http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/groping-for-leadership-in-an-hour-of-d...HAS there been a bigger lost opportunity in modern Australian politics than Kevin Rudd's decision not to go to an election in early 2010? Rudd and his government were still popular back then and could have expected to win that election, which would have been fought over the Coalition's abandonment of an emissions trading scheme under its new leader, Tony Abbott.Importantly, the ALP would have almost certainly won a second term in its own right. There is every likelihood that Rudd would still be prime minister and the whole nightmare of the past two years would have been avoided. From Rudd's failure to call that early election, the whole sorry tale of federal Labor in 2010, 2011 and these first few weeks of 2012 flows.
Typically, there is disagreement within the government about how the decision not to pull that election trigger came about. People close to Julia Gillard say it was all Rudd's work.
Those who have talked to Rudd say that, while he takes responsibility for the decision, it was made at the urging of Gillard who, as his deputy, advised him in the strongest terms not to go to an election until later in the year. Two months later, Gillard succeeded in persuading Rudd to put the emissions trading scheme on ice, hastening his demise as PM.The question of responsibility can be something for the historians to sort out. What we can say for certain is that as a result of Rudd's mid-2010 political collapse and Gillard's move to the prime minister's chair, the federal government, in its fifth year of office and with only 18 months to go before the next election, is in an incredibly bad place.
Some Labor supporters have complained about the media's treatment of Gillard and the leadership issue this week, saying it is a chimera dreamed up by mischievous, irresponsible journalists and editors.
They could well be right about Gillard getting rougher-than-usual media treatment during her time as prime minister. But the same could be said about the media's portrayal of Rudd as PM, something from which she personally prospered with apparently little or no compunction, realising her life's ambition to become prime minister. In any event, the performance of the media cannot be entirely responsible for the things that Labor MPs are saying privately.
They speak of two things: Gillard's performance - really, shorthand for her judgment - and what their electors say about the Prime Minister. On the latter, what the MPs report back is scathing. The general feedback from voters is that they believe Gillard is void of policy credibility, or a genuine belief system, and that she ranks low on personal integrity. It is, of course, not a monolithic view, but it is, according to many MPs, widely expressed, more often than not with a good deal of vehemence.
Caucus members have been back in their electorates for two months and they have had plenty of time to soak up voters' feelings. Now that they are returning to Canberra this weekend before the resumption of Parliament next Tuesday, some are admitting, away from the microphones and the cameras, that they cannot see how they can continue to support Gillard as their leader.
On Gillard's performance since she shone, briefly, during Barack Obama's November visit, many profess profound frustration and disappointment. In their eyes, her desultory showing at the ALP national conference in early December eroded her standing as leader. Her ministerial reshuffle in mid-December left them confused. They, like the press gallery, were briefed privately by people supporting the Prime Minister that the reshuffle would sharpen up the government's ability to deliver messages about its achievements.
Unfortunately, the fallout from Gillard's decision to cut her losses and pull out of her agreement with independent MP Andrew Wilkie to legislate for mandatory precommitment on poker machines and the brouhaha over the Australia Day protest have rendered moot this new era of improved messaging.
The truth is that many MPs know what was behind Gillard's standing-up of Wilkie, a move that has apparently surprised and disturbed many Labor voters. The move was driven by her increasingly shaky hold on the leadership and her knowledge that unhappy backbenchers were starting to drift to Rudd.
Originally, Gillard had been looking at a May deadline to realise her deal with Wilkie. Ostensibly, she still had four months to go before her final reckoning. Instead, she pulled the pin in the middle of January, arguing that a bill proposing mandatory precommitment technology was not worth pursuing because it would not get through the lower house. She was right about the bill's fate. But her decision to pull out was based on the fact that the longer she held on to the policy - which belonged to Wilkie, not Labor - the angrier Labor MPs in New South Wales and Queensland were getting as they faced aggressive campaigns by licensed clubs in their electorates.As much as it might disturb the sensibilities of what remains of Labor's support base to see this reported, a showdown in the party room between Gillard and Rudd is imminent. Just how it will come to pass is not clear.
Rudd is deeply, deeply reluctant to challenge. Gillard might pull on a ballot. In the strictest sense, numbers are not being counted. That is to say that no one has been appointed by either contender to sit down at a phone and work their way through a list of MPs asking for support.
But to the extent that MPs are talking to each other, the best assessment is that of the 103 Labor parliamentarians, neither Gillard nor Rudd can definitely be sure of having 52 votes. Significantly,
backers of Gillard this week have been telling reporters that there is a solid core of ''at least'' 40 MPs who will never support Rudd.
Forty is well short of 52. It is quite an admission, given that only two months ago, the same people were putting Rudd's caucus numbers at around 15.
The timelines are fluid. The Queensland state election, set for March 24, is not a powerful impediment to the federal caucus having a leadership ballot; Parliament will sit for five weeks before the election, so there will be many opportunities. Rudd is the highest-profile Queenslander in the country and he will be campaigning regularly in the state seats that are encompassed by his federal seat of Griffith. The view of some of the most senior people in the Queensland ALP is that it would not harm the Bligh government if Rudd was to resume the prime ministership before March 24.
It would be wrong to view the cold war between Rudd and Gillard as being entirely about personality and ambition. Clearly, those are big elements of the contest.
Rudd feels that he was double-crossed by his former deputy and Gillard feels that she has been undermined by her former leader.But there is also a dimension to this fight that will go to political values, or at least that is how Rudd is likely to try to shape it. Rudd's pitch to his colleagues will be on policy, on Labor values and beliefs and of the possible demise of the ALP as a mass-based organisation that can seek power in its own right.
In taking this course, Rudd is borrowing a leaf from Paul Keating's book. After Keating lost his first leadership ballot to Bob Hawke in mid-1991, he moved around the party and developed an alternative policy agenda designed to fight the recession and distinguish himself from Hawke's policy approach.
Regardless of the merits of anything Rudd might say about this, Labor's parlous condition cannot be denied. The orthodoxy for decades was that 40 was Labor's magic number; if it could not secure a primary vote of 40 per cent - its rock-bottom level of support - it could not hope to hold government. The most reliable polls have for months been showing Labor's primary support around 30 per cent.
What Rudd is likely to be saying to his colleagues is that the ALP's future is at stake, that in effect the party has to be saved. Rudd will share his assessment of Gillard, which is that, reflecting her background as a lawyer, she is a gun for hire when it comes to policy - sometimes strong with a brief but not a natural generator of ideas in the Labor mould. It is a polite way of saying that she stands for nothing. Not coincidentally, that is a criticism made of her by many swinging voters.
Rudd's policy pitch will be built on a charged-up version of his 2007 election themes, involving more equitable education spending, the need to open up Australia to more markets in its region and the necessity of not wasting the economic opportunities created by the resources boom. There could be room for a different approach on asylum seekers and a heightened emphasis on supporting high-tech manufacturing, although in recent weeks Gillard has taken up that area with enthusiasm.
It is truly bizarre that a government that has steered a growing economy through a global financial crisis during which most of its biggest trading partners have suffered deep recessions is not only met with indifference but open hostility by most voters. Something is profoundly wrong with the public's comprehension of the contemporary Labor Party. The malady demands extensive treatment.
Changing the leader might do the job, or it might require something much more radical.
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