Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

It looks to me as if he has single handedly triggered a change in culture in Labor. Hope it lasts

Droll, Richard. Quite droll.

The most important thing for the country now is ALP unity. I withdraw my hostile comments about Kevin Rudd when I perceived that he was disrupting that for no good purpose. Mind you I still perceive that.

Julia Gillard should be given six more months with her new team and that's it. If it doesn't work out  she should be replaced with Bill Shorten; and I would not rule out Rudd coming back as FM.

None of this is say I would prefer an ALP prime minister over a Liberal. I do not. Especially not another ALP prime minister beholden to the Greens.

My concern is where disaffected ALP voters might go in the event of a hopelessly split Government. It is easy to imagine that those who can not bring themselves to vote for Abbott (who can blame them?) might make the appalling mistake of voting for the Greens.  A strengthened Greens Party would be a catastrophe for the country. Eventually it would split the nation, European style.

The only way to eliminate this grave national threat is for each of the major parties to decide to direct preferences  to one another ahead of the Greens. I think the LNP will do that anyway. It remains to be seen whether the ALP will have enough guts and sense.

As this seems to have gone into circulation in interesting directions, thought you might enjoy the end product:

There were movements at the stations as the emails passed around

Rudd's bolt of Old Regret had got away

Rumours ran like independants, Murdoch made a thousand Pounds,

and Julia Gillard's cracks began to fray

 

A Hawker of the Faceless Men came down to lend a hand

on the media cycle he so loved to ride

cracking Whips and Albanese as he Galluped through the pack

It was grand, the way that old spin-doctor lied.

 

But the hardy little Brisbane bloke could hardly raise a vote

and it looked like he would fail in his attack,

and he strained there, single-handed, till his sides were white with foam

as he begged the squatters (please) to bring him back

 

And those squatters, who had gathered from their homesteads near and far

stood and shook their heads at Kev in disbelief

When possession still is thought of as nine-tenths of modern law

You'll find it hard to buck off a good thief

 

Big Red, she knew quite plenty when it came to bucking off

She'd unsaddled Kev not very long before

and now the man so Snowy can only limp away

and stagger to the Outback, stiff and sore. 

 

But late at night, round campfires up around the ACT

where the Faceless Men found Kevin's manners snide

there are those who quietly whisper of the Snowy Man with glee

and the journos tell the story of his ride. 

I have it from the most reliable of sources that Arbib was shoved for heavier members to vote for Gillard in his worthless spill.

There were movements at the stations as the emails passed around
Rudd's bolt of Old Regret had got away
Rumours ran like independants, Murdoch made a thousand Pounds,
and Julia Gillard's cracks began to fray

A Hawker of the Faceless Men came down to lend a hand
on the media cycle he so loved to ride
cracking Whips and Albanese as he Galluped through the pack
It was grand, the way that old spin-doctor lied.

But the hardy little Brisbane bloke could hardly raise a vote
and it looked like he would fail in his attack,
and he strained there, single-handed, till his sides were white with foam
as he begged the squatters (please) to bring him back

TO BE CONTINUED 

Any number of points.

Richard, I doubt whether there is going to be a tie or anything close to it. Don't be too eager for an Abbott governemt, puhlease, even if you are unkindly disposed toward a comparatively ugly current Labor party federally and at state level. Think on?

I understand that much press conferencing occurred late Friday arvo, when I was (mercifully) taking a nap. Have only seen bits and pieces but really, the notion that Rudd takes a backward step as an expression of his team bona fides and concern for the nation, given that Abbott can be the only real winner out of all of this, has been blown away and cost much of the fair bit of respect I held for him. Changing horses mid stream, after the cabinet largely lined up behind Gillard, is just not going to happen and Rudd should have let things cool down- instead he showed signs of the attitude that has alienated several colleagues. Had Gillard failed again, "with the wind", then he would have been entitled to go for the leadership later and probably won, too.

But all he seems to have done is sent the waiverers into the Gillard camp and made his own position within Labor even more difficult, for the benefit of people like Steve Smith and Bill Shorten, let alone the vested interests.BTW, Shorten did his cause no harm at all, with a strong performance on last Monday's QA.

The most fascinating facet of the this week's events has been the idiot polarisation that has occurred,  that has St Kevin as being the first human since Christ to be be completely flawless of character, while Gillard is the very incarnation of evil- and vice versa- and coming from many intelligent people on both sides and has astonished me.

 No shades of grey? No evidence of different strengths and weaknesses or tit for tat anywhere? I dont think so...

Geoff Pahoff is often maligned for lack of objectivity through being too close emotionally to his pet issues. 

But just once I'd mark him close to being in front  of the usually objective Marilyn Shepherd, who's vision here is (again) obscured through the too narrow lens of asylum seeker policy as the underlying pass or fail mechanism, perhaps to the excluson of other factors.

Geoff, you if you think her objectivity is tarnished, you now have a good example of how people see your approach to things mid eastern!

Marilyn, I agree with you so much on the influence of factions and the conservative nature of under seige minority Labor, let alone the need for resulting internal reform, as I said in an earlier post.

But  it ain't going to happen, given the the fact that Labor is a minority government trying to survive without upsetting the marginals and that Rudd has spooked the horses both inside Labor and with the public, after last night's performance.

Many of us would prefer not to be "punished" by a long term Abbott "austerity" government for  events and responsibilities more appropriately sheeted home to the US, as to off shore wars, global poverty and asylum seeker movements.

Take off the rose-coloured glasses for a bit and think of what hope for anyone, refugees, or working-class Australians, if this public quarrel worsens..

Amongst the many things that have been irritating me on this saga has been the emphasis on Rudd's "greater public support" - which is also what he majored on in his self-nomination speech. Well, with the News papers and jocks all saying he's so much better and attacking Julia 24/7, that's not that surprising. Of course, in the unlikely event that he got the job, they'd be white-anting him before the votes were dry, and he'd be down below his old approval levels in days if not hours.

I used to have respect for him for having sucked it up and got on with the job he should have had in the first place. But then he stopped sucking it up and started undermining his own party's on-vote-majority government, so no respect any more.

Oh, and he mentioned several policy things he'd think about changing, all of which are things that form part of the coalition agreements, so he'd be PM for about two days and then get himself replaced by the worst Liberal leader of all time. Self-importance over substance, which is why he had to go in the first place.

Mariliyn: "so-called crimes"? - try and find anyone in public service who's had to actually deal with him for even ten minutes, and you'll know that he is casually dismissive and rude to ordinary people doing their job supporting his Kevin-747 visits, let alone his colleagues.

 Was the Rudd video
recorded while he was PM?  Nonsense, in my view.  I believe the video
was recorded during the recent Christmas break.

 My reasons?

 - why was the video mysteriously
uploaded while Rudd was overseas, or about to head overseas?  To avoid media questions.

- why was Rudd the only person seen?  Because he was the only actor present.

- why did nobody else even speak during the video?  Same reason.

- why did Rudd appear red
in the face?  Makeup.

- why did Rudd at times look
directly into the camera for several seconds? 
Director’s instructions.

- who was the script
writer and director?  Rudd.

 Look at the video and make
up your own mind about whether or not Rudd was acting.

Nah.

The thing has come to a head for the time being with overwhelming ministerial support for Gillard. Therefore the factions also.

 Rudd should try to stay tho, he's "bankable"as an ALP assett and a reminder to the rest that if they don't read the writing on the wall he'll be back, provided they can survive Abbott, which is problematic if they continue as they have been. 

They will have to rein in the likes of Arbib and the other influence peddlers; stick with good government for a while, or leaks may starts springing up again, all over the place.

Otherwise they can fight over the spoils of defeat, from the opposition benches.

An excellent column in this morning's Australian by Barry Cohen. Unfortunately most of it is behind a paywall. Also a classic front page headline in the print edition.

Labor Burns Its Own House Down

My call? Rudd has got Buckley's on Monday and probably knows it. They say there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who like Kevin Rudd. And those who have met him.

Rudd knew he was rightly about to be sacked. After all he was a pretty ordinary FM let alone PM. For Rudd this is about destroying Gillard and sticking it to his colleagues for having lost confidence in him. In the words of Barry Cohen, this is the tactic of a kamakazi pilot.

This is not to suggest that Gillard is a good PM. I agree with Paul. That Malaysia solution mis-step on day one was an appalling mistake. Inexperience does not excuse a thing like that. It demonstrated that she simply lacked the bare essentials as a politician and everything that has happened since just confirms this.

Politicians who assume the public are stupid never last for long.  As a PM, Gillard would make a good industrial lawyer. Rudd doesn't even deserve to be in Parliament. Cohen suggests he should be expelled from the ALP and certainly he should not be re-endorsed in his safe Brisbane seat. Cohen suggests Peter Beattie should be the ALP candidate. That is up to the ALP but again I agree. It is interesting that Rudd has little support from his Queensland colleagues and never has. Probably they know him too well. 

Barry Cohen says give Gillard another six months and if there is no improvement in the government's stocks replace her. With Bill Shorten.

 What if it's a tie, Paul?  Maybe Rudd's call for People Power will indeed allow those MPs feeling compelled to vote according to the instructions of their factions to vote instead according to the massive pro-Rudd support in early polls.  His call this morning for Julia to rule out de-selection of opponent MPs is going to take careful handling.. if Julia rejects the notion, suspicions of Faceless puppeteers will grow much stronger.

Point taken Marilyn, if I was Kev I wouldn't be feeling inclined to be tactically polite either. Julia's throwing down of the duelling guantlet and dictating the terms while her opponent was in another country isn't going to do much to help diminish thes Brutus image that Jessica Rabbit drew in her book. 

Rudd's declaration speech next.. can't wait!

Having just posted expressing bafflement, I'd now suggest that Bernard Keane's take at Crikey is a partial explanation, if not a complete one.

After conceding that Rudd's personal style may have been a factor in his removal, he moves post 2010 to Gillard and one or two of her key ministers, who he claims have fumbled a few too many times in explaining policy to the public. For my part, I think Gillard got off on the wrong foot with the Malaysia Solution mishandling, so Keane's idea that she has been off balance since and lost momentum, rings true.  

Keane feels that the Gillard camp has allowed itself to be way too bothered over Rudd. This could be a curiously cyclical thing. Rudd's fears concerning Gillard and the factions had him off balance toward the end of his Prime Ministership; could the same thing now be happening to the other camp?

 A leadership spill beckons on Monday? 

The numbers will need to be pretty emphatic , one way or the other, for the air to finally be cleared. 

Yes Kathy, it's depressing to watch a real opportunity pissed up against a wall.

The whole country is baffled. Trying to make sense of it, I've visited a stack of big sites scanned hundreds of posts and even the brightest academic minds can't work it out.

One person bemoaned the death of what had been a "killer team" of Rudd and Gillard, going back  to the first year or two after the 2007 election win, others cited the different talents and defects of the two, their adventures over twenty and more years in politics, fair and foul,  the good, the bad and the ugly.

Many talked of the role of vested interests and the press in destabilising the government, the role of bottom feeders and mediocrities with politics itself; some said it's part of changing times and shifts in power in a globalised world, that people don't fully understand yet.

I wonder if they'll find an antidote- I think some people will deeply regret what's happening now, later and it baffles me that other intellent colleagues have failed to get the two of them to resolve this personality clash or to be honest with themselves, in their different ways, as to their own conduct and attitudes. 

 Paul :"Fifty-fifty, they both need a whack round the earhole with a rolled newspaper. There is enough to be done in the real world to keep them occupied, surely?"

 I'm with you Paul.. 

 The stupid twats have effectively handed government to Tony Abbott on a silver platter..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNsrK6P9QvI

Rudd has been abused and tormented since he was PM, Why Richard do you think he should play nice to fucking arseholes who keep bagging the shit out of him?

Thieves fall out?

I don't understand  why they want to throw away government and not even on a feud over principle.

Fifty-fifty, they both need a whack round the earhole with a rolled newspaper. There is enough to be done in the real world to keep them occupied, surely?