Kevin Rudd on the way out?

[The Emu's Prophet]

Looks like Kevin Rudd's support has collapsed this evening, and he's not likely to remain PM for much longer.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/rudds-leadership-hangs-by-a-thread-20100623-yywa.html

Kevin Rudd's leadership was hanging by a thread last night after his support base vanished following a push to oust him led by Right factional operators in Victoria and South Australia.

Mr Rudd’s fate was in the hands of his deputy, Julia Gillard, who had growing support among the caucus of 115 MPs and senators and an increasing number of factions.

These included the National Right, the Victorian Left and most of the NSW Right, including its kingmaker Mark Arbib.

As right-wing powerbrokers were counting numbers in an effort to encourage her to run, Ms Gillard, who all day had resisted overtures to mount a challenge, visited Mr Rudd in his office at 7.20pm.

Her office said it was just a routine scheduled meeting, the third between the pair yesterday. But the meeting was joined by senior ministers, including Anthony Albanese, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner.

It was understood Ms Gillard was reluctant to have a messy challenge and it is understood there were efforts being made to push Mr Rudd to stand down.

The push to oust Mr Rudd was led by the Victorian senator David Feeney, the Victorian MP Bill Shorten, and the South Australian senator Don Farrell, all right-wing heavyweights.

Sources said they met Ms Gillard yesterday afternoon in an attempt to persuade her to run.
Ms Gillard’s office confirmed she was meeting Mr Rudd on Wednesday night after reports that factional powerbrokers from the party’s right surfaced.              Just before Ms Gillard met with Mr Rudd, a spokesman for the deputy prime minister told AAP "nothing has changed".

[The Emu's Prophet]

There's going to be a leadership ballot at 9am tomorrow. It's looking like Julia Gillard's going to win.

[The Emu's Prophet]

. . . and so she did. Rudd is gone, and Julia Gillard is Australia's first female PM.

[nom]

Curiouser and curiouser.
I'm sure this is not how KR wanted to go, or JG wanted to become PM, but it is an historic day (in more ways than one).

[The Emu's Prophet]

I'm glad they got rid of Rudd - I never did like him particularly much, and with what continues to come out about his leadership style, it's rather disturbing to think that he was Prime Minister for two and a half years. It's good, too, that it'll be much harder for Abbott to win the election now that Gillard's PM - that possibility is truly a terrifying thought.

[Zoon van Ijs]

. . . and so she did. Rudd is gone, and Julia Gillard is Australia's first female PM.

 And the first to declare her atheism publicly I was told...

[nom]

. . . and so she did. Rudd is gone, and Julia Gillard is Australia's first female PM.

 And the first to declare her atheism publicly I was told...

Yes, that's right. She stated quite soon after taking up office that she did not believe in god. A couple of political observers have questioned the impact of her disclosure on the support from conservative Christian lobbies for her political party, but so far there has been very little public comment from any of the conservative religious groups.

The majority of the Australian population really don't seem to care. That is one thing that I do like about living in Australia.

Ice - I hope that one day you are able to move somewhere that affords similar indifference.

[The Emu's Prophet]

Of course, this isn't stopping her from pandering to the Christian lobby:


http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/gillard-pitches-to-christian-voters-20100807-11pih.html

Gillard pitches to Christian voters
JOSH GORDON
August 8, 2010

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JULIA Gillard will intensify her pitch to Christian voters with a major expansion of the school chaplaincy program.

Despite identifying herself as an atheist, Ms Gillard has been working hard to court the powerful Christian lobby.

It comes amid concern that Labor's standing among religious voters has slumped following the overthrow of church-going prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Ms Gillard will today announce an allocation of $222 million to boost the number of chaplains in schools by more than one-third, which would mean about 3700 schools will be covered under the voluntary scheme introduced by the Howard government.

It follows a promise by Ms Gillard late last week to spend $1.5 million on celebrations to mark the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. Ms Gillard also stressed the importance of faith-based schooling.

Late last week Ms Gillard met the Australian Christian Lobby to answer questions about her views on religion, child sexualisation, refugees, climate change and to confirm Labor policy that marriage will not be extended to same-sex couples.

The group's managing director, Jim Wallace, said Ms Gillard's atheism was an issue for many Christians, as was her unmarried status, although it was ultimately policy that mattered.

Mr Wallace said there had been particular concern among Christians that Labor would move to secularise the chaplaincy program, although Ms Gillard had assured him that this would not happen.

[nom]

So much for the hopeful "So far..." in my previous post. <sigh>

THis is turning into one of the few elections when I question the benefit of compulsory voting. The Coalition have it all over Labor with their commitment to mental health, Labor win on Broadband. For pretty much everything else it's either a nil-all draw or both sides score in the negative (you never see that in the world cup). Both sides are studiously avoiding talking about climate change (because ignoring it will apparently make it go away) and both sides are demonising asylum seekers (the most disenfranchised and helpless people on the continent - if they get this far!). The Greens can't get a word in, Family First have finally proved to be too wacky for most Australians and the Democrats have vanished without a trace. Independents? Who knows what ransom they'll charge for their personal interests if elected (remember Senator Harradine?).

Who'd have thought we'd miss good old Kevin so soon?

The only thing that makes me want to vote is remembering some of the things that Tony Abbott has said about women, homosexual people and indigenous Australians. Imagining him as PM is worse than remembering John Howard.

[The Emu's Prophet]

Well, there's more than two parties running. Personally, I vote for a more robust democracy with greater competition by putting the major parties last (of course ahead of obvious loons like Family First). Of course, my vote never will count under the voting system we have in the HoR (the best I get is a chance my vote will elect my second least preferred candidate rather than my least), but there's always the faint hope that somehow my little vote might be able to give a party that slight bit of momentum to help it one day be in a position to become a major party and seriously challenge Labor and Liberal. Still, the question of who to vote for is a tricky one, given how pathetic the media coverage has been - the newspapers will generally give four or five pages over to Labor and Liberal, but you'll be lucky if they dedicate more than two sentences to any of the other parties. Which makes it really hard to make an informed decision, when you don't know what the policies of the various contesting parties are. The cynic in me figures that's probably what the media wants. I'm inclined to vote for the Greens, as their position for the most part does seem reasonably rational; the only policies I really have an issue with, are, ironically, the environmental ones - for instance, their dogmatic opposition to even considering the likes of nuclear power and genetically modified crops, both of which go against their platform of protecting the environment; nuclear power is one option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and genetically modified crops could prove very important for reducing water usage, which could be kind of nice, given the trouble the River Murray is in and the droughts we tend to continually have. Of course, I don't know what the policies of the other parties running in my electorate are; it's pretty difficult to get information, so the Greens to an extent get my vote by default, rather than necessarily being the best party.

Oh, and some independents can be quite good - we in South Australia are quite thrilled with Nick Xenophon, who seems to be very rational by the standards of politicians (and I'm quite pleased with the way he's been trying to get rid of the tax-exempt status of religious organisations). He was the first independent candidate to win over 20% of the vote statewide in a State Election (he ended up quitting State politics to run for the Senate).

Anyway, I still prefer Julia to Kevin, even if she is a bit of a sell-out - the more we learn about Kevin the more it seems like he was just a more boring version of Mark Latham. It's scary that Rudd was Prime Minister for as long as he was.

[nom]

I agree with your comments about multiple parties running, and that our vote usually ends of going to our second least preferred candidate.

I think the number of Harradine-like independents exceed the number of Xenophon-like ones. I wish the reverse was true - I might vote independent more often (especially if the media actually told us anything about them!).

Rudd and Gillard? Not much different. I was initially quite pleased for Julia, but am very disappointed with her performance since. At this point, I'd almost rather have Rudd while waiting for the "real Julia*" to become more than just spin.

In my opinion Mark Latham was, and is, a bully with a chip on his shoulder. Rudd is not perfect (far from it) but he is no Latham**.

Notes for non-Australians reading this:
*Our current prime-minister, Julia Gillard, was blasted in the media and polls for being too stage managed and scripted. Last week she changed gear and promised that she was going to take "personal responsibility" for her party's electoral campaign and that we would start to see the "real Julia". I haven't yet noticed a difference, but maybe I'm becoming old and cynical...

**Mark Latham used to be leader of the Labor Party and lost, big time, a federal election in 2004. He lost, in part, because of an aggressive and bullying "hand-shake" with the then-Prime Minister at a chance meeting at a radio station. It was the first glimpse the public had of what he was really like and from that point on his campaign nose-dived. It seems he hasn't learnt his lesson. While filming an election special for the TV news show 60 Minutes, he fronted up to the current Prime Minister and used the exact same hand-shake. And was very, very, rude to her. While his employer apologised a few hours later, and a colleague on the same TV station publicly labelled his behaviour as unprofessional, Mark Latham has refused to apologise and even had the gall to blame the Prime Minister. One of the more bizarre moments of the current election campaign.

[The Emu's Prophet]

I think the number of Harradine-like independents exceed the number of Xenophon-like ones. I wish the reverse was true - I might vote independent more often (especially if the media actually told us anything about them!).

In the case of Xenophon he did have the advantage of a considerable media profile - he was quite well known for his work in State politics, which meant that people had a fair idea of what they were getting by voting for him, which is very rare in the case of an independent candidate. It would be nice, if at the very least the ballot papers could include a brief summary of what the candidates stand for; at the moment, especially with Senate elections, one is generally confronted with a flood of faceless independents who for all we know could potentially stand for anything between equal rights for all and the re-establishment of the Third Reich in Australia.

Julia Gillard is an improvement on Rudd if only for the change in leadership style. Even if the policies are little different, a government without Rudd's bullying, autocratic leadership style will be much less dysfunctional. Personally I think Rudd probably is as much of a bully as Latham, with the difference being that Rudd was much better able to present a 'mask of sanity' to the public for so long - if we'd seen the 'real Kevin' from the beginning, John Howard might still be the Prime Minister (a truly horrifying thought).

[The Emu's Prophet]

Well, I've just got back from voting. I ended up voting for the Secular Party; I checked out their policy platform and it's pretty similar to that of the Greens, except the Secular Party's environmental policies are actually sensible. Not that my candidate has a hope of winning, due to our lovely voting system. Still, my electorate is a marginal Liberal/Labor seat, which means that there's a small chance that I'll get a very dodgy consolation prize of my 6th choice, a particularly awful Labor candidate, winning, although it's most likely I'll end up getting my 8th choice (there were a total of 9 candidates standing).

The opinion polls are suggesting we'll get a hung parliament - hopefully we'll get a Labor/Greens coalition, as that is probably the best possible outcome, though there is a horrifying chance that Tony Abbott will win.

[nom]

Well the populace spoke. And it said, "A pox on both your houses". That may have been the most excruciatingly uninspiring and cynical election campaign I have seen (& I have now seen more than a few).

The upside is that neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott can form a government on their own terms. The downside is that one of them will still from government. I don't like either of the major parties, but Tony Abbott scares me. I also hope for a Labor/Greens coalition, but the numbers don't inspire confidence. Could still go either way...

[The Emu's Prophet]

It is looking a little better; Labor are on 72 and the Liberals and Nationals on 70. Hopefully Labor can get up to 74, so that they can govern only needing the support of the Greens and Andrew Wilkie, assuming he wins in Denison, and not need to rely on the conservative independents. Though the good thing about the conservative independents is that they all hate the National Party, which makes them less likely to support Abbott.

Hopefully this will all be the catalyst for some electoral reform. Several of the Greens members have made comments suggesting that they'll be pushing to make proportional representation a big issue in this parliament, and they will have quite a bit of clout, particularly if they end up in a coalition with Labor.