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Julia Gillard will need to do more to win over the MPs who have deserted her than the offer of a sizzled sausage and a weekend whiteboard session. The love may have come too late.

With Parliament due to resume in less than two weeks, the fragility of the PM’s leadership will be the issue she most has to deal with. And for her, there can be no moving forward from the horrors of last year, until she gets the monkey off her back.

For that reason, Labor MPs are left with little doubt that the so called special caucus “planning day” scheduled for the Sunday before Parliament resumes, is all about Kevin Rudd.

Continue reading "Butchers papering over the cracks in Caucus" »

Much has been made this week of the leaked excerpts from the ALP’s election post mortem by Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and John Faulkner.

The excerpts leaked were highly critical of Kevin Rudd but the authors now say that there is even more material that has not been released that paints a very different picture.

Now, in yet another extraordinary exclusive, an explosive second extract has been leaked to the Joe Hildebrand column. Of course some people say these excerpts have also been selectively edited but I see no evidence of that…

Continue reading "Leaked report reveals leaked reports cause leaks" »

“She gave us nothing really, no inspiration and no feeling for the party’s mood. She calls Abbott ‘Dr No’ but it’s Julia who’s going to be known for saying no, and sometimes for things she later praises like emissions trading and probably gay marriage.”

This damning critique came not from an Opposition MP or conservative commentator, but a moderate member of the ALP’s Left.

It speaks to a growing frustration that was all too evident in Sydney last weekend when the PM had to be rescued from the membership following the embarrassing “we are us” opening address to National Conference.

Continue reading "She robs Rudd of office, then rubs him from history" »

The ALP national conference is coming up and this time it might actually be interesting rather than an event more scripted than an inflight safety announcement.

By this time next week the Labor Party will know whether it has reinforced its claim to stand for something or simply invited internal voices of dissent to an unseemly shouting match.

Further, Julia Gillard will know whether the party gave her the authority she needed or was marking her down because of the manner of her elevation.

Continue reading "ALP conference: This party’s no cause for celebration" »

There has been much bipartisan rejoicing, about the Greens inability to win seats in their latte-belt stomping ground. The glee on the Right is understandable, but the champagne-popping among Labor supporters may prove to be shortsighted.

As is frequently observed, the ALP finds itself in the seemingly untenable position of trying to simultaneously appeal to those who — to channel the increasingly Sarah Palinesque Julia Gillard — set their alarms early and lead purposeful, dignified lives driven by love of family and nation.

And those who sleep in until 11am, fire up the breakfast bong, then amble down to a café wallpapered with Bill Henson prints of spread-eagled 13-year-olds to fill in an application for yet another round of arts funding while their same-sex partner amuses the nose-ring-sporting barista with acid-tongued denunciations of the ANZAC spirit/the music of Barnesy/hard-yakka-loving brickies and their heroic working families/baby Jesus/Don Bradman.

Continue reading "Is it time the latte-sippers left the bogans’ party?" »

On Saturday NSW Labor suffered the heaviest defeat in our 120-year history.

Losing an election after 16 years in office is part of the natural cycle of politics. Receiving our lowest vote since 1904, and winning our lowest number of seats since 1898, is anything but cyclical.

The voters expressed their fury at the way Labor has run this state for at least the last four years. One in three voters who expressly identify themselves as Labor did not vote Labor on Saturday.

Continue reading "We must have the courage to change" »

The series of natural disasters that have caused so much damage in Queensland are creating new medium and longer term challenges for the Australian economy. 

However the Gillard Labor Government is unable to take the necessary action needed to stop the inflationary and multiplier effect its re-regulation of the labour market is bound to cause.

Unfortunately for all of us the Government can’t and won’t say no to its trade union masters.

Continue reading "Gillard continues to recognise faceless men" »

Education, especially school funding, is not only a barbecue stopper; it is also a vote changer.

Just ask Mark Latham about the impact of the hit list of so-called privileged schools he championed when he was leader of the ALP.

No wonder that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, on taking over as leaders, rejected the politics of envy and argued in favour of school choice.

Continue reading "Hey Julia, you built the halls, now fix the schools" »

The heartbreaking boat crash off Christmas Island is the tragic climax of the confused and contradictory approach to asylum seekers that is now strangling the Labor Party. This confusion was perfectly crystalised in a small item buried in the Federal Budget in May this year.

In an obvious attempt to throw a blanket on the issue, the Rudd Government had just announced a freeze on processing Afghani asylum claims, signalling it expected to shortly reclassify the war-torn Middle-East country as safe to return to.

Yet before any final decision had been made the Government quietly inserted $5.8 million to pay for two immigration officers to go to Kabul to repatriate deported asylum seekers.

Continue reading "How Labor wedged itself into a bad policy on boat people" »

The Gillard Government’s love nest with a fragmented bunch of Greens and independents has been barely consummated before it faces its first big lovers’ row.

The dispute over the recognition of gay marriage is not an easy issue to handle for a Government trying to project unity and conciliation.

Contrary to the post-election happy snaps of MPs giving each other group hugs, vowing to show a spirit of respect and solidarity, there’s nothing unifying about gay marriage.

Continue reading "Online nation divided over gay marriage" »

There is a certain weathered look to the Greens today. The deep rich hue that has characterised that lovely new t-shirt in recent months has been slightly dulled by political reality.

The decision by the Victorian Liberals to preference the Labor party ahead of the Greens in the upcoming state election is a kick in the guts to the minor party’s chances of, not only holding the balance of power in the new parliament, but getting any seats at all in the lower house.

It’s important decision not only in the context of the Victorian election but the emerging story of the Greens as a real third force in Australian politics.

Continue reading "Liberals’ decision will change the new Green paradigm" »

Sitting around in a café the other day, one of my former colleagues bemoaned the fact that young people where not as active as him when he was studying. He raised his frustration that each generation is getting more politically lethargic and ranted about the generational changes we are seeing.

Apart from reminding him that ‘his generation’ had not done such a bang up job in solving the world’s problems, and actually delivering some new ones, the whole area of ‘generational research’ is one that is deeply flawed. That is, to clearly define a population’s attributes based on their ‘generational status’ tends to homogenise a population by their age – despite there always being significant differences within each cluster.

Despite this, we see books and papers about Boomers, X-ers and Y’s – all presented as if this is the missing ingredient in understanding the way of the world and what is going on with our society. So is this the case?

Continue reading "Looking to generational divides tell us nothing" »

The relationship between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard was bound to be a fragile one. But it now looks like the Prime Minister has grounded her Foreign Minister, potentially damaging our international relations.

Kevin Rudd should have been in Brussels this past week with Julia Gillard.

The Prime Minister was in town for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), a gathering of forty leaders from the two continents which Rudd lobbied hard to have Australia become a member of as Prime Minister. The leaders (or their deputies) of major and middle powers like China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea attended with their Foreign Ministers. But Rudd was nowhere to be seen.

Continue reading "Why wasn’t Rudd in Brussels with the PM?" »

NSW has today lost yet another former minister - but this time he didn’t get caught with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar.

Phil Koperberg, the former NSW rural fire commissioner who was drafted into the ALP at the last state election, said he just can’t take the factional infighting anymore and was surprised how hard it was to get anything done in government.

“I might be naive but I’m not stupid,” Koperberg said, as he announced he wouldn’t contest the next poll in March 2011.

Continue reading "Is Phil Koperberg right about the nature of politics?" »

In an attempt to claim respectability and to convince voters that they are no longer a haven for aged hippies, eco-terrorists, pot smokers and socialists the Greens are keen to present themselves as politically mainstream and moderate.

Candidates are groomed and well dressed, Bob Brown plays the role of the elder statesman above the sordid business of doing preference deals with the ALP and politically risky polices related to gay marriage, legalising drugs and abortion on demand are downplayed in favour of saving whales, preserving old growth forests and ending junk food ads.

Continue reading "Backward and destructive, Greens policy discriminates" »

Leadership destabilisation has a habit of becoming self-fulfilling. The more people in a party diss the boss the lower he drops in the polls.

The lower he drops in the polls the more people in his party diss him. Rudd seems to be in a death spiral this long weekend. Crusty old party elders such as Graham Richardson and Keith De Lacy are joining the pack of baying wolves.

Rudd’s about as popular as Tim Cahill in his camp this morning.

But as Matthew Franklin and Samantha Maiden quote a Labor source in this morning’s Australian: “Nothing will happen unless Julia acts. And there is no sign she will. She is being a very loyal deputy.”

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: The woman holding the Ace" »

You can understand why Kevin Rudd wanted to take out a virtual restraining order against the NSW Labor Government.

But despite his long-standing and open contempt for the NSW ALP, it has now emerged that Kevin Rudd was still prepared to insert himself in the biggest and most important policy battle in the party’s recent history – and then squib it when he was most required.

Rudd’s ambivalence towards this motley government is easy to comprehend. “Young Labor twenty years on” is how one party figure from NSW characterises the drift into personality politics, petty bickering and abuse, aberrant conduct and, most of all, policy paralysis which has marred the past few years of Labor rule in NSW.

Continue reading "NSW was the loser in Rudd’s betrayal of Morris Iemma" »

It was a pretty cruel act: killing the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine. Take away your own personal political views and the history of the tree itself, but the wanton vandalism of applying poison to a living thing to make a point, is mindless and cruel. Poisoning anything – tree, dog, rat, possum – is cruel and heartless.

Maybe someone wanted to have a secret the rest of the world didn’t have.

Maybe it was someone who’d been groomed and trained to look at Labor election posters as flags of war – things to pull down, throw eggs at, gesticulate at or draw fangs and horns on. Maybe the person who killed the tree was a natural enemy of Labor - the child of a small business owner or a farmer.

Continue reading "The labour movement’s about as healthy as its tree" »

The first thing the ALP needs to do now Belinda Neal has lost her pre-selection for the seat of Robertson is tell Kevin Rudd that the new candidate likes to be known as Deb O’Neill, not Debbie as he called her yesterday.

The second thing is they need to stick a big picture of Neal on the wall of the state secretary’s office as a reminder that the members of the party are much better at choosing candidates than they are.

It sounds pretty simple, but it’s a lesson that’s been long in the making, and one the Labor heavies in NSW are yet to fully grasp. And it’s not just important for voters and party members, as contrary to what you’d expect, being imposed on one’s constituency is no tea party for a candidate either.

Continue reading "Deb dumps Belinda and sends a signal to the machine" »

The truism goes a politician should wear out a couple of pairs of shoes in the lead up to an election, but for the Labor Member for Robertson Belinda Neal, her best strategy for a last-ditch bid at career salvation would be to stay indoors and put her feet up.

You see Neal has a way of alienating people that’s unique for a back bencher in the Federal Parliament, especially one who took her seat by just 184 votes at the last election.

And now the ALP has a big decision to make. Turf out a sitting member married to one of the most powerful men in the NSW division, or stay with a candidate so deeply unpopular senior party figures think she’ll be annihilated come Federal Election time. It’s more complicated than it sounds.

Continue reading "Belinda Neal: a one-woman political phenomenon" »

Local candidates are the political equivalent of sausages – we might accept they are part of the democratic process, but we don’t really want to know what goes into making them.

And like sausages, local candidates come in all shapes and forms, from the top-shelf gourmet that you would be happy to eat at a Hat restaurant to a sad sack of something that reeks of fat and sawdust.

But in an era of presidential politics, do local candidates really matter? To stretch the sausage metaphor to breaking point, it really depends on what they’re made of, how they’re cooked and what else they are served with.

Continue reading "With local candidates, there’s always a snag" »

WHEN calls came in the lead-up to Australia Day to remove the British ensign from our flag, the idea was slapped down. Australians had fought and competed under this one, the Government said in an argument more often deployed by monarchists.

When the idea of putting the republic back on the agenda came up, this time from Attorney General Robert McClelland no less, it too got short shrift from the leadership when asked publicly. Perhaps this is unsurprising from the socially conservative Rudd Government. But the agent of both of these off the cuff rejections, was not Kevin Rudd, but rather, his deputy, the left-aligned, Julia Gillard.

There is a growing body of evidence that ``Red Julia’’ as some on the Right have derided her, has been busily repositioning herself to be in contention for the Labor leadership should Kevin Rudd’s star fade. I’ll come back to that shortly.

Continue reading "Red head to blue rinse, Gillard’s evolution" »

Bob Hawke - like most public figures - always likes to get his picture in the paper.

But there was one time when I beat him at his own game.

It was the annual cricket match between the ACTU XI and the Press XI in Port Melbourne in the mid-70s.

Continue reading "Yes I love Bob Hawke and long may he reign" »

The introduction of the CPRS Bill or the ETS, whichever you choose to call it, is a mechanism where the Government will collect in excess of $70 billion tax revenue in the first six years and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars thereafter.

The commission earned by bankers and brokers will amount to multiple billions of dollars and the financial imperative for them to support the scheme is overwhelming.

This new tax will not save the Great Barrier Reef; it is not going to end the droughts; it will neither contribute to Greenland freezing nor thawing.

Continue reading "Why I am still voting no to this ridiculous CPRS" »

UPDATE: Nathan Rees has sacked Joe Tripodi and Ian Macdonald from Cabinet.

In political terms the equivalent of a nuclear bomb has just gone off in Sydney. It has immediate ramifications for some of the most hated figures in the deeply unpopular NSW Government.

But it has massive national long-term implications, as it will determine whether Labor leaders have the right to choose their own ministry, rather than have their frontbench foisted upon them by the factions.

In a gutsy gamble, NSW Premier Nathan Rees has gone for the doomsday scenario revealed on The Punch some weeks ago by taking on the factions and winning rank-and-file party approval to form his own Cabinet by dumping unpopular or treacherous ministers. And Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just strongly backed Rees in her speech to the NSW ALP, and Kevin Rudd has done so in a press conference at APEC.

Continue reading "Rees’ gutsy gamble rewrites the rules of Labor politics" »

Sitting in front of a blank computer screen is confronting, but strangely quite liberating.

There is a glimmer of anticipation, of unknown opportunity. There is a sense of freedom – now that is a strange coincidence. It is actually a sudden, unexpected challenge to my freedom that crowds my thoughts.

Who would have thought that in 2009, I would be sitting at my desk in the Australian Parliament, earnestly searching the internet for quotations about censorship?

Continue reading "Censoring our collective right to criticise the government" »

If you ever suspected that our major political parties got their leaders mixed up on the way to Question Time, this week’s Essential Report will come as no surprise.

In a sign of life catching up with the punch-line, half the nation now thinks that our political parties are becoming closer ­ and the majority of them think it’s no bad thing.

The convergence of our major parties has not happened overnight, the rise of centrist politics around the world has been a hallmark of the post-Cold War consensus. But in Australia it has reached its zenith, where the last two leaders of the Liberal Party both openly flirted with their political opponents.

Continue reading "Pepsi v Coke - How to tell Labor from Liberal" »

The present political consensus among the major parties against permitting and recognising same sex marriages is so obviously an intellectual surrender to the religious right that one looks for a single phrase rhetorical demolition of this anti-gay pretence of a position that would show it in all of its hypocrisy.

I do not, for a moment, believe that those politicians (including speakers at the recent Labor Party National Conference) who go on about protecting the “sanctity of marriage” believe the nonsense they espouse. I also fail to believe that they believe that a majority of the Australian people support the continued refusal to recognise single sex marriages.

I believe that the political imperative is to avoid the anger of that noisy minority, the religious right, which, itself, is hardly representative of most people of a religious persuasion in Australia. The political imperative also concerns the possible swing vote of the Family First in the Senate.

Continue reading "The ‘sanctity of marriage’ argument is nonsense" »

There’s been a lot of talk recently about so-called “green shoots” springing up in our ravaged economy.

Some commentators have grasped a recent bounce in the stock market, a few surprisingly strong profit results overseas, and a benign sense of business confidence as evidence that the economy is on the path to recovery.

Well, it is time for a reality check.

Continue reading "Why unions will remain the voice of workers in Labor" »

OK, so I know the drill is that we’re meant to dust off our LPs and find the angriest Midnight Oil lyric about uranium mining or nuclear war, present it as a damning tearsheet, and then use a photograph such as the one below - taken at the Sydney protests against French nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1995 - to declare that Environment Minister Peter Garrett is the mother of all hypocrites.

It was certainly the position Malcolm Turnbull took last night after Garrett signed off on the Four Mile Uranium Mine in South Australia. Turnbull might be our alternative, conservative prime minister but he sounded for all the world like some campus Trotskyist as he led the sell-out charge against the former Oils frontman.

“What this approval just shows today is that Mr Garrett is as big a phoney as the Prime Minister,” Turnbull said, happily side-stepping the fact that, in endorsing Australia’s fifth uranium mine, Garrett has done the exact thing the Liberal Party has been urging him to do.

Continue reading "Oils ain’t oils, but it’s the Liberals who are hypocrites" »

The biggest fib Kevin Rudd told today, after he’d lavished insincere praise upon Joel Fitzgibbon for his work as Defence Minister, was to declare the young Hunter Valley MP could return to the ministry at some stage.

As long as Kevin Rudd’s backside points to the ground, Joel Fitzgibbon has a better chance of becoming the next Pope than making a ministerial comeback.

And most people in the ALP will be pretty happy about that, as Fitzgibbon, for all his affable, knockabout charm, has long been regarded by many colleagues with suspicion and ambivalence on account of what was a long-standing and especially close friendship with disastrous former leader Mark Latham.

Continue reading "Latham’s little mate won’t return to frontbench" »