Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and the Red Cordial
Ptthpphthphthppthphtthpphpth!
Sir Roger supposes that, given he is the default custodian of Australian Values, he is bound to comment on the recent burst of enthusiasm in Canberra. The lesson to be learnt from it all is Don’t Let Unionists and the NSW Right Drink the Red Cordial. (They spill it all over the place.)
But where to start? First, we’d like to see the resumes of the people who have been advising Kevin Rudd for the last six months. My god, there has rarely been such a display of collective stupidity, incompetence and/or self-serving inhumanity in federal politics since … since … since Abbott & Costello, Sir Foppling Downer, Ruddock the Nazgûl, the tame but dreadful Keelty and, perhaps, DIC Correll, gave advice to John Howard.
Rudd was a joke for most of his leadership. And the joke was that he thought people voted for him. He thought, or came to believe, that people voted for him because they liked him. Pfffftt.
People voted for him so as not to vote for John Howard and his debauched, dissolute, corrupt, self-satisfied, complacent, arrogant party of political brigands.
They voted, specifically:
Rudd’s popularity was high for as long as there was a prospect he would deliver these things. And he did deliver more or less on Work Choices and certainly on the Apology. But the doubts were there for years as he substituted imprecise promises of distant and uncertain reports-and-inquiries for actual action. “We are acting decisively to set up an inquiry into whatever.”
Voters have felt betrayed especially about the acute need for action on mental health which has fallen away into nothing.
He looked cowardly when he distanced himself on a number of occasions from the bad news of broken promises which he ruthlessly forced his ministers to deliver while he was conveniently out of town. He didn’t look tough. He looked weasely.
The ascendancy of Tony Abbott has spooked him. And so he tried to look tough on the Mining Super Tax which he described as an example of revolutionising the taxation system which it patently was not. It was just a money grab and everyone knows it. Money to salve the hip-pocket nerve in the run-up to the next election. So we knew he lied about it being a revolution in taxation as long as this was the only recommendation of the hundred or two made by Henry that was taken on board. He recanted about the party political advertising “cancer” so we knew that he was unreliable, and untrustworthy – in fact that he was just another politician.
And he didn’t look strong against the miners. He just looked stupid. It wasn’t David and Goliath it was Dopey and Godzilla.
In his desperation to counter the attraction (he thought) and the traction of Tony Abbott he swung the party to the right. He matched Abbott on asylum seekers and he ditched climate change as policy – possibly the two biggest things that got him elected in the first place.
When he became Prime Minister he had placed the party in the centre right. That left the LibNuts nowhere to go but further to the looney right fringe, where Tony Abbott lives. Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull tried to contest the centre right and failed. All Rudd had to do was to stick to the centre right – humane social policies with responsible fiscal policies – and he would have been a three-term PM. But he got spooked. The hilarious moment came, in fact when the night before he jumped he promised that Labor wasn’t going to lurch to the right into Abbott territory on climate change and refugees. But it already had! His asylum-seeker policies were as ruthless, at least in prospect, as John Howard’s, and his proposed action on climate change now non-existent, like Howard’s. The other amusing thing he said was that he had been elected PM by the voters of Australia. This was not true. You can’t vote for the Prime Minister, just your local member and the factions elect the leader of the party. So the factions just unselected him as leader.
It was the lurch to the right that really opened up the Greens’ opportunity in the centre. They now look like the centre left instead of the looney left fringe. We can all see that they had been right all along, all those years of banging on about climate change and the environment and being ignored as radical-newage-pinko-leftie-drug-crazed-hippy-weirdos. Oh, and gay. And it turns out they were right and we should have listened to them way back then. But way back then they were unelectable. Now it is quite conceivable that they will hold the balance of power, possibly even in the Reps. It may be the only way to keep a rein on the ALP’s slide to the right.
Anyway, Rudd broke the faith and broke our hearts and he had to pay for it sooner or later. The power brokers all have the Labor Party self-destruct DNA. You can see it in NSW every day. Two and a half years in power federally clearly is beyond their capacity to cope with. The boiler was bursting and they longed for the quiet, familiar decades of Opposition.
One doesn’t blame Gillard. She knew Rudd’s number was up (courtesy of the naughty boys who had drunk the red cordial) and she was obliged to take the opportunity.
One doesn’t care whether she’s a woman or not. It’s no big deal. Bandaranaike, Meir, Gandhi, Thatcher, Clark; Boudicca, Mary, Anne, ER, VR, EIIR. Xena. All have come before, elected and unelected, both. We already know for goodness’ sake, that women are up to the task. They always have been. What one does care about is whether she does a good job for the country.
One dislikes her. Especially her awful, grating voice and strident accent. Someone on a radio talkback show said they liked her because she was a good communicator and a straight talker and they were looking forward to the end of all the political spin.
One begs your pardon?
One cannot recall a single time that Gillard ever actually answered a question, or at least the one that was asked. All there ever is with her is spin and slogans and ignoring the question. Here’s an answer I prepared earlier. Over and over and over again. She is a waste of space and a waste of time.
And she is still preferable to Tony Abbott by a long long way.
And if she softens asylum seeker policy and urgently implements real climate change policy and compromises on the mining tax grab and addresses mental health then one might change one’s mind about her.
We don’t deserve this bullshit. We shouldn’t be limited to choosing between the Liars and the Other Liars and the pot-smoking-long-haired-tree-huggers.
There ought to be a law that says anyone who wants to be a politician is banned from running for office and the politicians should be drafted the way juries are.
UPDATE: The question whether the bloodletting was worth it pragmatically (and what else is there in politics?) may be answered by the betting market, although one wasn’t watching before the guillotine fell to know how much tightening there has been.
Betting on the election result is strongly towards Labor. Centrebet has Labor at $1.36 against $3.05; Sportingbet has $1.40 against $2.85.
Top election date betting is for August 28: Centrebet $3, Sportingbet $3.50; September 4: Centrebet $5.50, Sportingbet $5; any date in 2011: Centrebet $6, Sportingbet $5.50. All other dates in 2010 are at longer odds. So the punters apparently expect Gillard to go early while she’s got the new-girl bounce. Hmmm. (Strokes chin)
MORE UPDATE: Recommended: more, more professional, betting analysis, immediate polling results and other entrail sorting available from Possum Pollytics and the Pollbludger. The new-girl bounce is there but would Kevin have won anyway?
[tags]Australia, Australian values, Rudd, Kevin Rudd, Gillard, Julia Gillard, Labor, Labor Party, Prime Minister, PM, leadership, politics, political values, Australian politics, mining, asylum seeker, refugee, stolen generation, indigenous, aborigine, aboriginal, Abbott, Tony Abbot, Costello, Downer, Ruddock, Howard, Keelty, red cordial, Work Choices, Apology[/tags]
Posted: 25 June, 2010 in Australian Politics, Australian Values, environment, History, politics and government, values.
Tags: Abbott, aboriginal, aborigine, Apology, asylum seeker, australia, Australian Politics, Australian Values, Costello, Downer, Gillard, Howard, indigenous, Julia Gillard, Keelty, Kevin Rudd, Labor, Labor Party, leadership, mining, PM, political values, politics, Prime Minister, red cordial, refugee, Rudd, Ruddock, stolen generation, the red cordial, Tony Abbot, Work Choices
Comments
Comment from worrierqueen
Posted: 26 June, 2010 at 12:09 am
Great site!
You can’t kick “the greatest moral challenge of our time” into touch without losing all credibility. Interesting how the decision to dump the ETS was made by the kitchen cabinet of Rudd, Gillard, Tanner and Swannee, 2 victorian left and 2 Queensland right (no wonder the NSW right was pissed off). Of course Gillard and Tanner being both from the Victorian left guarantees they hate each other more than the right or the Liberals, and the same of course applies to the right in Queensland, which is why we now see Tanner and Billy no mates off into politician heaven while Swannee and Julya are making cooing noises to each other.
In a party containing 31 factions, Rudd manages the quite remarkable feat of leading the smallest (Centre Unity) with only him and his one mate Arch, who he dumped from the ministry after Arch voted for Bomber in the leadership spill that brought Rudd to power in the first place (that’s how much factional pull Rudd can manipulate).
Swannee’s AWU is Centre Unity’s mortal enemy, and as everyone knows the Queensland AWU IS the Labor party (shearers, strikes, some dead tree out in the desert somewhere, you know the drill) and having Swannee close to your bosom is usually the last thing you’ll ever fondle.
And so we come to that day months ago with Swannee and Julya in favour of dumping the ETS, Tanner against and the Ruddling, as usual, without a clue. Such a no-brainer decision, leads the Ruddling as usual to make the wrong one, and the rest as they say is history.
Assuming Julya and Swannee aren’t complete morons, this coup has been bubbling for a while.
Comment from roger migently
Posted: 26 June, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Is that right, that Julia wanted the ETS dumped? Is she a climate sceptic/denier? Of course the ETS was a crock of shit and never would have worked but they should have talked to the greens. I suppose that’s what a lot of politics worldwide is about. It’s not nearly so important to be doing something as to APPEAR to be doing something. Some coalition guy on ABC radio this morning actually got it right. He said the ALP powerrangers thought the problem in the polls was the message and the messenger but it wasn’t. The problem was always the policy (owtte). Bad policies, absent policies, backflips on policies and policies not acted on caused usz to fall out of love.
I thought Swannee and Ruddee went to school together. Oh, right, if it was anything like my schooldays that explains why they’re mortal enemies.
Pah! Pah! Stop it. I don’t want the image of fondling Swan’s bosom. Get out of my head! Go! Shoo!
Also, did Tanner go because he’d had enough? It was he, of course, who ought to have been Treasurer and has a much better grasp of the issues and more talent than Swan. That’s the impression I got. Also he seems a lot more honest than most pollies. Not hard, I know.
Comment from paul
Posted: 29 June, 2010 at 11:58 pm
http://antonyloewenstein.com/tag/julia-gillard/
MOSSAD COUP ?
Comment from masealake
Posted: 9 September, 2010 at 2:51 pm
PM lounge leak for ever if voters voices, pains and crying not fixing?
Australia citizens now enter a very challenging political era for 70 years in the 2010 federal election, many reforms are demanding by voters are looking for a change with anger to share fairer resources supplied lives since the first term of a Labor government?
Australia social fabric repair long over due? The historical hung parliament demonstrated deep in voter’s heart a fixed must to carry on in vision and action immediately:
Voters’ voices do not hear?
Voters’ pains do not ease?
Voters’ cries do not care?
1. Poverty will not be phase out if no fairer resources to share;
2. Illness will not be reducing if no preventive measurement in real action;
3. Agriculture will not be revitalize if urbanization continuing its path;
4. Housing affordability will not be reach for young generation if government continues cashing from young generation debt by eating out the whole cake of education export revenue without plough back;
5. Manufacture industry will shrink smaller and smaller if no new elements there to power up to survive;
6. Employability will not in the sustainable mode for so long as manufacture and agriculture not going to boost.
Ma kee wai
(Member of Inventor Association Queensland since 1993)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 14 September, 2010 at 10:53 am
1. What time bombs will rock Australia democratic society?
The Australia historical hung parliament demonstrated the big gap of inequality society between the small educated elite groups who get highest pay by talk feast used mouth work controlling live essential resources of the country in every social platforms against the biggest less educated groups who get lowest pay by hands work squeezed by discriminative policies that sucking live blood from poor/less wealth off?
Voters’ voices do not hear?
Voters’ pains do not ease?
Voters’ cries do not care?
1. Poverty will not be phase out if no fairer resources to share;
2. Illness will not be reducing if no preventive measurement in real action;
3. Agriculture will not be revitalize if urbanization continuing its path;
4. Housing affordability will not be reach for young generation if government continues cashing from young generation debt by eating out the whole cake of education export revenue without plough back;
5. Manufacture industry will shrink smaller and smaller if no new elements there to power up to survive;
6. Employability will not in the sustainable mode for so long as manufacture and agriculture not going to boost.
Ma kee wai
(Member of Inventor Association Queensland since 1993)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 26 September, 2010 at 12:28 pm
What democratic societies should learn lessen from Australia election 2010:
1. What productive action Gillard Labor government 5 billions to UN buys ousted PM Kevin Rudd’s face?
Voter’s pains did not link to high income Politicians and Bureaucracy.
The Australia historical hung parliament demonstrated the big gap of inequality society between the small educated elite groups who get highest pay by talk feast used mouth work controlling live essential resources of the country in every social platforms against the biggest less educated groups who get lowest pay by hands work squeezed by discriminative policies that sucking live blood from individual poor/less wealth off?
Voters’ voices do not hear?
Voters’ pains do not ease?
Voters’ cries do not care?
1. Poverty will not be phase out if no fairer resources to share;
2. Illness will not be reducing if no preventive measurement in real action;
3. Agriculture will not be revitalize if urbanization continuing its path;
4. Housing affordability will not be reach for young generation if government continues cashing from young generation debt by eating out the whole cake of education export revenue without plough back;
5. Manufacture industry will shrink smaller and smaller if no new elements there to power up to survive;
6. Employability will not in the sustainable mode for so long as manufacture and agriculture not going to boost.
Ma kee wai
(Member of Inventor Association Queensland since 1993)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 27 September, 2010 at 7:32 pm
What democratic societies should learn lessen from Australia election 2010:
1. What voters crying for reforms not just parliament, but for all department?
Voter’s pains did not link to high income Politicians and Bureaucracy.
The Australia historical hung parliament demonstrated the big gap of inequality society between the small educated elite groups who get highest pay by talk feast used mouth work controlling live essential resources of the country in every social platforms against the biggest less educated groups who get lowest pay by hands work squeezed by discriminative policies that sucking live blood from individual poor/less wealth off?
Voters’ voices do not hear?
Voters’ pains do not ease?
Voters’ cries do not care?
Voter is crying for department reforms over 70 years that resulting a 2010 Hung Parliament?
An iceberg example of voter’s crying:
“……it seem to me there was an unfair to treat me when the merit of “Claim for Disability Support Pension or Sickness Allowance” form in detail clearly defy 15 hours classify the cut off point for acceptance, when comparing to my early assessment completed in June this year that it has the merit less than 8 hours (0-7) work capacity due to my long term medical impairment since an injury occurred in 2005”…….
It was disappointing where the push of Parliament reform that mainly to brink good news to all MPs by the individual MPs during this year historical hung parliament in 70 years, and the reform did not including all Government Departments where it would directly brink good actions to all voters/or people?
Ma kee wai
(Member of Inventor Association Queensland since 1993)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 24 March, 2011 at 9:04 am
Why believe coalition Supporting Local Communities?
It’s all about power and money most Politicians and parties wanted above all and after all election?
Just listen how Barry O’Farrell convincing voters: “Over the last four years I announced positive and practical policies which will help support local communities……..” .
Take a look below the link subject: “Time for Action” in “Healthy Active Life” program that convert Broken hill into a Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy? Link with http://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=20747&mycomm=ES
… , will you then still believe Barry O’Farrell’s announced positive and practical policies which will help support local communities……..” ?
Will you also believe there were only 1-2 Politicians responding to this greatest “Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy model”?
Why the most Politicians do fail their own test in support community health/economic development who with$1.65 million Tax payer’s money each annual spending for?
Masealake (Member of Inventor Association QLD)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 26 March, 2011 at 8:07 am
Why believe coalition economic plan works without revitalize agriculture and manufacture industries??
It’s all about power and money most Politicians and parties wanted above all and after all election?
Just listen how Barry O’Farrell convincing voters: “People are our asset. They are our greatest wealth and they should be given the opportunity to pursue their dreams?” On the issue of economic management, Mr O’Farrell was asked what he thought was the state’s greatest source of wealth, given NSW lacked a resources industry.
Take a look below the link subject: “Time for Action” in “Healthy Active Life” program that convert Broken hill into a Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy? Link with http://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=20747&mycomm=ES
… .
When we look at what today’s shrinking industries, such of agriculture (34% of fruit and 19% of vegetables imported); manufacture (10.5% by 2005–6) destructed by John Howard’s coalition government.
Will you then still believe Mr Barry O’Farrell’s coalition opposition announced positive and practical policies which will help revitalize agriculture and manufacture industries for create more sustainable jobs, and innovative export products?
Remember, it’s not one person to construct or destruct the whole lots of industries, it’s the matter of whole political party/government?
Will you also believe there were only 1-2 Politicians responding to this greatest “Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy model”?
Why the most Politicians do fail their own test in spend little brain work to revitalize agriculture and manufacture industries who with $1.65 million Tax payer’s money each annual spending for?
Masealake (Member of Inventor Association QLD)
Comment from masealake
Posted: 27 March, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Why believe NSW coalition health plan works just by add a few dollars in hospital without innovative ideas?
It’s all about power and money most Politicians and parties wanted above all and after all election?
Just listen how Barry O’Farrell convincing voters: “The key to our program is giving medical professionals a bigger say in how health services are delivered in their area. These are the people who know what their patients need…so we will be listening to them”.
Where the Preventive Health program under coalition government’s 8 years health plan is proved that a political mouth show in which spent millions dollar only produced a book for sale, people who have to pay for reading, but not benefit taking.
Will you then still believe Mr Barry O’Farrell’s coalition opposition is committed to health reform (put some money in some hospital if you liked)? Then call it rebuild the hospital system through Better Hospitals and Healthcare program? The coalition put it up simply as a truly health reform that would fix NSW health problems?
Will you also believe there were only 1-2 Politicians responding to this greatest “Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy model”?
Why the most Politicians do fail their own test in spend little brain work to come up some innovative idea that truly achieve the health reform materialized that benefits to all voters?
Take a look below the link subject: “Time for Action” in “Healthy Active Life” program that convert Broken hill into a Healthy Las Vergas Broken Hill economy? Link with http://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=20747&mycomm=ES
… .
Masealake (Member of Inventor Association QLD)
Comment from annette
Posted: 25 June, 2010 at 7:16 pm
We have the same law in childcare….If someone comes in and says “I want this job because I love children” you know they will be shit!