Gillard must be doing something right at the moment, the leadership tension stories have started up once more. I have to say that if they do put in Rudd again as leader then my vote will be going elsewhere. Where I do not know. But re-instating Rudd will do two things. One, make my homelife miserable as the stress on the member of the family who works for the Commonwealth escalates quickly to unbearable levels, again; and two because it shows that they haven’t learnt a bloody thing about what is good for the party and what is good for government. I’m not claiming Gillard is perfect, there are many things I wish she would do. But Rudd is not the answer. Not this time. If anyone has any idea in comments about who could be I’d love to know.
While I am complaining about the media, if you haven’t read this excellent article from Grogs Gamut, I recommend that you do. Not only did sections of the media make up this anti-Gillard story, they continued to carry on with it once their sham had been revealed by Annabel Crabb who acted as we would expect all journalists to act and went to the primary source.
The funniest thing about this whole leadership tension thing – Rudd isn’t even keen.
ETA: the SMH is running with The crushing of Kevin: kindness saved the day where Therese Rein talks about how lovely people were after Rudd resigned the PM’ship. Which is great, but front (electronic) page news? Interestingly, it will be 2 yrs since that day on Sunday the 24th. Those two years seem to have sped past.
Wow, Mindy – that post of Grog’s wrt Annabel Crabb’s tweet is a corker. In fact, I want to reproduce that portion of your post with its own headline so that it’s better highlighted. *bustles off*
Rudd may be suitable as the sacrificial lamb to give them an excuse to go to an early election. Only the lower house will go as the its too early for a senate election. They’ll get wiped as expected (Rudd may give them a bit of a bounce though). But they’ll retain control with the Greens of the senate. The public then gets to experience Abbott as PM for a while before a senate election next year and hopefully the ALP/Greens won’t lose majority then. Not sure Rudd wants the job though!
Why would they want to go to an early election? I’m not 100% but I think even with the Senate election next year it isn’t possible for the Libs to get back a balance of power in the Senate because of the number of seats won by the Greens. Antony Green did a blog on this some time back. So basically whoever the govt is has to deal with the Greens in the Senate for at least the next two elections. Which IMHO is a good thing,
Mindy @ 3 – apparently it is possible for the LNP to get a senate majority, or perhaps a minority with say someone like Xenophon with balance of power. Remember that the Greens have mainly been taking seats from the ALP and independents, not from the LNP.
If the combined ALP/Green senate vote drops below 41% in any 2 of NSW/QLD/WA then its likely they’ll have enough support with Xenophon. If they get 4 senators in all 3 states then they’ll have a clear majority.
According to my election guru Antony Green, possible but unlikely:
From here
NSW and Qld don’t seem particularly enamoured of their Lib/Nat State Govts at the moment and although most punters are able to distinguish between the state and federal I think even people voting for the Coalition federally won’t be keen to give them absolute power.
Mindy – yep, I’d agree its not likely, and many people out there do vote differently in the house compared to the senate. So even if there is a landslide (which at the moment looks likely) hopefully the senate won’t be as bad. There’s a chance though that enough people have disliked the hung lower house that they get polarised in their voting in the senate and don’t vote for minor parties. And in years time they may have both NewsCorp and Fairfax papers actively lobbying against them – thats going to hurt.
However, separating the house and senate elections by a decent amount of time would ensure that it doesn’t happen – can’t see the voters staying angry at the ALP months after they get kicked out of office. In the end the ALP is going to have to make a decision about how much more they think they can achieve over the next year versus risking having a lot of what they have done reversed if the LNP get a clear majority in both houses.
btw the last poll I saw for QLD had the LNP getting an even bigger majority than what they got at the last state election. Perhaps the government is still in their honeymoon period.
Interesting Chris, although I must admit my tweet stream, FB, and blog reading is all very left wing. Sometimes too left wing. So yes I could be completely unprepared for a nasty surprise come election time.
Amen to the Rudd comments. I can’t understand why several people of my acquaintance love him and hate Gillard (*cough* misogyny *cough*).
If they call an early election and Abbot becomes PM that will just be embarrassing (for Australia). Maybe there will be a last minute swing against the Libs on account of Abbot being Abbot.
I’m not sure why they’d call an early election, but Labour has absolutely no momentum at the moment. Something needs to change.