According to some pundits in the press today is likely to be the high noon moment for the Gillard Regime and the resurrection of Brother Number One well personally I don’t know its certainly possible but I can’t help thinking that the internal animosities within the party might just prove to be irreconcilable. The Daily Telegraph reports on a piece of information control that kept the news of Rudd favourable polling away from the caucus just before the knives were pulled on Brother Number One.
click for source
Its a story that would have made Machiavelli proud and one can imagine about way the Gillard coup plotters sought to control this crucial bit of information and just how relieved that they were to know that their efforts were successful. Then again its quite amazing that none of the caucus thought to ask just why a whole swag of party polling was suddenly cancelled at just the point in time when it was Rudd’s fall from grace with the voters that was the claimed reason for the sharpening of knives.
Labor have even further blotted their copy book with the rather heartless move against those single mums and even a committee that they head is saying so:
click for source
Even the most heartless conservative can not fail to recognise the political madness of this so called “cost saving” measure. You can bet with great certainty that every one of those single parents will not be voting for Labor this time around and once people switch their vote it takes a great deal more incentive for them to return to the fold than it took to lose them in the first place. Its a whole lot of political injury for the party to save a few bucks. Worse still it makes a mockery of Labor’s claim to be “for” the disadvantaged in our community. If they wanted to save money that is well and truly wasted they should have abolished all of the “Clean Energy Future ” nonsense instead. That would save many billions more that the “savings” of this measure and on top of that it would have played better with the middle ground voters who have been crossing the political street to vote for Tony Abbott in droves.
As I see it the tragedy of the modern Labor party is that they have tried, without any benefit, to court the loopy left constituency which is far smaller and of course they can’t go too far in that direction without alienating the centre from which they are bleeding an ever increasing number of voters straight to the coalition. Their problem though is that those who slip into the loving embrace of the Greens tend to preference Labor but those who go to the Coalition will not return the same secondary benefit to the ALP. Am I the only one who can see the inherent problem in this strategy here for Labor?
The new ALP HQ for the next decade or so
So will today be the Gillardageddon? I don’t know for sure but its shaping up that way and if it is I suspect that we will be going to the polls well before Sept 14. As a resurgent Rudd will seek to capitalise on any honeymoon period to maximise his chances of making a good showing in the final result. It will all be too little too late for the ALP who have utterly trashed their own reputation with such skill and acuity that a conspiracy theorist would be insisting that the party must have been infiltrated by agents of the Coalition. Back in the real world though we can see that what has killed the Labor party has been two things firstly they have failed to keep pace with the changes to the demographics of our society. No longer is there a vast cohort of low and semi skilled labourers who are amenable to the message of socialism and “worker solidarity” we have moved on form that to being a country were more workers are highly skilled and many are contractors or sell their Labor via their own small businesses. To these men and women the union dominated Labor party are like a lumbering sauropod , a lumbering dinosaur that is out of its time and place in the current environment. Secondly they have lost sight of just how corrosive their own archaic internal processes are to their public image. I think that it will be a near fatal combination at the next election and that it will be the reason that The ALP will take up residence in the wilderness for a very long time.
Cheers Comrades
Pulled from both the left and the right the beast is sure to fall.
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Less a Gillardageddon, more a Ruddastrophe! Like Phoney Tony Abbott, Rudd is not the messiah. All he now appears to be is just a naughty boy, still upset that his lolly was taken from him. So we have two naughty boys in Federal parliament it seems! ;-)
Doubtful Rudd will get up — just wouldn’t work and the Caucus knows it!
Mind you, Conroy needs a damned good poke up the nose!
Oh for God’s sake, it’s quite obvious that there were no really valid grounds for removing Rudd in the first place and that doing so has caused Labor’s woes and poor polling ever since.
Despite the biggest knifing and character assassination of a PM (by some members of his own party!) ever seen in this country, Rudd’s popularity with the electorate and status as ‘preferred PM’ has never wavered over what has been a nearly 3 year period since June 2010 when Gillard plotted his downfall.
He simply has to be reinstated to ensure Labor is not wiped out at the election. And believe me, they’ll lose seats they never expected to lose if Gillard’s still there. It’s going to be an absolute wipeout.
Ray no one but those who endorsed the coup have ever argued otherwise, but its not just been the coup that has laid Labor low its been their political ineptitude in so many aspects of the administration. I have seen better piss ups organised by the temperance society than the Labor party performance over the last five years.
I really doubt that Labor’s fortunes will be that much improved by reinstating Brother Number One Ray, its the NSW situation all over again with leaders changed like underpants grossly underwhelming the voters.
but I suppose when you are as much in the toilet as Labor are under Gillard what can you do but go “all in” even though you know that your cards are utter crap?
Nice and colourful rhetoric, Iain, but you know that it’s just not the case that Australia is in any kind of shit as a result of putting Labor in government the past 5 years. Consider the alternative: If Howard had won in 2007 and Costello (or Nelson, or Turnbull or Abbott or, God forbid, Hockey) won in 2010 where do you think we’d be now? We’d be in deep recession, Iain, because none of the aforementioned Einsteins would have had the brains or foresight to get us through the GFC.
Rudd’s not the answer! Party unity and fighting the NO Coalition for the agenda is!
I wasn’t happy when Rudd was cut down either, but increasingly Rudd is being seen as destabilising the party for his own interests. I suspect that returning Rudd to PM will be a flash in the pan and won’t result in the victories of victories.
Abbott and his bunch of has-beens are the target! They, should be the only target!
“Destabilising the party for his own interests?”. Like Gillard did in June 2010? Like Keating did in 1991? Like all politicians do in what is called … politics. The point is that Rudd was a better PM than Gillard. A more popular PM. And he had the party in a winning position when he was knifed just a few months out, unlike Gillard who has them in a losing position … just a few months out from an election too. Who cares about his personality? Look at Keating’s personality. Look at Hawke’s. Terrible people – great Prime Ministers and leaders. Stick with Gillard if you like deknarf (or worse still, Shorten or – *shudder* – Crean) But I reckon it means you’re either terribly politically naive or you’ve got a death wish for the party.
…A more popular PM. And he had the party in a winning position when he was knifed just a few months out,”
ummm…..re-writing history again Ray….That is just flat out wrong as I pointed out to you not so long ago…
No, it’s true, Craigy. Labor were in front in the polls at the time. They certainly were in a much better position than now.
Anyway – the news is good. There’s a spill!:
http://alpineopinion.com/2013/03/21/its-on-and-rudd-is-coming-back/
Okay Ray, good luck with that……Thank goodness I don’t support either of the major parties, what a joke.
And Milne … she’s not a joke? Nor is Bandt or S.H.Y. ?
Okay ……
Well, it looks like the spill may be on according to the media. Crean has called for it! So we may see Rudd back again, soonish! And it doesn’t bear contemplation should Gillard win again!
While not wanting to see it I suspect either scenario (Gillard or Rudd as PM), given the continued internal ructions Labor is doomed at the polls in September unless it can get its act together. I’ve been a Labor supporter for some 55 years and I’ve never been so dismayed by what is going on in the party! So I’d suggest that you save the naivete appellation for someone who hasn’t followed Labor, isn’t a union members, and hasn’t also been a Union rep in his day!
The party is bleeding and all that the power hungry can do is bicker amongst themselves and play silly buggers with a winnable election.
Yeh, I’ll vote Labor, whoever the leaders is, with one proviso! It’s not Shorten. If it is Labor has lost me!
I am watching question time now on TV and there’s a no confidence motion that the cross-bench MPs are discussing.
I have no confidence in any of them: Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Crean. A bunch of talentless self-serving hollow men.
Iain Hall for PM, I say.
I’m watching it too and Abbott’s motion of ‘no confidence in the PM’ is pointless because (a) they have to suspend standing orders first and that won’t happen. (b) All Abbott is doing is cementing in the minds of Labor MPs that Rudd has to come back. It’s overkill by Abbott.
Okay deknarf, as I said, if you’re not “naive” you must have a death wish for the party. And it certainly sounds like it too. I think you might find a turnaround from late this afternoon – after all, Rudd’s only got to take on Abbott and that won’t be hard.
Yes, this motion will end up being a waste of time. Abbott would have been better reminding Gillard that this will probably be her last question time.
Interesting that the independents sided with the opposition and voted for the suspension of orders. That suggests they no longer support Gillard either. It’s looking like Rudd is back for sure – soon we’ll know.
Well there’s no guarantee that the independents will back Rudd, that’s an unknown. Remember they backed Gillard in 2010, just months after she knifed Rudd, so perhaps they don’t hold him in high regard either. Time will tell I suppose.
Nothing from the usual Liberal Party cheerleaders this afternoon? Iain is probably rolling around on his lounge room floor, wetting himself with laughter. “GD” is probably re-writing all his “I hate Labor” press releases. Quick tip “GD”, just copy+find+replace “Gillard” with “Rudd”. No need to write new material (if you ever do).
I reckon the independents will be irrelevant once (or if) Rudd gets the job back today. If they won’t support him he’ll just say “stuff you” and call an early election.
I have to add that I hope this isn’t all another ‘dirty trick’ by Crean to force Rudd’s hand to challenge in the belief he’ll lose the vote. Crean was the one who instigated the last challenge by attacking Rudd when he was overseas as Foreign Minister. I don’t trust Crean – he’s a nasty type.
No Brian, I reckon Iain & GD et al are in deep-frozen shock. After all, Rudd v Abbott is their worst nightmare.
You may be right. The election will be a lot closer with Rudd at the helm. We won’t have barely relevant side-issues like sexism, Slater and Gordon or Pickering’s smutty cartoons getting in the way. It’ll be a more policy focused campaign. I’m not sure Rudd will want to call an election straight away though. He will want at least a couple of weeks to rebuild some gravitas as a leader and take on Abbott directly. And he’ll win those stoushes too, because head for head Abbott is no match for Rudd.
AAP reporting that Gillard has sacked Crean from the cabinet, understandably.
Yes, she’s sacked Crean but that seems odd. I mean, what’s the point of that? And the latest is that the Gillard ‘camp’ are saying they have the numbers (high 50s) and that Rudd is yet to decide if he’ll run. This could be a Gillard/Crean cook-up after all. It’s bloody tense.
I doubt she’d have sacked Crean if he was in on the whole thing. I don’t think either side can say with certainty what their numbers are, not this time around. We won’t know until after the vote, but you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be a close result, whichever way it goes. Rudd will definitely run, he’s just playing the reluctant candidate.
I hope you’re right. The thing is that if Gillard somehow holds on it won’t be by much – and that makes her position even more untenable. She should do what Rudd did and not recontest.
Rudd says he’s not running. So I guess that’s that then.
I think this is a win for Gillard, at least within the party. The end of any election chances for the ALP though.
FALSE ALARM
Rudd is not running.
It looks like this was an attempt by Gillard and Crean at a set up.
Unbelievable.
You are reading too much into it with the Gillard-Crean thing. If Crean comes straight back into the cabinet there might be something behind it, but I doubt that’ll happen.
I’m sure Rudd would have stood if he’d had the numbers. Clearly he does not. Frankly I don’t blame him. Gillard should take the party to the next election and be fully responsible for the outcomes there. Rudd can do what he can to rebuild once she’s gone.
Anyway, a day of high drama, at the end of which…. nothing happened!
As I said Ray; Rudd is not the messiah, not any more. Suspect you’ll see a slight fillip in the polls and then we’ll be back in the red again! Unity, cohesion and policy are what’s needed, not infighting!
Well we won’t know, deknarf, because Rudd ain’t running.
Brian, I’ll stick by my ‘Crean’s a dirty dog’ theory unless there’s another twist.
No. He’s not running unless the PMship is vacant! There’s a subtle difference!
You’re welcome to hold to that, but it seems to be based on your dislike of Crean. Personally I don’t see any evidence for it.
deknarf, a lot of the polls over the coming weeks will hinge on the budget and how Abbott and co. respond to it. And how it’s all reported, of course.
So there we go! Rudd didn’t challenge and Gillard & Swan were elected unopposed! Let’s hope that that settles down all the ructions!
Now let us work on Abbott—–what did Abbott know about pedophiles in the Catholic Church when he was training to be a Catholic Priest.
It can’t settle down the divisions, only make it worse. She has clung to power but at the party’s expense.
Actually Guys I’ve spend my day taking the cheese and kisses to have a medical procedure and while I’ve been able to watch the drama unfolding I have had no internet access to comment here.
Frankly I think this just proves what I was suggesting earlier, that Rudd wants to be the reformer/saviour of the party and for him to lead them into certain defeat would make that impossible. As a coalition supporter its the best possible outcome, The unelectable Gillard still at the helm of an ALP riven by disunity .
Iain and I let you boys to fight it out amongst yourselves. Gee, Ray, you sure called that wrong all day long. You were even wrong about Crean. Anpther day, another Labor f*ck-up :)
I didn’t “call” it at all, GD, and if you scroll back you’ll see I expressed uncertainty about the legitimacy of the spill and whether or not Rudd would nominate well before the caucus meeting. As for Crean, I think I’m right that he was a false supporter of Rudd and only appeared to be defecting to bring about the spill before Rudd was ready.
Kevvie in his kevlar suit
laughing ‘cos it’s all a hoot
Simon Crean gets the boot,
another day in Labor
Stephen Conroy’s face is red
his underpants are on his head
the censorship is all shot dead,
another Labor failure
the deficit is on the loose
Swan is looking like a goose
spending all with no excuse,
another a drunken sailor
the rusted-ons believe in Rudd
to save them from this bath in mud
but really he’s another dud,
not a Labor saviour
the voters wait with bated breath
to hear about a Labor death
but Joolia is such a pest,
it’s six months more hard Labor!
GD I liked this enough to magiced it into being a post proper!