07 June 2013

Ruling in, ruling out

'Cause the high heel he used to be has been ground down
And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around ...


- Elvis Costello Man out of time
What is Kevin Rudd up to? He has realised the guerrilla-campaign of opposition-within-government is a lonely place to be (with only the likes of Joel Fitzgibbon for company, true loneliness would be the better option). Rudd has learned the lesson that Malcolm Turnbull learnt and applied within his party: that if you're a team player your shortcomings will be covered up, while your light can outshine lesser lights even when yours is dimmed and theirs is at full wattage. Over the past two days or so Rudd has done what nobody expected him to do: join the team, fight for the team, rule out taking over the team.

Prime Minister Gillard invested a lot in keeping the Australian-manufactured vehicle industry going, in terms of personal credibility and in terms of money: public money, billions of dollars of it, which was ringfenced against budget cuts. When Ford announced that they would cease manufacturing in this country Gillard made an appropriate but impersonal statement, and has committed to greater job retraining and placement services than other redundant workers get.

She reiterated in her calm, lawyerly way that the whole idea of throwing money at the vehicle industry was about the workers, and that they remained her focus after they had ceased to matter to Ford management. Visiting Geelong today, Rudd said it punchier and better. He's not trying to one-up the Prime Minister, he is compensating for what everyone agrees is one of her weaknesses (in areas other than education or disability care, it would seem): an ability to get to the point, stick to it and hammer it home, so that you don't forget who owns this issue and who you need to vote for if you think it's important too.

I think Kevin Rudd has had his go, and have been strongly critical of him over three years now. I remain unconvinced that his ability to manage people and information has improved one bit and nobody takes any word of oily old-school Ruddsters like Hawker to the contrary. Of course Rudd talks about great-power rivalry; all ex-PMs do that, but not even the most addled nostalgist is talking about SHOCK FRASER/KEATING LEADERSHIP TILT SHOCK. Now that Rudd's on the team, doing the right thing, it's incumbent upon critics to identify and support constructive behaviour: well done, Mr Rudd.

"Gillard-haters"* like Drag0nista and Leigh Sales are clearly upset. They'd be fine if Rudd was undermining Gillard; they'd be fine if Rudd went to ground, and rendered himself politically inert. Both fit the Abbott's-inevitable-Gillard's-doomed Narrative. Because he's done neither, they play word games with him: do you rule out ... are you leaving the door open for ... Rudd knew in 2007 that playing along with such bullshit is worth nothing in terms of votes. Abbott knows it now, and plays journos like trout on the rare occasions that a) they actually confront him and b) he doesn't walk away.

The only thing to do when confronted with that is to shirtfront the interviewer for asking pissant questions, which is what Rudd did this week and what the Prime Minister should do more often.

It doesn't matter if you trash a broadcast media interviewer, they'll still beg to have you back: they have no choice. Only those seeking to hustle their way out of obscurity believe otherwise, but the big guns know you don't cop that from a journo. The journo isn't eliciting information of value by the ruling in/ruling out thing. What they are doing is getting the jollies and the sensation of power that a child gets when offering food to a puppy and then jerking it away at the last minute, laughing, and then offering the morsel again. Old dogs know you can take a bit of skin off the cherub without being put down, and improve the relationship quite considerably over the long term.

Rudd is one politician who has certainly lost a lot of power, but the broadcasters/MSM have lost more power than he has. Nobody who doesn't know suck-up-spit-down Sales personally is going to feel for her after being outmanoeuvered by someone The Narrative regards as a political corpse.

Fitzgibbon looks like a prize fuckwit for courting publicity at his party's expense, and even those of us with no love for the ALP as an organisation see this clearly. To be fair, however, this is also true of the entire, almost entirely worthless Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. Yet again the media turned their back on the market that will maintain or kill their jobs in order to pursue a nobody: the unspeakable in pursuit of the implausible.

God forbid that anything at all should hang upon sad-sacks Alan Griffin and Daryl Melham for tossing in the towel. Once again, Rudd has left his so-called supporters within caucus in the cold. He's done it before - pretty much every time he ran for the leadership, except 2006 and after '07 when he had enough largesse to distribute to friend and foe alike - but every time he ran and lost his supporters wondered why they bothered.

I remember when Daryl Melham's career ended, sometime in the '90s  after an interview with Kerry O'Brien. The Liberals have been targeting his seat for twenty years, one of the longest courtships in Australian politics. If they win no other seat, let Banks be the crown-of-thorns for Loughnane-Abbott. Griffin has gone from newbie to burnt-out husk without any intervening achievement, a bit like most careers in politics or political journalism really.

The Murdoch journos can't believe the Labor leadership thing really is over. The basic facts of Australian politics are clearly different to what they told us, what they demanded we pay them to tell us: Julia Gillard was Prime Minister was Prime Minister in June 2010, she was Prime Minister was Prime Minister in June 2011, she was Prime Minister was Prime Minister in June 2012, she is Prime Minister was Prime Minister in June 2013, and no amount of increasingly strident Narrative is convincing that she won't be Prime Minister was Prime Minister in June 2014, or '15.

Having Rudd as leader in this election was essential to the Liberal psyche.

The Liberals who survived the 2007 election mostly accepted the people's decision, and began casting about for a post-Howard future. They thought Costello would lead them there and they were wrong. There was a hard core of people like Bronwyn Bishop who simply refused, Tea Party style, to accept that an actual majority of actual Australian voters elected a Labor government. They thought that Rudd had swindled them, and every time he backed down and watered down the positions with which he beat Howard he fed that perception. Nelson was their compromise candidate: nobody wanted Abbott after his performance at the election yet they were afraid Turnbull would rush them into some strange future of a republic, education, hi-tech and fine arts, of the sort that Keating had tried to foist onto Labor.

Turnbull got up when Nelson could go on no longer and he assuaged the most basic fears of the organised Liberal Right, directed from beyond Canberra. When Turnbull failed too they put Abbott in, as they wanted all along because they could control him as he presented a face to the press gallery that it found appealing (and the public will swallow whatever the press gallery feeds them, apparently).

Abbott needs to face Rudd and beat him. Only then can the Howard continuum be restored and maintained. That's why Abbott looked crestfallen when Gillard trounced Rudd last year, and why the Liberals didn't laugh when Rudd refused to challenge earlier this year (the key union bosses remained behind Gillard; had they shifted, they'd have told their people in caucus to vote for Rudd, and Rudd would now be PM. Rudd knew they hadn't shifted and wasn't obliged to commit political suicide).

The role of the press gallery and their broadcast media colleagues in leadership transitions over the past seven years is an anachronism, a homage to an image of the press and its role within Parliament that no longer applies. The parties' relationship to the media in leadership transitions used to be intimate: they would watch collaborators gather and disperse. They could point to evidence contradicting those who would "play down leadership tensions".

Now their position can be likened to [another analogy that compares grown journalists to children!] the schoolyard bullying tactic whereby taller children take the property of a smaller child and throw it back and forth above the owner's feebly grasping hands. The difference is, though, that the child whose property is being used as a plaything knows what's going on; after seven long years, no press gallery journalist - no newbie with fresh perspective, no old hand who's seen it all - none of them have twigged to the way leadership challenges actually happen.

Seven years. Six leadership changes in that time. Two elections, and another coming up. None of them have twigged to the way leadership challenges actually happen.

Now that you understand the difference between how leadership challenges actually work, and how they are reported by the press gallery and others in the broadcast media (or if you will, MSM), you can see the level of self-delusion from this tribune of the Conventional Wisdom:


That could have been written at any point in the last three years, and would have been no more valid then than it is now. It's not even informative, failing as journalism at every level other than the ovine everyone else is doing it. Looking to the caucus to find out what's going on with the leadership is like looking for Lasseter's Reef in the carpark of the Rooty Hill RSL: it just ain't there.

Leadership changes have been carefully managed affairs for the past seven years: in that time Labor has changed leaders twice, the Liberals three times, and in every case the fix has been in long before the press gallery even got wind of it. Even the Greens notified the MSM only after the Brown-Milne-WhishWilson deal was done.

That journalist is wasting her time running the same non-story she's run for three years, the same non-story the press gallery ran about Howard and Costello before that. You can be a veteran press gallery journalist in this country with a resume consisting of nothing but bullshit.

No amount of MSM wishin'-and-hopin'- that the realities of the past seven years might be different this time will make it so. Party leadership changes are just not decided in Canberra. Pollies will wring their hands over a dud leader but won't move without being told by people who put and keep them there - people who aren't in Canberra and who rarely talk to journos anyway. This is one of the many changes that affects the way that the broadcast media does its job which has nothing whatsoever to do with the dreaded Internet.

The ABC's Mark Colvin insisted at the Sydney Writers' Festival that journalists were the victim of an imaginary construct called "the 24 hour news cycle", and on Twitter this week he claimed that it explains this. It doesn't. Neither Morrison nor Fitzgibbon had anything new or interesting to say and only the most skittish and idiotic sheep would contend otherwise.

The press gallery in Canberra doesn't operate on anything like a "24 hour news cycle". The one exception to that was the night of 23-24 June 2010, a leadership transition brought on by people who cared nothing for the comfortable routines of traditional media.

The fact that Prime Minister Gillard is the first occupant of that office since McMahon who has not courted the media before securing it explains why she gets unrelentingly negative coverage, and why her policy-lite opponent is excused for not facing up to economic and social realities of the nation he would govern. The press gallery is denying us the information we need to make a decision other than that which would bring about a government that they - and their construction of 'we' - would want.

It is perfectly appropriate to laugh at the sheer effrontery of journalists caught off-guard when a press release is issued at 4.30pm on a Friday. Have you ever had something crop up at work when you thought a day was nearing its end? I have, so have most people, and journalists should keep that in mind when they chew up airtime/space with their bellyaching.


If a government is truly gone you don't need to get as shrieky as the broadcast media is (and some of the more gullible bloggers are) now. Look at the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger coverage of the doomed Howard federal government - or even the she's-quite-nice-really coverage of NSW's Kenneally government in 2011, a government that actually did die of shame. If you really do believe the polls and the backroom consultants who insist it's all over then the absence of such coverage about Gillard is suspicious.

Rudd is courting the same audience that he courted in 2006: the lumpen public (nobody you know, just those randoms 'in the field' of a poll); and the heads of the ALP's most powerful unions, whom he won over in '06 and lost in '10 and clearly hopes to win again. By neither sulking nor abasing himself, he is doing what they have told him is necessary and unavoidable: those who fight for Labor when their prospects seem darkest have a future, while those who simply jeer or walk away might not be welcomed back.

Maybe Rudd will feint again between now and September and glory in the title of the only Federal Labor MP north of Sussex Street. Maybe he'll turn on Gillard again when Abbott is having a dead-cat bounce. Drag0nista is right when she uses Rudd's words that a leopard never changes its spots - that may be so, but a leopard can be de-clawed and -fanged, and boxed into a small enclosure. I've seen it happen and so have most Australians, assuming their experiences of leopards is similar to mine.

The point here is that none of the Conventional Wisdom surfers and Narrative-mongers predicted Rudd would support the leader who replaced him. It might well be fleeting, and to some it's infuriating, but you can't deny it's happened or that it might recur. Having thus failed your analysis of what might happen in a new light is pretty much moot. You just can't trust the press gallery (like other essentially conservative people who exist in a matrix of cliches) to differentiate a passing fad from a structural shift, and report it to you.

Those yet-unreleased Liberal policies would want to be real doozies, instantly and firmly embraced by a grateful nation that truly believes Abbott and Hockey and their support acts really can and will deliver Australia from what ails it under Rudd and Gillard. Yep, click your ruby-red slippers together and believe, believe, believe.


* News Ltd columnist Miranda Devine used to claim that anyone who criticised the Howard government for any reason was a "Howard hater". In that sense, Drag0nista can be said to be a "Gillard hater". When I wrote that I thought I was being terribly wry. Oh well.

35 comments:

  1. Dear me, Andrew. I'm a Gillard-hater now? I look forward to you providing one skerrick of evidence to demonstrate this "fact". If you have no evidence, then you're no better than the journalists you deride for their sloppy work and craven hyperbole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought it was pretty obvious Andrew was being sarcastic.

      Delete
    2. ..and in one short paragraph the poster sums up the CPG and journalists in general.

      " Show us the evidence of our craven,sloppy and hyperbolic work and ethical practises? Our honour and professionalism is under question. Deny, deny, deny. followed by "Attack, attack, attack. "

      This from a mob of second rate chancers who take pride, yes, pride, in peddling lies, obfuscating truth, convicting without evidence or reason and who kowtow to a resident of a New York sewer. This mob of mug lairs want evidence??

      Tell Scotty to wait 5 minutes before he beams me up. I gotta pick my jaw up off the floor.

      Delete
  2. Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd can make this work! He just has to keep his ego in check, he owes it to the labor voters of this country after the damage he has done to our government over the last three years!
    What Rudd and Julia Gillard had when Rudd was PM, was a common partnership you see in business! You have the egotist, the communicator out front making the promises and the 'get it done' person behind (scurrying around making it happen)
    All Julia Gillard has done is put the 'get it done' person out front and the communicator in second position. And why not? should'nt substance take precedence over spin (or salesmanship?)
    Unfortunately a lot of people and many in the media cannot see the value of new ways only of the old!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have any of the wankers criticising and whining about Rudd ever met the man or talked to him?

      It's not about his bloody ego, it's about his love for the ALP and Australia and doing the right thing by the down trodden.

      Gillard is the fucking ego maniac.

      Delete
    2. I haven't, but the people who had to work with him have. They all seem to think it IS all about his ego.

      And who knew that demonstrating your love of a person, organisation or country is treachery, whiteanting and providing the enemy with ammunition?

      Delete
  3. An entertaining piece, Andrew. Thank you. By the way, who agrees that the Press Gallery should apologise for wasting our time - weeks and weeks of it - with the last leadership nonchallenge nonstory? It is worrying to consider how much of our money Their ABC wasted beating up that nonclimactic nonevent. Their "news" channel spent weeks frothing in excitement about something that wasn't even news and was never going to be "news". They need to be held to account for this waste of taxpayers' money (and time)in the most farcical way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but I don't rule out (sorry, couldn't resist it) the possibility that Rudd has leapt into the field immediately after the recent Newspoll precisely because it was so bad. When the next Newspoll comes out returning to trend, he can then claim credit for having "rescued" Labor's recent poll slide.

    Many people seem unable to grasp the significance of polls. There is a margin of error that for a poll of 1000, as Newspoll was, of over 3%, so a reported 2 - 3% slump in a single poll is NOT signigicant. A single poll figure reported is not an accurate measure of current opinion, but the MSM and the procession of Labor figures recently all but admitting defeat don't seem to get that. BludgerTrack at the Poll Bludger is a far more accurate indication than single polls.

    Maybe Rudd is relying on this widespread myopia to slingshot another leadership attempt. He imagines he is Labor's saviour, so he could well see himself as being able to turn the tide if only he could get back in as leader. Pubicly trumpet his wares, wait for the next Newspoll to return to the mean, take the credit, win the leadership, win the election... seems like a plan to him.

    Not sure which would be worse as PM, Rudd again or Abbott! One can only hope Gillard produces the miracle.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Andrew thank you , I had been having positive and negative feelings about this,, but now having read your piece full of positive feelings, that the positive side of me really believes
    Ive always liked and respected Julia,, she is woman amongst woman who shines, and any one who does not like and respect her are not really looking in her direction.
    her courage and what she gives to us as aust,, is not
    measurable.
    I hope mr rudd stays on that message if so he will do him self a great service and the country

    ReplyDelete
  6. I know everyone here knows this, but it's still almost beyond belief that a cursory scan of today's Fairfax papers bring the following headlines, on just one day:

    Critical of Labor:

    Editor's Pick: "Ice queen Gillard must thaw or be carved up by slogans"
    "Now showing: the magnificent Kevin"
    "Rudd back to denying bid to overthrow Gillard"
    "The loved and the loathed" (Gillard, presumably)
    "Rudd backers frolic as PM loses her grip"
    "Opposition is all smirks at Labor winter of discontent"
    "It's a rerun of a rerun, but we need to talk abou Kevin"
    "MPs start packing as election loss looms"
    "Ex Labor pollster tips epic disaster"

    and of the Coalition:

    "Abbott took a swing at me: ex-researcher"

    Pathetic. And they want me to buy their papers?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mr Rudd suffers from a psychiatric disorder called

    Narcissism

    Simple as that!

    A lot of our political clas should undertake a psychological assesement before entering politics...

    Im not being sarcastic at all with that comment!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And no other pollie has ever been full of themselves? He does not have a narcisstice personality disorder though or he would have trashed the ALP by now and brought down the whole shabby lot of them.

      Delete
    2. The real question to be asked is

      Why doesnt Obama have the same problem??

      He's not narcissistic?

      People who are full of themselves have an inferiority complex

      Wankers= white collar criminals

      Dregs of the middle class!

      Delete
    3. By the way,

      Does anyone know Tony Abbott at all?

      I would like to know what he was like at University and this bag man on campus status he has?

      What exactly does that imply??

      Did he engage in criminal conduct that may have resulted in that name?

      Weird man to be p.m I would think?

      Delete
  8. ernmalleyscat8/6/13 1:40 pm

    For some strange reason, that I couldn't quite articulate like you have here, I too feel that this round of Kev's 'look at me' is different.

    While I never quite reached a Latham level of disgust at his (and supporters in both parties and press) antics I didn't think I'd ever be willing to offer him the benefit of the doubt. But here we are.

    And I'm willing to consider that maybe the bulk of the leadershit within the party came, not necessarily from Rudd himself, but from the dicks who resort to smirking on Sunrise or laughably sprouting 'class war' or packing up their offices. Good riddance to all of them.

    Nevertheless, it's hard not to think Rudd is still in it for himself. So, either he sees genuine chance of victory if he campaigns effectively and can claim his help saved the party, or a narrow defeat would give him a shot at LOTO for one disastrous Abbott term.

    I can imagine the press pack playing along with a change in fortune too. Any poll improvement can be put down to 'Rudd factor' even if he's not leader. The excitement of 'the biggest comeback this millennium' would make the gallery wet themselves and they'd jump on it quicker than leaving a Morrison doorstop for Fitzgibbon on a phone.

    The macros that insert "certain to lose the election" after any mention of Gillard or Labor can be replaced with "not since Lazarus's quadruple bypass" and they can all start smirking at Tony's humiliation. They like that.

    Anyway, for some reason I feel this might be the actual circuit breaker that I mistakenly thought would come from, first, the failed spill, then the spill that wasn't, then the budget, then the lack of LNP policy. We'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  9. ernmalleyscat8/6/13 1:47 pm

    Also, genuine laugh out loud at
    "Old dogs know you can take a bit of skin off the cherub without being put down, and improve the relationship quite considerably over the long term."

    ReplyDelete
  10. Love your articles Andrew.
    It's a pity that there aren't more journalists of your integrity and intelligence working in Australia's MSM.

    The citizens of Australia are being grievously misled by our current bunch of journalistically incestuous corporate sycophants.

    JohnB

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you! What a reassuring read after all the rubbish in our media these days. So lucid too. I do so want you to be right. Is there really a wise body of Federal ALP leader 'selectors' who are above factions and neither Caucus members fearful for their seats nor burly trade union officials likely to be strongly sexist? I'd love to know who are these people who aren't in Canberra and who don't talk to journalists anyway. Or...

    Is it a mark of Julia Gillard's success
    That nowhere has there been much mention
    On broadcast media or in national press
    About the remarkable ascension
    To power of a brilliant woman -
    Achieved by overcoming challenges
    With skilled resolve near superhuman?
    Does discussion now on how she manages
    A House majority so slender
    Somehow make seem an irrelevance
    The vital issue of her gender,
    Once thought of such historical significance?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Am taken aback by this piece given what you have consistently written about Rudd in the past.

    Rudd's on the team? Rudd's doing the right thing?
    How can you seriously state that Rudd "ruling out taking over the team"" is evidence he has joined the team?

    Next week, when we see the momentum building for execution of Julia Gillard kicked off today by Fairfax and Sweet Barrie on the ABC not. News. Ltd are you still going to be saying its all a media fabrication even as Rudd bounces everywhere for the cameras "fighting for the team"?

    Don't geddit Andrew!

    ReplyDelete
  13. And here we have the media carping on about Leadershit yet again... the broken record gets another spin. As I've said all along, the media won't change - they'll be forced kicking and screaming, or left to ponder their own existence when the redundancy checks come flooding in.

    I really hope that Labor gets up this election, not only for the fact that they are offering a better future, but to show the media that they don't need them - a Labor win would render the media impotent overnight.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Andrew do you still believe that Abbott will never be prime minister of Australia?

    I sense that with every new post that you write even you are now starting to believe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I reckon Possum [Scott Steel] nailed it in 2007 when he analysed the Lib's secret report from Crosby Textor that fell of the back of a truck.
      It should be on the Crikey/Possum site archives - worth a re-read.
      They, CT and/or Poss, noted that the '07 election would be fought on several issues that were 'owned' by one or other of the parties. And in 2007 the ALP 'owned' nearly all the issues, that is they were seen by the public as winning those issues hands down. So no matter what the COALition did on those issues, tried to negate them by counter spin or ignore such and focus on other issues, the ALP was going to continue to win those issues cos the public had largely made up it's mind collectively.
      And I reckon that is where we are now.
      In reverse.
      The public has decided the ALP are out, the COALition is in and the ALP is powerless to change perception.
      Now I also reckon its pretty darn obvious that on most of those issues the public perception has been, shall we 'benevolently guided' by the media in a relentless negative anti-govt. campaign lasting years. The drip, drip, drip of the media 'narrative' punctuated with frequent shrill hysterics [Slipper, Thom[p]son, pink batts, govt waste, electricity prices, taxes, taxes, taxes, JULIAR, blatant misogyny, NBN and asbestos, a flood of boats, Rudd repeated endlessly, ....you get the picture has created a given set in concrete negative perception that this govt has gotta go and ,well, that leaves us with Abbott by default doesn't it?
      Media 1
      Democracy nil


      fred

      Delete
    2. So bloody sad....

      Its like nazi propaganda with a drip feed!

      Its a sick joke thats corrupt in well educated circles....

      Pathetic idiocy of the masses...

      Poxy on all houses!





      Delete
  15. The punters know that the horse named morality rarely gets past the post whereas the nag named self intetest always runs a good race

    Gough Whitlam

    Cheers and interesting post here sir

    Pp et al

    ReplyDelete
  16. Who asked for slogans? We lefties aren't good at them, it seems. I have one that keeps going through my head.

    "Gillard Has Guts!"

    A few words say it all dear reader.
    We couldn’t have a better leader.
    While leakers and gossip writers go to town,
    Character assassins bring her down,
    And Abbott does his stunts and struts,
    She keeps smiling. Yes! Gillard has guts!

    She's got brains too. And a heart. Let's hope for all our sakes that good head of hers is working out a way forward. A media orchestrated coup in a replay of November 11th, 1975, would be a disaster for Australia.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haters are really playing gender politics here thats directed towards our p.m


      Its sexism pure and simple

      The whole machination of the a.l.p were there are left and right factions is weird anyway

      Affirmative action is very important in our political class where the hyper masculine male is paramount where theres only a small percentage namely 21% of women in politics Andrew

      Its pathetic and corrupt and the liberal based argument about merit is ridiculous really.

      Sorry that's the reality of our political climate

      Hatred =sexist






      Delete
  17. Agree with PatriciaWA.

    Also like to remind everyone about the histrory of universal health care

    1972 medibank introduced by Whitlam
    Fraser dismantled it
    1983 medicare introduced by Hawke

    so if history is any guide we can expect that NDIS will be stopped by Abbott and reintroduced by the next Labor government a decade or so later

    ReplyDelete
  18. Abbott is an a.....hole sorry Andrew et al

    I dont dispute the fact that his own kids know it as well by not accepting marriage equality!

    Underneath that clean facade, the mad monk is let loose with that catholicism in tow.

    You just need a REALLY good journalist to push those buttons and then...

    Gold!

    ReplyDelete
  19. From all the nasties inflicted on the internet im surprised the trolls dont ask that she tops herself as well....

    Thats how ridiculous it has become in the m.s.m

    Sick people out there..really those liberal staffers are a law unto themselves

    FREEDOM OF SPEECH spare us this stupid mantra from the libretarian radicals

    Weirdness prevails in the pursuit of power

    GROW UP!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Rudd in the press today AGAIN!

    Jihadist revenge in this disturbing and very sad man!

    What an absolutely deranged individual,,i empathise with Mrs Gillard now.!

    Crazy and quite sad for our democracy!

    We the punters are the losers here!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Thanks for your comments about Rudd's latest foray, about which I had vague ideas which you have articulated better than I could.

    Despite everything, it's pretty tough when a Labor MP can't speak up for his party and attack the Opposition without being accused of disloyalty.

    ...mind you: it's a pretty clever wedge by those wishing to undermine Gillard and/or Rudd

    ReplyDelete
  22. Julia Gillard is a breath of fresh air in our Labor Party. She is one very strong and determined woman who will not bow down to the likes of Abbott, Hockey, Bishop and co and of course the most vitriolic anti labor press I have ever had the misfortune to read and watch! What morals this Murdoch must possess eh? He got the almighty shits because he just couldn't get the Conservatives up in the last election but he is pulling out all stops to 'seed' the people's minds--I hope he gets his karma!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Karma has been seeded shall we say?

      Murdoch files for divorce

      Smirk

      Delete
  23. So glad Kevin has "ruled out taking over the team."

    ReplyDelete