With all due respect to Bill Glasson, who was a great candidate, the best result for the Liberal Party out of this election was not winning Griffith.
They get to win the election in a landslide, and their opponents get mired in the mud of Nightmare on Norman Crescent as Kevin Rudd comes back and back and back every time they nod off and lose concentration.
Craig Emerson, Stephen Smith, Brendan O’Connor and Greg Combet are all doing the right thing by the Labor party and the nation in calling on Rudd to resign.
They’re also doing the right thing by the Labor voters in Griffith, even though it would mean forcing the electorate to a byelection.
While Rudd is in parliament it will be very difficult for Labor to run a coherent and disciplined opposition.
He won’t be able to help himself. Everywhere he goes he will attract enthusiasts, and that will attract the easy media stories of the Komeback Kev, which he will be happy to fan.
Those in the ALP who are urging their colleagues not to go public are doing the party a disservice.
When you’ve just lost an election by the margin that they have you need a period to regather and regroup.
It is a fantasy, born of the residue of campaign adrenalin, to think that they will be in any position to challenge Abbott any time soon.
If they are to get competitive again they have to demonstrate that they have been listening to the electorate and will mend their ways.
That involves having an open conversation that electors can see.
One of the things that electors want them to fix is Kevin. On my polling Rudd was a strong reason for voting for the coalition, particularly with minor party voters.
It’s significant that the voters who know him best seem to share this point of view.
The two-party preferred swing across Queensland against the Rudd government stands at -0.89%, and across the country it is -3.35%, according to the latest figures from the AEC.
In Griffith the swing was -5.42%.
There was a Rudd effect. It wasn’t positive. He should go.
I think what remains of a decimated Labor should grow a UNITED backbone, and tell the endlessly plotting and planning Mr Rudd to go row a boat, or suffer the Public humiliation of the withdrawal of Labor preselection!?
This is the worst primary vote result for Labor since the second world war, and under an optional preferncing system, would have translated to an electoral bloodbath!
One has to question the logic and wisdom of the highly usual step by Mr Rudd in not gathering up, what little remains of his dignity, [and following all other defeated former leaders,] do the right thing, and resigning not just the leadership, but from parliament!?
The Labor Party can do without his unique form of patently self serving destabilization
Mr Rudd with his former PM’s pension and other extremely generous entitlements, will hardly be hard done by in political retirement!
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan B. Goulding — September 10, 2013 @ 11:24 am
One good sign Alan, he hasn’t tweeted since September 7. Perhaps he really is rethinking his life.
Comment by Graham — September 11, 2013 @ 6:40 am
To view the election loss as some kind of historic route of Labour brought about by a dysfunctional party that was not listening, or not governing well, is to legitimise the kind of hokey analysis that has reduced so much of our political life to the sloganeering and sound bite absurdity that allows the media to dictate a ridiculous, myth-perptuating conversation in the place of anything like proper scrutiny of social and economic policy.
I may sound like a bitter loser but I am not a Labor supporter. And I am also most certainly not a suppirter of the royalist rugger bugger from Sydney’s north shore who will now start the bitter process of the long reveal, the overdue revelation of the costs to ordinary Australians of upper middle class welfare, tax dodges, off shore capital flow and the environmental and social degradation that we will barely notice if Rupert Murdoch and our cabal of over paid shock jock journalists have their way.
Yes Kevin is a problem when knifed. Yes that is destabilising. Yes Kim Beasley may well have romped home in 2007. Yes Julia Gillard has red hair. But there is no evidence that Kevin Rudd is a destabilising influence after voluntarily stepping down. Indeed leaving the Parliament once you step out of the leadership of your party, like Keating or Latham, or staying on like Beasley or Turnbull, has nought to do with whether you exercise a disciplined, potentially stablusing silence. Gorton and Fraser who were both disciplined and principled men, and bith were sharply critical of the party they had once led, but neither was portrayed as a psychopath for their troubles. But then again, neither were Labor. And how intriguing it has been to aee the media’s virtual amnesia in recent years over the circumstances of Gorton’s ousting as a sitting PM, albeit by his own vote and because he dared to support a very modest idea about the need for national superannuation.
Yes Labor lost the 2013 election, but no Labor leader has ever held sway against a media that has so abused its role. That’s the role it likes to adorn itself with, the role of the fourth estate, the provider of facts for the consideration of an informed electorate. In fact few rational people would still consider that the role of the traditional media and few will ever believe them if they try to reclaim it. The media likes to defend itself as the messenger that should not be shot, when its vilifying headlines and its opinion shaping feature, and headline, writers effectively set the ground for the polling that it then carries out in order to on-sell as “news”.
When a half truth – or half untruth – is repeated over and over in the media, it becomes a media truth! Example 1/1000: Ask people to tell you what Gillard’s “lie” was and they’ll tell you it was her promise not to tax carbon. Ask the same people to quote where and when she told her “lie” and they will probably be able to repeat words from the LNP placards and news paper headlines. And they would be the opening words of her 2010 election policy sentence about no carbon tax under a government she would lead. Ask them what she also said in the very same breath to make it absolutely clear that she would indeed be putting a price on carbon and they mostly, on all sides of the politcal fence, haven’t got a clue. And whose fault might that possibly be? Ans so we see over and over and over again just how effectively the media can misinform and twist the truth to maintain any narrative with which it chooses to run.
Even my saying this will be seen as “media scapegoating” or side stepping the fact that Labor lost the election because it lost the trust of the electorate. But without an impartial fourth estate there can be no real contest, and while the loss of seats is real enough, the loss of the faith by the electorate is not anything like a proper explanation of what just happened in Australia.
Adam Brandt will continue to represent well over a million first preference Green voters across the nation while the National Party (which last time polled even less nationally than the Greens) will continue to have its usual score of seats in our rortable electoral system, and no one will notice because the media has no interest – and one suspects little ability – in talking about it when it can continue its easy journalism about Kevin Rudd. And so we continue to hear the bleeding obvious, that Labor lost . . . but not that it, or Mr Rudd, lost against the juggernaut of an egregiously lazy and self justifying media that was preoccupied with measuring the extent of Labor’s certain “route” before the election was even underway.
And now that he has stepped down can the media hold its fire to allow a bit of time and considered reflection about any future direction he might choose to take. No way! Not while it has to keep itself busy looking at everything other than its owm complicity in the ousting of an objectively effective government and its replacement with one of Rupert Murdoch et al’s choosing,
Comment by Russell Pollard — September 12, 2013 @ 10:16 am
This Rudd witch hunt sickens me. Gillard and her union mob started this downward spiral of Labor by their TREACHERY. Then she coached her mob and her female MPs in particular to “attack” Rudd publicly; what a crass move. More like drunken street brawling than educated MPs disagreeing. Gillard was a gift from heaven for Abbott; without Gillard, her treachery and the public brawling, Abbott would not have become PM. Just like Bush was the precursor for Obama. Emerson has no credibility after having had such a cosy relationship with Gillard. Hmmmm. Amazing how the drunken street fighters continue to bicker publicly even after their defeat. These people will never learn and that will continue to boost LNP survival. A once staunch Labor supporter, I am SICK of the current Labor, since Gillard. That people like Whitlam, Hawke, Keating graced the ALP is almost unbelievable in the current climate. To all past and present Labor MPs; just “SHUT UP” and have the decency to let Rudd decide his future for himself. Your behaviour (childish, bullying and vindictive) is indicative of your all encompassing fear of and hatred for Rudd. Rudd is NOT God and does not have such omnipotent influence to destabilise future ALP. If he does, it would only reflect how weak and unworthy Labor leaders are to fall victim to the Rudd influence. Rudd is the outsider (not from the union mob) a quirky nerd, an exceptionally hardworking and clever chap. He had several traits that went counter to the usual union leaders; he was not a drunk, he did not womanise, was not pals with militant, bullying, corrupt union thugs. He also did not ‘sleep’ his way up the union hierarchy. He was just an honest nerd. Let him be. Perhaps ALP needs to emulate some grace from the LNP.
Comment by Jolly — September 23, 2013 @ 1:00 pm