Apparently the Kevin 2013 version comes with a backbone. Fair enough, but if its going to be his new offensive weapon he should use it on someone other than himself.
Kevin’s latest stunt is to say that Labor will block the Liberals from abolishing the carbon tax because it is a core Labor policy.
Now, let me get this straight. This is the same Kevin who in 2010 was quite happy to jettison the whole ETS designed to deal with climate change the “greatest moral challenge” of our era because it was politically inconvenient.
But somehow three years later it is non-negotiable.
And this is the same Kevin who has criticised Tony Abbott because all he does is oppose, even when the government has a mandate.
If you needed a better illustration of the disintegration of the Labor campaign I can’t think of it.
Rudd tried to clean up his carbon tax mess by convincing us all that he had abolished the carbon tax. That was on July 16.
Here we are, not two months later, and someone, somewhere, is so convinced we want to pay more for our electricity that suddenly, not only reinstating the carbon tax, but forcing us all back to the polls in the next twelve months to make us vote for more expensive power, is a genius political strategy.
I’ll tell you what the average Joe and Jill are saying: “How loud do we need to yell at this mob before they will listen?”
The queues are going to be long and early on polling booths this Saturday. We’re not going to an election so much as a lynching…I suspect.
This is the same man who almost single-underhandedly destroyed Julia Gillard’s political career and a once great party, with his apparent leaking! [A claim he has never ever denied.]
Simply because, he couldn’t or wouldn’t accept the unanimous decision of his caucus, which replaced him with Julia Gillard, with not a single dissenting vote?
It was an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented step, to replace a PM just weeks before an election!
And reportedly, not because of his apparent poor polling?
But because he had had the equivalent of a political nervous breakdown and juveniles in his office, were reportedly running the country?
However, it may have had more to do with the fact, as reported by some of his closest colleagues, that he was a virtual tyrant, (street angel house devil) with a filthy mouth?
Colleagues, some of who he managed to offend so much, that they would rather resign than continue to serve under him! [One notes that one third of his former Cabinet, are not re-contesting there seats!]
As for his threat to block legislation, backed by a clear and unequivocal peoples mandate!
He still has to retain his own seat, let alone the continuing leadership of a once great party!
However, I don’t believe Tony Abbott will wimp out, the way Kevin did over climate change, and will use the double barreled double dissolution trigger, if the Senate tries to obstruct his legislation.
The end result of which is likely to be, an even bigger win for the coalition, and possible control of both houses?
That being so, I don’t believe what is left of Labor will sit quietly, and allow Kevin to have his way.
There will be a spill and Kevin will be “managed” and sent to some face saving ambassadorial posting; say in China?
Where no doubt, given his history, he will end his “political” career?
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan Goulding — September 4, 2013 @ 9:50 am
absolutely overrated, always was.
Comment by Chris Lewi — September 4, 2013 @ 10:00 am
Vote for any party but Greens, Labor or the Coalition. Do a Clive Palmer protest vote.
All the major parties have been bought by big business interests and they don’t give a fig about us.
Comment by Ross — September 5, 2013 @ 7:53 pm
In the 22nd Century, history books will recall that Rudd was the last honest PM to have held office.
It’s hard to know which will be worse – the 13 years of Tory misrule oz is about to have, or the subsequent dictatorship of the Machiavellian wanna-be tyrant Bill Shorten, who is so desperate for personal power that he was prepared to sacrifice the goat of government and thereby throw the ozzie battlers to the dogs of money fronted by Bumble Abbot in his budgies and nothing between his ears.
I saw Shorten being interviewed for just 30 seconds after the vote and the curtain of deceit fell from before my eyes and suddenly it was clear why all that has happened in the past 3 years had happened.
It never made sense that Rudd could have been the presidential-style authoritarian that so many Labour ministers had spun – and most certainly not the snake-in-the-grass that was painted by the Liberal spin-doctors which played to the paranoia of holier-than-thou middle class blue rinses.
But it did make sense that a Napoleon in the wings would choose the moment he did to play on the mulish ego of Pinnochio Gillard to front her for a coup d’etat which he knew would be a fleeting ride as she has no stage presence at all, and then set Rudd up for a fall in the polls – all to to clear Rudd out of Shorten’s way. This is why the spin doctors told the huddled masses of also-rans to go around saying that Bumble’s token parental leave freebie was “too generous” instead of the too biased that it actually is – taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich for getting laid.
And they fell for it, grabbed for it, the self-centred saps on Q&A, queueing up to say how they didn’t want to lose the financial privileges they enjoyed when getting up the duff – and no-one seemed to want to ask why a mother already earning $150k should get 10 times more to grow a kid than Sally in the streets on $15k.
Shorten presumably is counting on Bumble being so bumbling that it will be 3, not 13, and he will, Keating-like, become Queen of the desert.
Yet it was not Shorten alone – for just as Kennedy was eliminated just as he was about to pull out of Vietnam, Rudd was knifed on the threshold of introducing his mining supertax so it wouldn’t happen.
BHP et al are the string-pullers, and Shorten is their new attack dog.
Comment by Steppenwolf — September 8, 2013 @ 10:02 am
The revisionists are already at work, along with their usual conspiracy theories.
Incidentally, I believe the reason Labour saved its seats in Queensland is down to Clive Palmer, not Mr Rudd.
Mr Palmer gave disaffected Labor voters somewhere to go to vent their spleen, who promptly gave it back via Palmer preferences, which favored Labor three to one?
The suppository of all wisdom, (real pain in the posterior) gave an unusually verbose concession speech, which sounded like a valedictory or victory speech. Basically because the defeat wasn’t a complete disaster, which ought to have been the result of the endless white-anting.
The new shadow Cabinet ought not include any of the remaining Mr Rudd support base, in what remains of the Labor party, to exclude the leakers, who can be relied on to continue to undermine, for reasons not completely clear, but possibly part of the so called self defeating British disease, we have imported into this country?
[I hae me doots who was the principle leaker, but Ah wouldna be surprised, if it had a Scots accent?]
Labor has retained some of its most talented; and a commitment, which will prevent future caucuses, from routinely changing leaders in midstream.
They need to learn the lessons the electorate has handed them; i.e., disunity is death in politics!
There is little doubt the people will be watching and marking Labor on its promised inclusive democratization!
Genuine reform and a return to more traditional Labor values, could help it find its way once again.
Clearly it has lurched too far to the right, for the centrists, who make up the silent middle majority, which is the bulk of the Australian electorate.
Nor would they be hurt by learning to listen some more, instead of continuing to behave like, we know best elitists.
A problem which has already cost the greens 3% of their support!? And a huge loss given their very modest numbers?
The one standout is Adam Brant and his campaign success in the seat of Melbourne, principally by holding fast to his enunciated values and core beliefs; and indeed, holding on to the middle ground Labor has vacated, with its lurch to the right.
And in so doing, has quite dramatically improved his primary vote! Something Labor must now emulate!
Labor’s best bet is to relocate and stick-fast to its core beliefs, even if that then results in a double dissolution.
If they can approach that event, given it occurs? With their reforms in place and part of their future story; and with their tradition core values, back as their relighted guiding light on the hill?
They will rebuild their brand and parliamentary numbers; and begin to win the trust anew, of the Australian voter. Who is looking for something else, currently not proffered by either side of politics, at the moment? And its not more of the same old same old!
As one Candidate remarked, parties can come and go, but ideas live on forever, particularly good ones!
However, if parties are not listening, which seems to be the current problem for most parties, they will never ever hear them!?
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan Goulding — September 8, 2013 @ 11:17 am
Well we had a referendum of sorts on the carbon tax on Saturday. Voters in every state had the option of voting for the No Carbon Tax party in the senate (and then directing preferences where they felt like). The reality is the NCT picked up less than 1% of the vote, in fact the numbers were so small my magnifying class wants double time. The Coalition has lost ground in the Senate while the Greens picked up an extra Senator in Melbourne and some small parties won here and there. So where’s your no carbon tax mandate Mr Abbott? It’s clear from the House of Reps voting people wanted a change of government. It’s also clear from the increasingly plural voices voted into the Senate that people want a diverse and less partisan body to assess the legislative program. That should include the retention of a price on carbon.
Comment by Baffled — September 9, 2013 @ 10:36 am
The coalition have a mandate for all of their enunciated policies!
Labor doesn’t have enough Senate numbers after July, to effectively block the repeal of either the carbon tax or the mining tax.
Or the reversal of some of the Labor/green alliance decisions, with respect to heritage listing or the creation of marine parks!
That said, the coalition do not have a mandate to cut education, or health spending, or indexed pensions.
So, the other parties may be justified in waiting until after the promised audit and its findings, and what the coalition intends to do about it? Before they acquiesce to the coalition’s mandate.
The audit ought only seek to eliminate actual waste via duplication; and or, which actual government or agency, should have final/sole responsibility.
And where savings can be made by a direct funding model, and or regional autonomy.
With the audit complete and all its recommendations made, Labor and the other minor parties can reconsider, whether or not they can chose to force the coalition to the threatened double dissolution, or if there might be some electoral advantage in doing so?
I mean, would the Campbell Newman government survived or kept its huge majority, if it could have been virtually forced back to the polls, after that post election audit and all those cuts? Well?
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan Goulding — September 9, 2013 @ 11:16 am