And so each side continues and deepens its tactics. The challenger, returning to Australia like an exiled prince, calls for a people’s revolt to restore him to the throne taken from him by sinister court plotters. The incumbent, with vast resources at its disposal, continues blasting away at him with everything it’s got. Having failed to stop him yet with massed artillery fire, the Gillard camp’s answer has been to order up more guns.
There’s plenty of collateral damage from the massed fire. Cabinet confidentiality under Julia Gillard has now gone by the board — at least confidentiality for the Kevin Rudd era. It’s been abandoned in the government’s quest for anything that can do damage to Rudd, so now examples of his poor judgement and bad management are coming from the likes of Nicola Roxon.
Once again, you wonder how on earth these people tolerated Rudd for five minutes let alone two and a half years if he was so awful. Why did they sit there so supinely?
To reinforce their battering, ministers, starting with Tony Burke, are declaring they won’t play any more if they lose on Monday. “Shock and awe” indeed.
Rudd has shown two can play at that game, for the first time today confirming the long-reported claim that Gillard had agreed on the night of June 23 not to challenge but then reneged. Key lieutenants Kim Carr, Robert McClelland and Martin Ferguson have shown far more judgment in declining to return fire.
Leadership spills are always conducted with ferocity, but no party has ever torn up the rule book in the way Labor is now doing. For the current cabinet, there is now a precedent for ministers to go public on cabinet discussions when they’re unhappy with an outcome. And the precedent has been set by a range of ministers, right up to Julia Gillard herself.
Rudd, with limited resources and having begun with hit-and-run tactics, feints and surprise attacks, has continued in similar mode. He seemed on the verge of telling voters to storm MPs’ offices and demand they vote for him, in a sort of Australian Spring in which the Faceless Men would be overthrown by a popular revolution and a new order of people power installed in Canberra.
Needless to say, Rudd’s embrace of this insurrectionary role — Che Kevara — is more than a little convenient. The man who was the most control freakish, centralised, command-and-control prime minister in Australia’s history only discovered the virtues of party reform and people power once he’d been done over by the factional bosses who’d installed him in the first place.
This is a party imploding. The word is used carefully: Labor’s internal weaknesses, its ideological drift, its lack of core values, the devolution of the factions in mechanisms for distributing patronage, its reluctance to publicly argue over important issues — the hollowing out of a once vibrant, reformist institution, is causing Labor to cave in on itself.
You can see from the inability of either side to distinguish itself from the other: Rudd struggles to name key differences beyond not being satisfied with Gillard’s unambitious health reform package, tax reform for small business (Edmund Barton being the last prime minister who didn’t promise that) and yet more help for manufacturing.
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.
At Mr. Rudd’s invitation I wish to put my views and reasons why the Labour caucus members should reject overwhelmingly his reapplication for the position of Prime Minister’
Mr Rudd I want a government that operates under the principles of Parliamentary Democracy. A government that deals and confronts with the issues that challenges us all in this nation.
I don’t want a government or democracy that we witness in America; I don’t want a Tea Party style populist’s government.
I want a government lead by someone who has the focus and determination to both listen to a collection of ideas and the skill to develop and implement policy and direction based on that advice.
I want government that has the backbone and perception to identify the future risks to the nation and community and address them.
I don’t want a government run by polls and media moguls for a group of corporates and billionaires. I want a government that is run for the benefit of the people and the collective nation.
I want a government that addresses the challenges and issues that confront my birthplace. I want a government that has the fortitude and guts to prepare the nation and populace for the future we must confront.
I don’t want a government led by an ego but by a leader with dignity and a measured, mature approach to the development and implementation of policy. I want a government led by someone who has the wit to be inclusive of all the divergent views that party politics gives us.
Mr Rudd I don’t want a government that is lead by someone who spits his dummy out every time he can’t get his own way as seems to be your habit.
So Mr Rudd, whilst I may have enjoyed many of your contributions as a Foreign Minister I don’t want you as my leader and do implore that all members of the caucus reject your renewed application to be Prime Minister on Monday.
And I do hope that after you have reconsidered some of the hypocrisies you have enunciated over the past months you accept your democratically endowed responsibilities to attend to your electorates and constituents needs.
I don’t see an imploding party, i see one loose cannon and a lot of sailors scrambling madly to contain it. the pirate ship nearby is the one to watch out for.
I took up the invitation too:
Dear [my federal local member],
I hope you’re not getting too many emails in response to Mr. Rudd’s moronic call for a ‘people’s something’ in response to his much anticipated challenge. Hearing him on the radio on my walk to work I was moved to contact you, but (I hope) not for the reasons suggested. My question for you is:
Seriously, what the shiz is wrong with you people?
I was once an active ALP member and part of an active Branch. Since the election of the ALP in 2007, an election I (in a small way) helped you win, not only with my vote but my activism, you’ve comprehensively flushed the values the ALP should be making policy from down the toilet. Then, not content with playing the loser’s game of trying to be more right than the Tories (hint: they’ve had more practice) you indulge in a lengthy self-immolation saga in the media. Suffice it to say, I’m no longer a member. To me, the policy problem tells you why you’re having the public bloodletting over leadership right now.
I frankly don’t care if caucus elects my cat as leader. My preference is for a leader who can steer progressive legislation through the Parliament. Gillard has shown she can do that; Rudd has not. The fact that neither of them are committed to progressive policies is, of course, a greater problem, but at the moment I’m prepared to settle for the ‘we’re not the Coalition’ argument. If Tony Abbott had his way, I’d be chained to a sink and/or should I be lucky enough to secure a low-paid insecure job my taxes would continue to fund elite private schools and health insurance for people who can afford it anyway.
It is not your job to be popular. It is your job to make legislation that is in the best interests of Australia. It is not your job to pander to the lowest common denominator and avoid offending people. That’s the difference I see between Gillard and Rudd: he’s a better panderer. Sure that might mean he wins elections, but then what? You found out what having a campaigner as a leader really means in government. This is also why Rudd is paralysed on policy. Pandering is not policy. Making laws that reflect people’s unthinking prejudices is not policy.
It’s quite simple: people don’t know what you stand for. They might not like it once you tell them, but don’t try and be everything to everybody. It doesn’t work. That’s why people are so absorbed by the Tintin v Ginger ninja narrative: you have no values story as a party, so it’s reduced to a story about personality. The way you try and play the media doesn’t help either: I’ve not heard a politician answer a question like a normal human for some time. Q: “Can you promise that no one-winged pelican fanciers will ever have to walk under a bridge on their way to a pelican-fancers meeting?” A: I would say to the pelican-fancers, and indeed bird fanciers, or fanciers of fancywork, that we are committed to not committing to anything and droning on until your ears bleed.” The real answer is, “We’ll do what needs to be done in the best interests of Australia and if the one-winged pelican brigade don’t like it, then stiff bikkies.” You can’t please everyone.
In Barrie Cassidy’s book about the 2010 election, he talks about Hawke and an internal Cabinet revolt about means testing pensions. Hawke’s colleagues told him it was a vote loser. He stared them down and copped a hiding in the media. Cassidy’s point is that now, most Australians would be horrified at the idea that millionaire superannunants could also draw a pension. If your policy is good, stand by it. If it loses you votes, then so be it. Obviously that runs directly against your self-interest, but do you really think you’re getting re-elected anyway? At least people will know what they’ve voted for, which isn’t the case now. Incidentally, it’s this that has generated the Ju-liar storyline – partly of course it’s ill-concealed misogyny – because a perceived flip-flop on policy leaves people feeling cheated. If you had decent, consistent policy then no one would care who the leader is because the ideas would be the same. Knife whoever fails to push policy through by all means. That’s the only reason I’d say Gillard over Rudd: she pushed a weakened CPRS through in the face of intense criticism, while Rudd folded.
Get your house in order. Commit to progressive policy and sell it. Campaign on ideas, not on people. Surely Mark Latham showed you what a disaster that is. Frankly, you deserve to lose the next election. Not because of the leadership stuff, but because you caused it by deserting policy so the only arguments you can have are about personalities. Given the people involved, that’a a hiding to nothing.
Oh, and don’t add me to your mailing lists. And stop sending me ALP stuff.
Kevin Rudd a team player? Nooooooooooo!
There are riots in Greece and a ruckus in the Ukraine, terrible events in Syria, a possible overthrow kept at bay in the Philippines. The tribes in Yemen are getting restless; the € euro is wildly gyrating at the mercy of Merkel. Will she kiss or just shake hands with the obstinate Nicolas Sarkozy? Europeans are all bleary eyed, keyed up with tension and Common Market constipation, millions suffering intermittingly serious bouts of intestinal hurry. Some desperate Italians are said to be holed up in caves sitting on hoards of gold.
But, where are the problems in Australia?
Are the butchers running out of T-bones or have the rules of cricket been changed. Don’t tell me the Friday night bingo has been scrapped, the meat raffle banned, cows off their milk? All of a sudden, with not as much as a single seething university student or a hyped up history professor, Australia has gone terribly hormonal. When everything is rolling around in total peace and everyone happily tucked in bed, an ex PM decides at midnight’s hollow chime to chuck it in and go for the Government’s jugular. The bells are tolling, heads are rolling, and tongues are wagging. We are having a serious political breakdown and the whole nation is gone troppo with all the excitement of a coup d’état at the Dungog local ladies bowling club.