A quick follow-up to my previous post. Kevin Rudd’s announcement today of a push for a “productivity pact” shows he knows he really should grow the pie, but simply has no idea how to do it, which confirms that new Kevin is old Kevin and not much different from […] Continue Reading…

At the Press Club today Kevin Rudd will pay homage to Clint Eastwood’s Republican Convention “oration on an empty chair”, by debating Tony Abbott on the economy without Abbott actually being their.

I guess he will do a selfie of this performance to post to Instagram along with his homage […] Continue Reading…

Morgan has Labor at 54.5% to the Coalitions 45.5% and Newspoll has it 50/50 two-party preferred. That confirms our polling of last week where the positions of the parties had returned to where they were in October 2010.

The results, averaging these two polls, would be somewhere around a 52.5% Labor victory. It […] Continue Reading…

There was always a question mark over the way in which the Governor General appointed Kevin Rudd Prime Minister, but little discussion. Now, in stating that they may not support Rudd if he defers the election until October, the Greens have bolded and italicised that question mark.

Rudd governs with […] Continue Reading…

That’s Asynchronous Stupidity Syndrome, and I’m sure there’s a manual somewhere to cure it.

Forget, for a moment, political thrashing and bashing, multiple human rights outrages, or lofty national goal-setting. The immediate challenges of a new gadjet take precedence, for a while.

It was clear that if I didn’t take the […] Continue Reading…

Kevin Rudd has just launched his first campaign ad. Of course he doesn’t want a “negative campaign”, because then he’d have to justify himself. Instead he’s trying to rerun the 2007 campaign. I’m not sure that he’ll be able to get through a whole election campaign kidding the country […] Continue Reading…

It’s in all the crisis management handbooks – the first thing you do in a crisis where you’re to blame is apologise and accept fault. It works so well that politicians like Peter Beattie managed to turn saying sorry into an election winning tool.

So of course Kevin Rudd is […] Continue Reading…

The stilted unidiomatic bureaucratese, the command of multiple languages which you hope is stronger than his command of his own, a lack of physical co-ordination, an overblown sense of self-importance and ability, extreme risk aversion, confusion of mind, and complete conviction he […] Continue Reading…

We’ve been assured that Kevin is reformed, but the signs are there that nothing much has changed. Take the election date for example.

Who remembers 2007 when John Howard seemed reluctant to go to an election? The airwaves were full of Labor spokespeople, including Kevin Rudd, and fellow travellers, branding […] Continue Reading…

Unless my stunned and tired ears misheard, he didn’t mention climate change in his press conference last night. He had a unique opportunity to reinforce the message Obama sent out the day before. The US will undertake a massive investment and effort to at least adapt to the train […] Continue Reading…