Labor MPs? If anything might precipitate a serious threat to Julia Gillard’s leadership, presenting that sort of bill to Parliament would do it, I suspect.

I think the return of Rudd would put the spotlight on Abbott’s total fraudulence, maybe even paving the way for the Rudd vs Turnbull election we should have had last time.

That’s an interesting reflection, because amidst all the sound and fury that surrounds the Gillard government, the related facts that Tony Abbott is not popular and that no one knows what an Abbott government would do except try to return to Howardia are not highlighted enough.

Tony Abbott stands for endless upheaval. He’s the permanent revolutionary of the Coalition side.

On his stated platform, there would need to be another election should he become Prime Minister. In quick order.

That’s simply because what he says he wants to do (repeal the carbon price, undo the resources tax, shift towards individual bargaining in workplace relations, dissolve the NBN and so on) would not, in all likelihood, be capable of being carried through a Senate where the probability that The Greens will retain the balance of power is high.

So an Abbott government would be more of the same. Lots of yelling and posturing, with the view to forcing a double dissolution.

Abbott’s implied assurance that calm and stability and Howardian goodness would return in an instant, and all the many, many grievances he has fostered would be instantly wiped away is impossible of attainment.

Having won power, it’s hard to see the Coalition (which is always of the view that power is the oxygen it ought to breathe) chancing it on another throw of the dice. It would be under a PM whose sole virtue is his not-Gillard-ness.

It is not at all impossible, indeed I’d say likely, that there might be a Liberal leadership change either before the 2013 election (which may occur earlier) or shortly afterwards. Put your money on before. I suspect that John Quiggin is right that a Labor shift to Kevin Rudd (and probably only to Rudd) would act as a catalyst.

On the Labor side of things, reality has to be confronted.

Labor’s primary vote has collapsed, and Julia Gillard’s approval has collapsed.

In reading over the thread about Peter Beattie’s little play, two themes are interesting:

(a) It’s all the fault of the media;

(b) Julia Gillard’s government has done good things.

(a) can be disposed of easily. Kevin Rudd did not have News Limited in his pocket, and he and the ALP enjoyed very high popularity from the end of 2006 to the end of 2009. A hostile and febrile press gallery, and “campaigning” newspapers are simply just the environment in which a Labor government now has to operate.

(b) mistakes legislative command, more often than not, for political and governmental authority. No one is really going to vote Labor because 188 (or whatever) bills have been passed by Parliament this year. A government which looks to be in a state of panic, like a bunny in the headlights, when confronted by the inevitable implosion of an ill-judged and rushed policy fix has little claim to authority.

The good things that have been done (a proper paid parental leave scheme, health funding reform, the NBN, and so on) do not redound, for whatever reason, to the government’s credit.

Over and above that, as Malcolm Farnsworth makes clear in an excellent piece at The Drum, there’s a longer term hollowing out of the Labor project which is really starting to show.

Kevin Rudd’s removal, whatever his faults, were symptomatic of that decline.

Kevin Rudd’s removal also explains most of why Julia Gillard has not been able to make a success of things. The accusation of a ‘lie’ gains so much traction because she can easily be perceived as having seized the leadership by stealth.

Now, that is not true, but the fact that the political logic behind that perception is at work is a fact, and a fact that must be reckoned with.

I don’t think the “hold the nerve with Gillard” strategy is a goer any more.

The three policy issues Julia Gillard herself nominated at the time she became Prime Minister are causes of the government’s pain. Principally, climate change and asylum seekers, but the resources tax is also not settled, and the departure from the original design has, it’s become clear, exacerbated all the political issues associated with the “two speed economy”.

On climate change, Labor gave the issue away to The Greens. On asylum seekers, Labor gave the issue away to the Right.

What we need is a return to sanity in Australian political life. So, Quiggin is probably right that a Rudd-Turnbull contest would promote that. We may not get there. Anything can happen. But Julia Gillard’s effective Prime Minister-ship is almost certainly over.

Again that is not fair, but there it is.

I think that if the leadership were to change, the most likely outcome would still be a sizeable Coalition win. This Labor government is beyond saving. But some of the furniture needs saving, one of Australia’s two principal parties of government needs to recover some dignity and self belief, and the country needs anything other than an Abbott-slide.

Julia Gillard should think about that.

The problem now with the ‘hold your nerve with Julia’ strategy is that her personal and policy performance appears to be a very poor argument for it.

It’s true that the ALP has some runs on the board (the NBN, parental leave, and so on) but it appears incapable of selling them, and stuck in this horrible vortex where its attempts to play on the field the Right has layed out look ever more self-defeating and anarchic.

Peter Beattie’s son appears to be his official spokesperson, which is odd, but it’s hard, having lived with the bloke as Premier for so long, to believe that he’s not touting himself as a Labor messiah.

That this could even be taken seriously is an index of how much has gone wrong, and how quickly.

Probably the only chance the ALP has is to go back to Kevin Rudd, but I don’t think they’re going to. And I don’t think they’re going to face up squarely to the way they have contributed mightily to their own woes over the past year, which would be a precondition of doing that.

So, what does the ALP do?

I’m not certain they can answer the logically prior question – ‘what is the ALP for?’ And there’s the rub.

The younger Miliband, profiled here, has been perceived as the candidate who can transcend both the Blairite-Brownite wars and the “New Labour” template. Former Deputy Leader Roy Hattersley writes:

Labour lost the last election because, despite the Blair/Brown governments’ acknowledged achievements, they were intimidated into believing that victory depended on imitating their enemies – light touch regulation in the private sector and the internal market in public services, combined with a wanton disregard for personal liberty. Not surprisingly, its core vote felt abandoned and thousands of more prosperous families asked the question that sounds the knell of political hope: “But what does Labour stand for?” Ed Miliband knows what the answer should be. He will provide it with the confidence that comes from the certainty that a natural progressive majority in Britain is waiting to support a genuinely radical party with an unapologetically radical leader.

Ed Miliband was elected through a process which took five months, and involved televised debates, “hustings” for party members, and a relatively substantive discussion over the party’s future and ideological direction.

Update: This is interesting – Ed Miliband on getting out of the “New Labour comfort zone”.

Update: Anthony Barnett at Open Democracy and Ed Miliband on civil liberties and constitutional reform.

As I said earlier, this challenge, it would seem, has been brought to you by the genius “strategists” who talked Rudd into dropping the ETS in the first place, setting in train his plunge in the polls. The NSW Right, as I’ve said before, knows no other response to bad focus groups than to bring on a leadership challenge. Political courage and leadership is unknown among the apparatchiks and Sussex Street types.

If the ALP dumps Rudd now, it will be the height of political stupidity, and be a demonstration of nothing but craven cowardice in the face of a media/mining industry orchestrated campaign, at a time when the polls indicate, despite a low primary vote, the ALP is still odds on to win the election.

While I’d like to see Julia Gillard become PM, the Labor Party would be insane to dump Rudd now, and nor should they.

If Rudd prevails, heads should roll.

Previously on LP: The events of tonight as they unfolded are documented on this post and thread.

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger, Bernard Keane.

Update: The full text of Kevin Rudd’s press conference.

Elsewhere: Hoyden About Town, Politically Homeless, Shakira Hussein at The Stump.

The story follows a report in today’s Fairfax papers that Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff, Alister Jordan, had been asked to take soundings among MPs on the Prime Minister’s behalf, and claims from The Australian that Julia Gillard had done herself and her party a dis-service by not initiating the challenge the paper had been talking up at yesterday’s caucus.

Update: There’s now a report on the ABC News website.

Update: The Twitter hashtag #spill is being revived… though #ruddroll also has its admirers.

Update: Kerry O’Brien says there’ll be more later on in the 7.30 Report. Meanwhile, the most astute summary on Twitter comes from RachWelsh who points out that some tweeting journos with sources are saying something is happening, and others are not.

Update: Heather Ewart on the 7.30 Report claimed that meetings were taking place between elements of the NSW and Victorian Right, and Mark Arbib is said to have defected from Rudd. She reported that Gillard is meeting with Rudd, but of course, Gillard may be meeting with Rudd to quash the unchallenge. Or not.

Update: Fairfax reports (at 7.39pm) that Gillard’s office has said “nothing has changed”.

Update: There’s very little news among all the noise. Bill Shorten is said to be one of those orchestrating the unchallenge, and the AWU has reportedly withdrawn its support for Rudd.

Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Anthony Albanese and John Faulkner are reported to be in Kevin Rudd’s office.

Gillard is reported to be not intending to challenge.

This micro-event, it would seem, has been brought to you by the genius “strategists” who talked Rudd into dropping the ETS in the first place, setting in train his plunge in the polls. The NSW Right, as I’ve said before, knows no other response to bad focus groups than to bring on a leadership challenge. Political courage and leadership is unknown among the apparatchiks and Sussex Street types.

And we’ve also had an unprecedented campaign against the PM from the media and the mining industry. While I’d like to see Gillard become PM, the Labor Party would be insane to dump Rudd now, and nor should they.

This will be highly damaging, coming as it does just at the point when it appeared that things could be turned around for the government. If I were Julia Gillard, I’d urge Rudd to convene a caucus meeting tomorrow morning, and personally move a confidence motion in his leadership. And heads should roll in the ALP. Soon.

Update: The Punch, which is live blogging what is still the unchallenge, reports that John Faulkner between Gillard and Rudd.

I’ll repeat what I said before: if the ALP dumps Rudd now, it will be the height of stupidity, and be a demonstration of nothing but craven cowardice in the face of a media/mining industry orchestrated campaign, at a time when the polls indicate, despite a low primary vote, the ALP is still odds on to win the election.

Update: Paul Howes has just Tweeted that he’ll be on Lateline to explain the AWU’s position.

Update: Rachel Hills says it all on Twitter:

I feel like much of the anti-Rudd sentiment recently is more journalists getting bored with him than a newfound excess of crapness. #spill

Update: The Drum editor Jonathan Green on Twitter:

a certain smugness in the media at this coup by commentariat

Update: Sky News is reporting Kevin Rudd will be giving a press conference in the next 5 to 10 minutes.

Update: Lots of Tweets claiming that Rudd is about to quit.

Update: Rudd’s press conference will be televised live on ABC1 very soon.

Update: Rudd has convened caucus to meet at 9am. Gillard will be challenging. He is not standing down.

Update: Rudd indicates he will be running against faction and union domination. He is also running against the NSW Right, indicating that if he wins he will not be retreating from the RSPT, or giving in to calls for a hardline on asylum seekers. He suggested forward movement on climate change.

Update: New thread here.

Parliament is only sitting for two weeks, and then won’t return until September. The delivery of valedictory speeches in the budget sitting shows that this term is reaching its parliamentary conclusion.

Let’s leave aside all the faffing about of the confected ‘Rudd’s leadership on the line’ narrative.

One little noticed facet of the recent onslaught on the government has been the virtual disappearance of Tony Abbott.

In one respect, that’s sensible politics – keep the focus on Rudd. But that may backfire, as I said earlier. It also suggests that the Coalition are well aware that Abbott’s terrible personal ratings, while not the subject of febrile media commentary, make him a liability when it comes to the campaign. Nor is their much evidence that the Antipodean ‘Party of No’ has spent much time on policy development.

So, there might be some advantage to going early. It would put a stop to the endless repetition of Rudd and doom noise, and particularly if there are attractive policy options in development, there may be advantages in catching the Coalition unprepared. And the polls may indicate volatility rather than doom for Labor.

Those are the arguments for. What are the arguments against?

Elsewhere: Richard Farmer:

There’s only one good reason why Kevin Rudd will not scurry off to the polls early in August and that’s if he thinks he certainly can’t win. Even if the prime ministerial judgement is that the prospects are a little dicey he will be encouraged to take the plunge. For delay that allowed Parliament to reconvene after the winter break would be confirmation that Rudd thinks defeat is likely and faced with that prospect his Labor caucus colleagues would start seriously thinking about the Julia Gillard option. If being thrown out even before an election is too horrible to contemplate, then it is time to get a hurry on.

So far the idea of a leadership challenge is no more than that — a vague thought in the back of the minds of those in the most vulnerable seats as they mull over all the “what ifs” about the forthcoming election. Opinion polls — the unreliable and meaningless guide that they are at this stage of the electoral game — do influence backbenchers and especially so when they are pointing in the same direction as their own interpretation of what the public in their own electorate thinks. When a young hard head such as former federal ALP secretary Gary Gray starts getting anxious, we can deduce that the message he is getting from the people of Brand is certainly troubling.

Not that even a new leader would fix the big problem that Gray has identified. Labor will go to the election advocating a super profits tax on mining whether it is a Rudd, Gillard or some-one-else led government. The best that ALP members from Western Australia and Queensland can hope for is a change or two at the fringes that will take enough heat out of this particular debate to get people thinking about other things as well.

The best way of broadening the issues of the political debate would be to call an election quickly and if Rudd was listening to my advice, he would be driving out to Government House this coming Sunday afternoon and thus neutering any talk of a caucus revolt before the next Newspoll produces a predictable next round of leadership speculation.

Update: According to Barrie Cassidy, the Coalition have been coming up with some policy ideas. Whether they’re policy ideas or thought bubbles and stunts, though, is another question.

Update: Possum has published a leaked minute which suggests options are being kept open for an August 28 election.

How’s it looking by Wednesday?

I was asked on another thread about ways the government can talk over the heads of the media. I was thinking more about this, reflecting on how yesterday’s proceedings in Parliament appeared on the tv news last night.

The 125 000 readers of The Australian, as Mr Denmore observed, are a very small proportion of the electorate. They might include every single press gallery journo, but nightly grabs on the news have some considerable resonance to publics beyond the way they were framed.

Television is still, by far, the predominant source of political information for voters.

The ‘leadership’ narrative only resulted in vision of a series of Ministers and Labor MPs strongly defending Kevin Rudd. Meanwhile, the Opposition was bizarrely warning mining companies not to negotiate with the government, as Rudd pursues a more differentiated strategy to break the unity of the industry peak body and the Coalition. It’s pretty clear to anyone who thinks for a moment that the Liberals are pursuing their own interest, not the national interest. As I’ve previously remarked, they could well be left out on a limb if a deal is reached.

One other way of thinking about the recent polls, and the drift away from Labor (but not strongly to the Coalition) is of volatility in the electorate rather than a desire to punish, or vote out, the government. If that were the case, we’d expect a much stronger swing to the Liberals. Giving Labor the chance to deliver a positive message on tv is just one way the media narrative can backfire. And it’s worth remembering, once again, what Essential Research found about derisory levels of public trust in the media.

The political conjuncture is still very fluid.

And anyone reading Dennis Shanahan today would have noticed a slight shifting of the bar. It’s certainly not out of the question that the ‘media narrative’ will still collapse in the face of reality.

Enter the big guns, such as they are, firing broadsides from their Monday columns.

The theme of both Peter Van Onselen and Glenn Milne‘s pieces is that Kevin Rudd has one more Newspoll left in him (or two, according to Milne, if reality fails to play to script and the bar needs to be moved).

Newspoll returns after the return of federal parliament this week, and according to Van Onselen, “Rudd has one week to shape up”.

Milne’s farrago of faint praise points the way for how this story would develop should Gillard take the leadership – the knives are already being sharpened.

Let’s be very clear about what’s happening here. We’re going to read about this ‘narrative’ all week, and the same people writing it will bemoan that the government lacks ‘oxygen’ for its ‘message’, in the hope that having ensured that’s true, they can further shape reality by influencing the Labor caucus, and by necessity, Julia Gillard. If the ‘deadline’ passes and nothing happens, some other set of facts will be invented, and I’m sure that will occur, as Gillard’s far too smart to dance to the News Limited tune.

Meanwhile, Tony Abbott’s suitability for high office and the Coalition’s policy stance continue to go completely without scrutiny from the so-called ‘fourth estate’, and the implicit threat is that will continue, along with the relentless drumbeat of ‘Rudd in trouble’ stories, unless and until the ALP caves in.

Welcome to media politics, 2010 style.

While we’re at it, Guy Beres throws down the gauntlet:

In fact, I’m willing to put money on the fact that there will be a change in the leadership of the Federal Liberal Party before there is a change in the leadership of Federal Labor. Any takers?