Much has been made of the tasteless descriptions of Prime Minister Julia Gillard on placards at anti-carbon tax rallies. Tasteless they are. They are also not really a world away from the descriptions used by our former prime minister Kevin Rudd to convey his toxic disregard for his successor.
Since losing the job in a swift and brutal coup just over 12 months ago, Rudd has been less than circumspect in his contempt for Gillard, at times in very public settings where he has gone out of his way to run her down to anyone who will listen.
When Julia Gillard seized the leadership last year, despite the role of the factional heavies, she took personal ownership of the decision to move against Rudd, memorably declaring that his was “a government which had lost its way”. Maybe it had, but in relative terms, it’s hard to see where that assessment leaves her government. A government which has lost its way, both its paddles, and has capsized its barbed-wire canoe in the deepest recesses of shit creek.
For several months now the polls have shown a sustained decline both in Labor’s primary vote and the approval rating of the prime minister. At the same time support for Kevin Rudd as alternative Labor leader has remained solid or grown, reaching its most dramatic illustration with yesterday’s poll in the Fairfax press showing the return of Rudd would put Labor in a position where it could hold off Tony Abbott.
Polls come and go but this one has the potential to be hugely important. It’s the kind of result which seeps into the psyche of politicians, all of whom are motivated at their core by a desire to win. This poll has already got them talking and could yet see them acting.
Yet it is eminently debatable whether Kevin Rudd is the saviour of the ALP. The first challenge the party would have under his return goes to unity. For Caucus to embrace Rudd after dumping him so recently and unceremoniously would set a new standard for collective pride-swallowing. Conversely, given Rudd’s well-documented disgust not just for Gillard but for the so-called faceless men who knocked him off, it is highly likely that Rudd’s return would precipitate a wave of payback in which some of the most powerful and potentially dangerous party figures would be put to the sword.
Fresh from heart surgery, and merrily talking up the quality of his ticker, Rudd can barely disguise his delight at Gillard’s daily awkwardness with the procession of rotten polls. The word smug does not do it justice, and seeing this smugness manifest itself in a round of retribution across the frontbench could set up the party for a protracted bout of public blood-letting.
There is also a live question as to how the public would actually respond to Rudd’s return. That might sound weird given that the polls show he is preferred leader over Gillard. But voters are a funny lot and there is a chance their reaction to Rudd’s return in theory may be different from their reaction to Rudd’s return in practice.
Plenty of voters could change their tune; you can imagine the Opposition having a field day trolling through the transcripts and digging up every quote from every MP about how the government has lost its way last year, not to mention the many narky criticisms of Rudd’s precious and explosive personal style. For an elected government to have gone from Rudd to Gillard and back again in the space of less than 18 months may end up pointing more to desperation than anything, and the polls could swing back in an unpleasant direction.
The other thing which could drive the polls south is Rudd’s handling of the two biggest policy headaches afflicting the Government – the carbon tax and border protection. Given his record as prime minister on both those issues it is extremely difficult to see how Rudd could negotiate a credible path forward, were he to return as PM. The problems Gillard has on these two issues are problems which began under Rudd.
On climate change, we very nearly had an emissions trading scheme to deal with what Rudd was calling the greatest moral challenge of our time. After its failure in the Parliament the ETS was summarily and indefinitely shelved in an act of political cowardice which in policy terms did more than anything to seal Rudd’s fate.
On border protection, Rudd was also seriously guilty of inconsistency, running on a campaign of greater compassion at the 2007 election only to toughen his stand dramatically at the start of last year when he unilaterally froze new asylum applications from Sri Lankans and Afghanis. The lurching from left to right on this issue over the past 18 months has fed into base level support for the Greens and the Coalition. It is hard to see what tack Rudd could take on his return to end the vacillation which started on his watch as PM.
On paper then the return to Rudd is the most sensible option and possibly the least workable, even though the party is currently not just staring down the abyss, but in it.
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