Australian Politics thread

Incredibly, based on the insider reports the only people who have their heads screwed on straight about this are Smith, Crean and Shorten.

Rudd has the exact same problem Gillard and the whole government have. And if they think re-replacing Gillard will play over well they're more deluded than they already seem. It's farcical.

The people still shouting that Abbott is unpopular and accordingly Labor still have a shot are missing the point. He was even less so when he led to Rudd getting ditched. I still remember people laughing and thinking the Liberal party was screwed for the dustbin when news broke that he, not Hockey, had beaten Turnbull for the leadership.

The only consolation is if the smug fuck returns Graham Perrett (and possibly other backbenchers) may make good on the threat to resign. Government collapses, new election, new government, orgies in the streets etc.

Watching the news before, and if I heard correctly, they said something like, people voting for Kevin Rudd to regain his place as PM is sexist and offensive towards Gillard.

Gits.

Bob Brown made a statement attacking Gillard's "sexist" male critics in the media. Never mind Gillard's male sycophants or her female detractors. But then again, Janet Albrechtsen probably has a bigger nutsack than Mike Carlton. :)

I really love how we have a Treasurer, Finance Minister and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation who all seem to think they have a better idea of what an 'acceptable' profit is than economists, shareholders and gee, the bankers themselves.

La Albrechtsten should run for pre-selection at the next election. She's catty enough to spar with La Guillotine and milfy to boot.

Great column by the always on-point Nikki Savva today:

Quote :

PM's failure in office is nobody's fault but her own

by: Niki Savva
From: The Australian
February 07, 2012 12:00AM
104 comments


Cartoon by Jon Kudelka. Source: The Australian

IT might seem like only yesterday, but Julia Gillard has been at or near the top of this government for four and a half years, first as deputy prime minister, then as Prime Minister.

You would think that would be plenty of time to sort out personnel, procedures and processes to provide a competent, responsible administration, with a minimum number of stuff-ups involving a minimum number of people. You would think that people with a healthy respect for the institutions, the voters, for themselves and each other, would make sure the best possible practices were in place to be implemented by the best possible staff.

You would think a vigilant media, across the board, not just pockets of it, would maintain pressure on the government and officials to behave appropriately rather than make excuses for them by arguing they were only doing what others before them had done by breaking promises, wasting squillions and inciting riots. This would not only show balance, it would force the government to confront and fix its problems, thereby doing them and us a favour. Then again, it's much easier to beat up on Tony Abbott for refusing to make promises he knows he might not be able to deliver if only to equalise the abuse Gillard has copped for breaking pledges she swore to keep.

Despite all this, and even if everything below is chaos, which in government it often is while policies and issues are sorted, you would think Gillard and Co would by now have worked out how to convince people, on the surface at least, that all is under control and adults are in charge. Hell, just look at how elegantly ducks manage it.

She has had years to get it right, so how come Gillard, her staff and a swag of her ministers look chronically incapable of consistently executing the simplest tasks and delivering the most basic messages? It has been exasperating and downright embarrassing.

It has been everything bad - except boring - which is why time has passed so quickly and which is why political tragics, obsessives and commentators remain so deeply grateful.

If these were only sporadic, minor incidents in an otherwise competent administration, they might be forgiven. However, the transgressions run wide and deep involving piles of money and not just pink batts and school halls, but things like live cattle exports, a grossly mismanaged exercise that cost taxpayers $100m, and the shameful ill-fated Malaysia Solution which has left Australia devoid of a border protection policy.

And still we get the nonsense she is treated harshly because she is a woman or that she needs more time to get the hang of it. It has little to do with her personality or gender as she implied in her interview with Mike Willesee, and everything to do with competence.

She ran a terrible election campaign, took Labor to the brink of defeat, signed whatever the independents and Greens demanded to secure minority government, repeatedly makes bad calls and heads an administration too often overcome by bungles of its own making. She chooses her staff, she chooses her ministry, she sets the government's tone and ethical boundaries, she makes the promises and she decides whether or not to keep them.

She made the unequivocal commitment on carbon tax then shredded it, along with her credibility. She placed herself between a rock and a hard place on mandatory precommitment, signing up to something she should have known she could never deliver, then ditched it and Andrew Wilkie, principally to avert a threat to her leadership.

She said yes on June 23, 2010 to the unprecedented removal of a first-term Labor prime minister, after giving every impression she would not. All these actions have cemented a picture of her as a person with disposable principles.

Then there's the question of judgment. Let's accept that her press secretary, Tony Hodges freelanced on Australia Day and tipped off demonstrators to the presence of the opposition leader at a function which his own boss was also attending.

Good staff bounce apparently smart ideas off colleagues, after confirming an opponent actually said what was claimed, an easy thing to do these days with the much maligned 24-hour news cycle. We are told Hodges went rogue, initiated the fracas, then later toured the press gallery to smother his role by trying to convince journalists Abbott was to blame. To their discredit, some of them bought it and broadcast it.

When he finally told his immediate superiors in the office, the senior press secretary Sean Kelly, and the communications director John McTernan (who fancies himself as a bomb chucker when what Gillard needs is a bomb disposal expert), they decided to keep it from their boss.

What kind of office is she running if her staff consider it acceptable to hide from her something so serious, for more than a day, leaving her exposed and ignorant at a doorstop even after the allegations were aired by Ray Hadley?

Her explanation that her staff wanted to get to the bottom of it all before they told her is also rubbish.

They owed it to her to tell her immediately and it says a lot about the ethos of the office, and her as prime minister that they did not.

It is impossible to overstate the damage that one event inflicted on her leadership, despite her shining moment insisting on Abbott's protection. If the ramifications of the debacle have not fully seeped through to the public, they certainly have to caucus.

Those 24 hours answered one of the questions most frequently asked by outsiders, about who is to blame for her poor performance, her or her staff. Ultimately and always the responsibility is hers. She sets the boundaries, or she should, for their behaviour.Their judgment, or lack of it, is a reflection of hers and reflects on her. As leader she gives the government its character, so she is to blame for all of it, no one else, not even Kevin.

The question driving Labor MPs mad, which they can't answer or can't bear to confront is, now what? Yesterday's Nielsen poll showing Gillard and Labor picked up and Rudd remains more popular simultaneously provides respite while compounding their dilemma, an outcome the opposition found comforting.

Labor's mood can best be summed up this way: they like her but in their bones know she is not up to it, and no matter how much time they give her it will not improve all that much; they hate him because he's a bastard and treats them horribly, but he offers a sliver of hope.

There is no fix for her poor judgment or his bad temper, and no remedy for the bitterness and backbiting.

There will be no end to it until either or both Gillard and Rudd are dispatched.

Possible leak from Gillard's office... Rudd off his rocker:



Fucking hell... this t***-faced Tintin over John Winston motherfucking Howard? In any case, it seems it's come to open warfare between Gillard and Rudd. A pair of children fighting over a rattle, except the rattle is the rather important Office of Prime Minister which has been so devalued over the past four years by these two unstatesmanlike, vacuous morons.



"These fucksticks make me look good."

The tragedy of it all is it is not even a fight over policy which Rudd's dismissal arguably - it strained credulity but arguably - was. It's unashamedly a scrap fight over popularity. And relative popularity at that. Anybody who thinks that Rudd will lift the primary vote above 35 for a sustained period of time has their heads in the clouds.

He wasn't becoming unpopular in the public because he was a dickhead, a micromanager and a control-freak. He was becoming unpopular because he was pretentious, because he over-promised and under-delivered, and because he consistently and continually underestimated Tony Abbott. Against plain-talking, active action man Abbott, Rudd began to come across as a whiny, smug, smart-alec schoolboy in the Australian subconscious. And Abbott has only become more of a safe bet since Rudd was last prime minister. Bishop and Pyne do the attack work now. He has become considerate and measured in his interview responses. And after so much time in the job he has almost proven uncriticisable.

Furthermore, he still has flexibility to move. The Coalition bench is deep enough for a reshuffle, Abbott is not publicly seen as having enemies within his party - even Malcolm Turnbull - and on the Coalition's weakest ground at the moment (economics) they have two easily and superior substitutes to slot in if the need arises - Sinodis, and Turnbull - who is so popular in his own right a higher profile as treasurer could indeed increase the Liberal Party's vote.

By contrast Rudd is shortchanged: any team he leads now is the same team who stabbed him in the back in the first place. One third of caucus are in the Gillard Cabinet, the other two thirds are either incompetent, totally inexperienced or unknown. He cannot make up a cabinet without including his betrayers. And Ray Charles could see that that will not and cannot make for a productive working relationship. The 'rising stars' are firmly in Gillard's camp and are responsible for his original ousting. The most reliable performers have stated quite equivocally their support for Gillard. The active cabinet members in Rudd's camp (Evans, Carr, Bowen, Albanese, McClelland, Garrett) - have rightly or wrongly been tarnished by policy or political blunders. The moment an election campaign starts this is bound to be questioned.

And of course, Tony Abbott and every Liberal/National MP can get up and ask the media at the doorstop "Kevin Rudd may be the leader of the Labor Party now, but if they win an election he'll be stabbed in the back all over again. They did it to him once before. They did it to Gillard. It is in their nature to betray and decieve and rob the Australian public of it's legitmate leaders" etc etc.

Vesper wrote:

The tragedy of it all is it is not even a fight over policy

That's really what makes this so ridiculous. Two terrible salesmen offering the same plate of horse shit and each claiming they can make it taste better.

Tony Abbott has claimed Rudd's scalp once and he can do it again with even greater ease. I see some comments about how "golly gee Mr. Rabbit must be dreading having to face Rudd"... i.e. the same thing that was being said when Ms. Popularity ascended to the leadership. Abbott can take down any Laborite now, irrespective of personality or policy. Once your government looks like a disunified rabble, you lose the legitimacy to govern. Contrast with Abbott who's stuck around for over two years and it looks like he'll soon outlive two prime ministerships. Leadership rumblings? Zilch. The kind of stability and discipline that we've seen from the Coalition under Abbott is what this country needs for a decade or more to restore the idea that governments may not always be popular, but they can function properly and be free of constant navel gazing and childishness. Australia needs to give the car keys back to the grown ups.

But by God, Windsor and Oakeshott must have gotten some really good head to still be propping up this Playschool government.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-19/labor-leadership-crisis-nears-breaking-point/3838886/?site=sydney

Quote :

The source said Mr Rudd is likely to lose and then issued this vicious warning: "We will unleash bloody vengeance on all of those who brought this vampire back to life."

Delicious!

Sorry for the triple post, but I'd just like to point out the fun fact that in the upcoming Queensland state election a dozen or so Labor candidates are younger than I am.

I'm expecting CASINOROYALE to get drafted into a hopeless seat, even if Bligh has to pull him in by his hair...

I'm sure he'd be able to claim a few scalps.

Kevin Rudd is a machievellian genius.

Delicious stuff. Can't wait to see how this episode of The Young And The Feckless plays out. :)

Gillard: This is silly. Of course Kevin Rudd had my full support.
Interviewer: Then why didn't you state as much?
Gillard: I thought his conduct spoke for itself.
Interviewer: But why, when your senior front bench came out and attacked his integrity this week, did you not make a public statement that Kevin Rudd had your confidence?
Gillard: Look, if I had to go out and make a public statement of confidence for every minister in my cabinet I'd never get anything done.
Interviewer: But you expressed publicly, in fact, repeatedly, your support for Craig Thompson... etc etc

A very fair point. Gillard has indeed expressed more public support for the brothel-hopper than her own Foreign Minister. What a riot.

Hope the nongs who chose touchy-feeliness over statesmanship back im '07 are happy now. Howard and the Liberals warned that a government dominated by union hacks would be disastrous. It's going to be fun watching these conniving egotists beat each other up and consign their party to irrelevancy.

I don't know anything about Australian Politics but I rather live in Australia on Bondi Beach than in the USA in a metropolitan city of 5 million people, 680 Square miles, 75 miles away from the brown water of Galveston Beach.

You wouldn't want to live in Bondi, j7. Large community of you-know-whos.

Try Lakemba. No beach, but your ideas would find a large audience.

Quote :

Hope the nongs who chose touchy-feeliness over statesmanship back im '07 are happy now. Howard and the Liberals warned that a government dominated by union hacks would be disastrous. It's going to be fun watching these conniving egotists beat each other up and consign their patty to irrelevancy.

I think they're still all waiting for their laptops.

I never got mine. :(

*Should be "party" not "patty." I hear Kev and Julia make a mean burger.

Tony Burke fucking savaged Rudd on the ABC. Not the Mr. Nice Guy of parliament any more.

Yeah, not mincing words. Did you see Swan's statement to the media? It was viciously vitriolic. You think someone at party HQ would wisen up that it isn't the brightest idea to get your entire front bench to openly savage your most popular minister, whether he was a douchebag to work for or not.

I tuned in to the ABC and heard most of that statement but I didn't know who it was from until the end. Almost fell out of my chair after the reporter said it was Swan. Who knew the old Goose has bite?

Loving this civil war really. Makes me feel like my relentless negativity since the last election has been vindicated.

CJB wrote:

You wouldn't want to live in Bondi, j7. Large community of you-know-whos.

who?

Hot Girls in Bikini?

http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/zqam4p0afkf7ozyxlcomqesa69ulja7p/

http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/l8s2gtiqg7zwvlm69ilpccvgb2pd6bo6/

http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/myd7ezrxm1n9bsbakldsh1b2h88lj2dr/

http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/epbsylpgw9lq8wx5fjl8ox3fxuo03x9j/

Didn't Baywatch shoot in Australia for a season, towards the end. J7, you might enjoy settling in that locale (The Baywatch beach). Maybe Pam Anderson might visit for old time's sake.... but then you could just as easily end up with visits from Hasselhoff .

j7wild wrote:

CJB wrote:

You wouldn't want to live in Bondi, j7. Large community of you-know-whos.

who?

They don't sell much bacon in Bondi delis.