FriYAY wrote on Aug 14
th, 2013 at 3:59pm:
Peter Freedman wrote on Aug 14
th, 2013 at 12:36pm:
Abbott says he was "exuberant" and having "a daggy dad moment."
True. Unfortunately he could have such a moment in front of the world's press and make Australia a laughing stock.
LOL
Who’d forget Kevin “I’m the most popular leader in the world” Rudd.
In front of Obama and the rest – dam cringeworthy crap that was.
Kevin Rudd is counting on the love of the people, not his colleagues, if he is to emerge victorious from Monday's leadership ballot.
It is plain weird that the western democracy that survived the global financial crisis and has the most stable economy has the most unstable politics.
As this now extraordinary and hostile spectacle plays out in full public glare, Rudd will contest the leadership when he comes home, despite his humbug about not having made up his mind.
Rudd told reporters in Washington DC this morning that Julia Gillard cannot win the next election and he can.Advertisement
This is the paradox. Gillard is well liked by the majority of her colleagues but disliked by the majority of the voters. Rudd is loathed, indeed hated, by the majority of his colleagues, but is vastly more popular than Gillard among the public.
So rather than rely solely on direct lobbying of colleagues for support, Rudd has enlisted people power. Ultimately, every MP wants to keep their seat and Rudd knows the survival instinct eventually overrides personal loyalty.
Thus his appeal today to the general public from which he claimed he had received overwhelming support, is to ring their local MP and tell them to choose Kevin. Rudd's wife, Therese Rein, made the same appeal at her own press conference in Brisbane this morning.
Gillard's pitch this morning was also extraordinary. She finally expanded on what she meant in June 2010 when she said the Rudd government had ''lost its way''.
Rudd was a chaotic, difficult and dysfunctional leader obsessed by opinion polls and headlines, she said. What he lacked was the courage and the temperament to keep his head when those polls and the headlines with it went south.
She went on to say that government was about more than just being a great campaigner and a populist, it was about the ability to keep going no matter how adverse the circumstances.
And the most serious charge of all: that Rudd was behind the leaks that destroyed Labor's 2010 election campaign.
Everyone in Labor believes it, the post-election review implied it and now everyone is saying it. It s considered in the ALP as one of the most treacherous acts in the party's history, up there with Billy Hughes and the Latham Diaries.
Gillard's appeal today was principally to the caucus but she also had a message to those members of the public who want Rudd back - don't be fooled.
She urged them to consider why he did not even contest the ballot in 2010. ''The people who know him best and know the most about the prime ministership had determined he no longer had their support,'' she said.
Whoever wins on Monday, it is hard to see this ending.
If Rudd wins, Gillard has promised to move to the backbench and renounce further claims to the leadership. That is, she will let Rudd govern and will not destabilise him.
But joining her on the backbench will be almost half the current cabinet, including its most senior people.
After unloading on Rudd, it is inconceivable that Wayne Swan, Simon Crean, Stephen Conroy, Tony Burke, Nicola Roxon, Craig Emerson, Stephen Smith and Brendan O'Connor, who is a junior minister, could serve in any Rudd executive. Conversely, this prospect enables Rudd to promise his backers plum jobs but it makes for a much weakened line-up and government.
If Gillard wins, Rudd will not give her the same promise of loyalty that she gave him this morning. This may settle for a while but, as Roxon said two weeks ago, Rudd will keep coming and coming.
Yet to be thrashed out is the damage to the nation's reputation that this is causing.
Firstly, it is plain weird that the western democracy that survived the global financial crisis and has the most stable economy has the most unstable politics.
And for Rudd to resign in Washington and hold two press conferences denouncing the nation's prime minster, makes this country a laughing stock on the world's biggest stage.
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