It was another poor week for the Government, and one in which the Opposition didn’t have to lift a finger.
In fact, Tony Abbott just rode off into the sunset swapping the noisy “gutter politics” of the last weeks of Parliament for the majesty of the open road. His lycra-clad parade along the 2011 Pollie Pedal charity bike ride gave us a new variant - gusset politics.
But Julia Gillard’s misfortune had nothing to do with nagging suspicions of where the alternative PM keeps his spare pair of socks.
Rather it was that yet another week had drifted by. Another week when the modest goal of simply being seen to govern was consumed by a faux “values” brawl with the Greens, and the continuing aftershocks of last June’s earthquake when she seized the prime ministership from Kevin Rudd.
Government MPs were mortified at their former leader’s blatant destabilisation when he appeared on the ABC’s Q&A to reveal some of his Cabinet colleagues - read Julia Gillard herself - had wanted not merely to delay the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but to ``kill’’ it for good.
With Ms Gillard currently locked in an all-or-nothing battle to force a carbon price through parliament and claiming the moral high ground that she had “always” believed it was necessary, it was another surgically precise blow to her credibility.
Yet there was also an element of resignation within Labor. Ominously, despite one MP’s reported view that Mr Rudd was a ``selfish ego-maniac’‘, the ex-PM is unbowed, determinedly reserving the right to"correct the record” again if he deems it necessary.
This is Julia Gillard’s exquisite dilemma.
Kevin Rudd has her over a barrel. She simply cannot risk him leaving parliament because Labor might very well lose his seat in the subsequent by-election. And with that would go the ball-game. His Brisbane seat of Griffith would fall with a swing away greater than 8.5 per cent. That’s easily imaginable if he were not the candidate and is small beer compared to the anti-Labor swings we saw in NSW recently. The by-election would immediately be seen as a referendum on Ms Gillard’s government - and in Queensland of all places! This is Labor’s horror scenario.
What it means in practice is that Julia Gillard has no authority over her own Foreign Minister. That much was clear from his recent Libyan no-fly zone campaign where it was the PM who was forced to adopt the language of her Foreign Minister rather than the other way around.
His reaction to being disciplined by a woman he now despises could be anything from meek acceptance (unlikely) to blithely ignoring the request (highly likely) or even opting for more public candour (more than likely). And if she tried to sack him, he could walk, (game over).
So Labor is stuck with him despite what some of his colleagues now worry is his fall-back agenda - to regain the leadership in opposition and reprise his Kevin07 success.
This is a toxic environment. In terms of cabinet solidarity, the capacity for ministers to speak freely without fear of being quoted is fundamental to Westminster government. The Prime Minister must know this but is powerless to act.
One effect of the Q&A revelation is a renewed suspicion of the former PM’s connection to previous leaks. You will recall these unsourced leaks went to Ms Gillard’s alleged privately expressed opposition to lifting aged pensions (old people don’t vote for us anyway) and paid parental leave (stay-at-home mothers and older women will resent it).
With the events of this week, some in Labor thinks they see a pattern.
Exhibit one was Mr Rudd’s declaration to Caucus on the morning he was rolled, June 24, 2010. That was when he told his colleagues that the people to whom they were mistakenly turning, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan, were the very two who had persuaded him to delay the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It is of course, widely accepted that junking the CPRS was the moment when Kevin Rudd’s bond with voters was snapped.
Mr Rudd presumably knew at that late stage, that outing the architects of his decline could not save him. Indeed, he had probably already decided not to force a vote. But he wanted it on the public record.
The revelation hobbled Ms Gillard’s leadership from the get-go by neutering her ability to present as the new broom. She was left with the unconvincing assertion that “a good government had lost its way”.
The subsequent leaks in week two of the election campaign smashed her poll ratings, at a time of quite extraordinary popularity among female voters. Indeed, an Advertiser poll in marginal Kingston of 605 voters taken just before the leaks emerged showed her leading Mr Abbott as preferred prime minister by a massive 46 points with a 68 per cent approval rating to his 22 per cent. Among women, the difference was even starker with only 17 per cent of voters favouring Mr Abbott to Ms Gillard on 73 per cent.
Exhibit two came this week on national television. The point being that viewed as a job-lot, the three revelations have all had the same “MO”, to erode Ms Gillard’s credibility by highlighting at critical moments, alleged differences between her public and private positions.
The truth is, there is no evidence Kevin Rudd was the source of the election campaign leaks. But it no longer matters.
He has made it clear he intends to speak out whenever he deems it necessary - and there ain’t much Julia Gillard can do about it.
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@AndrewCatsaras Agreed. Kills more people than AIDS. Yet tolerated. Meanwhile: Good Insiders piece again Andrew.
RT @JamieTravers: I'm in Europe and don't care for Eurovision, why is my twitter feed filled with Aussies recounting the bloody thing!?
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