Labor Leadership

The joke when Peter Costello was trying in vain to cobble together a viable leadership push was that he had enough supporters to fill a Tarago van. Kevin Rudd probably has around the same level of support – Kev’s van might also be fitted with a trailer to carry a few extra bods up the back – but it in numerical terms it is far from being an unstoppable juggernaut which will steamroll Julia Gillard out of the top job.

It’s the numbers that matter in politics. In the absence of good numbers, aspiring leaders fall back on psychology. History suggests it offers no sure path to the leadership. Quite the opposite.

Peter Costello was a bit like the dorky guy at the school disco who hung around in the corner hoping a girl would ask him to dance.

Continue reading "Memo Kev: Pee or get off the pot" »

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" »

BY all accounts it was an extraordinary sight. Kevin Rudd was in flying form. As were his guests. Last Saturday night, while dining at Noosa’s trendy eatery, Bistro C, adoring patrons mobbed the foreign minister’s table.

They flattered and fawned over the local celebrity, who was born nearby in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. An obliging Rudd did his best to accommodate them, leaving his guests at the table to stand arm in arm for group shots with his fans. He was in his element.

But that wasn’t the most extraordinary of things. Few people noticed the other man sitting at the table with him. And why would they. The former Attorney General Robert McClelland, dumped only last month in Julia Gillard’s frontbench reshuffle, is hardly a household name in Queensland or a face that many would necessarily recognise. But there he was, the political cuckold, dining with Rudd and several members of their families, as if they were long time friends.

Continue reading "PM beware former foes dining in fancy restaurants" »

By her own definition, Julia Gillard is the leader of a government which has lost its way. This was the rationale she famously used to justify the removal of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister last year. Sixteen months on and Julia Gillard yesterday found herself in the invidious position of having to convene a meeting of the Federal Cabinet where she looked each of her ministers in the eye and declared she would not tolerate any more leaks from within their ranks.

There can be no greater demonstration of government dysfunction than a breach of Cabinet solidarity as seen last week over border protection. The ability to debate policy vigorously in secret is central to the effective running of government. Julia Gillard has lost this privilege. It is something which never happened to her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, albeit possibly because he was such a control freak that he never told his colleagues what he was up to anyway.

Gillard is also in more strife than Rudd ever was on border protection. Rudd might have flip-flopped on asylum seekers but Gillard has performed a 12-month tumbling routine with the result being that hardly anybody supports or, worse, understands her policy.

Continue reading "Government that lost its way, Opposition that cannot lose" »

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.

Continue reading "Rudd’s return a brilliant idea, possibly doomed to fail" »

There is a certain evil logic behind Tony Abbott’s offer to work side-by-side with Julia Gillard to fix the asylum seeker issue. Due to the vagaries of minority government plenty of other members of this shambolic parliament have had a go at playing prime minister, so it’s only fair that Abbott joins the Windsors and the Bandts, the Oakeshotts and the Wilkies, in determining government policy.

Abbott’s offer to work with Gillard is excellent politics in its cheapest form. By extending an invitation to Gillard to support the amendment of the Migration Act to allow offshore processing, Abbott looks like the very model of civilised bipartisanship. In reality it’s a political ploy aimed at drawing even greater attention to the fact that the Gillard Government has failed, again, on border protection.

None of the options Julia Gillard has at her disposal to resolve the asylum seeker problem are politically palatable. Nor are they politically sellable, not in a climate where, according to Newspoll, just 12 per cent of Australians say that Labor is doing a good job on border protection, and are twice as likely to support the Coalition as the party which could best deal with the issue.

Continue reading "If Julia buys bipartisan Tony she’ll buy anything" »

There are two ways to deal with dumped political leaders. They can either be accommodated or destroyed. The fatal mistake the Labor Party made when it knifed Kevin Rudd last year was that it tried to do both.

Since Rudd’s removal the party’s public position is that there is a valuable role for Kevin to play at senior levels of government, that he is a team player, an asset in foreign affairs, someone who adds depth to the Cabinet and continues to enjoy deserved popularity with the voters.

The party’s private position is that Rudd is a high-maintenance sook, was a bully and a control freak as leader, that he is now using foreign affairs to gallivant about big-noting himself, that he is running Julia Gillard down to whoever will listen, and that it would have been best for everyone if he’d bowed out gracefully ahead of last year’s federal election.

Continue reading "Forlorn hope that a smited Kevin would go quietly" »

This time last year Labor’s factional bosses were loading the bullets into the chamber so that Julia Gillard could pull the trigger on Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. No-one saw it coming - even on the night of the coup the most senior members of the government were dismissing the reports as a beat-up – and few predicted the chaos which would ensue.

Caucus was so quick to fall into line that Kevin Rudd ducked a leadership ballot after confidantes advised he would receive a humiliating handful of votes. The party believed that Julia was its saviour and two months later it failed to win a majority, with Ms Gillard having taken the government from its unassailable 2007 landslide position to a shambolic day-to-day operation, reliant on the vagaries of rural independents and inner-city Greens.

The polls now all point to a comfortable Coalition win at the next election.

Continue reading "Nothing to celebrate on Julia’s 1st birthday as PM" »

There was much laughter and teasing from the Labor side about the decision of the Queensland Liberal National Party to install a leader who wasn’t even in the Parliament. Federal Labor has its own leader in exile, except he’s inside the Caucus.

His name is Kevin, he’s from Queensland, and he’s here to do anything other than help Julia Gillard as she grapples with the horrors of minority government and seeks a difficult second term.

Julia Gillard has her work cut out for her. She’s up against not one but two alternative prime ministers, Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd. Tony Abbott is currently unassailable. Kevin Rudd is simply uncontrollable.

Continue reading "There’s nothing Julia can do about Kevin" »

One of the more unusual comments of this election campaign was made by Julia Gillard on The 7.30 Report this week when the Prime Minister batted away questions about the personal repercussions of defeat on Saturday.

“Oh, this isn’t about me Kerry,” Gillard said. It was a funny remark, and an engagingly selfless one, as it’s hard to envisage anything more personal than serving yourself up to the judgment of the nation in a general election.

Most people who enter politics do not exit politics on their own terms. You can only begin to imagine what the sense of rejection must be like for past leaders, or even no-name backbenchers who have to grapple with the fact that the loss of their seat is effectively a signal from the community that they just don’t like them enough to make them their representative.

Continue reading "If it’s not about you PM, who is it about?" »

When Julia Gillard successfully challenged Kevin Rudd for the Labor leadership, she brought the noble profession of politics in this country into disrepute. Prior to Gillard’s ascension to the office of PM, politics was a gentlemanly undertaking carried out with a spirit of fair-play. On 24 June 2010, the Gillard coup against Kevin ‘The People’s Prime Minister’ Rudd destroyed this tradition, and sullied the good name of the office of PM. 

That, at any rate, has been a core theme running throughout this election campaign.

In his closing remarks at the leaders debate, for example, Abbott claimed that ‘decisions will be made by Cabinet, not powerbrokers’, implying that Gillard was somehow beholden to shadowy background figures and that he himself is just a free agent. Similarly, Abbott has tried to run the line that the sight of Kevin Rudd on the campaign trail will remind voters of Labor’s ‘political thuggery’.

Continue reading "Fresh from his brutal coup, Abbott bemoans brutal Labor" »

Paul Keating reckoned you got a certain legitimacy by ``taking’’ the leadership from your opponent in an open contest rather than through having it handed to you.

Certainly in his case, voters had plenty of time to get used to the change when he finally knocked off Bob Hawke after a long-running and acrimonious campaign of destabilisation.

The high profile Treasurer had even carried himself off to the backbench for a spell before launching a successful second challenge. Traumatic as it was, the evisceration of Bob Hawke’s leadership was a bloody and drawn out affair but it was comparatively transparent.

Continue reading "Julia’s leadership struggles for legitimacy" »

Kevin Rudd last night gave his his first real interview since being knifed as Prime Minister while still recovering from the knife of the surgeon. Both wounds are evidently still very painful. 

A very frail sounding Rudd spoke to a very sympathetic Phillip Adams and confirmed that he would campaign for Julia Gillard and attend the Labor Party launch, but on a couple of conditions:

I will be there but on the condition that I don’t have a major relapse before then and secondly, that I’m not a distraction from what I think is a pretty serious debate about what sort of future we want for our country and I don’t think it’s a debate which we can allow - with only two and half weeks to go before D Day, that we can’t allow to be trivialised.

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: What the hell to do about Kevin?" »

Here’s what I would’ve done if I were Kevin Rudd’s daughter, Jessica, and I was watching my dad’s anguished final press conference as PM on June 24.

I would’ve broken ranks and yelled, “He f—-ing got asked to step down all of you f—-ing idiots. I’m Rudd’s f—-ing daughter and he did not f—-ing resign. Gillard is a selfish piece of shift [sic], who cares about herself and not the f—-ing Labor Party. Have fun with the country, I hope to never vote for this god foresaken party every again [sic]. F—- all of you.”

Oh no, wait, that’s what I would’ve yelled if I were Sarah Henderson, daughter of Fritz Henderson, the former CEO of General Motors. Which, of course, is precisely what she did yell (with the obvious noun substitutions), on the GM Facebook page just days after her father was f—-ing asked to step down and replaced by one of the company’s board members late last year. 

Continue reading "‘I want to sledge them’: Jess Rudd on her Dad’s demise" »

Kevin Rudd might be flat out carrying on like one of those sacked Japs who keeps showing up for work - UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon had a meeting in New York yesterday with Mr Rudd in his capacity as, erm, a backbencher. But there’s now a strong view in Labor circles after Laurie Oakes’ bombshell question to Julia Gillard at the Press Club yesterday that the former PM has in fact been a very busy little bee.

Leo Shanahan has had a close look below at Oakes’ question in a piece he filed straight after Gillard’s Press Club ambush yesterday, and the 170+ readers comments are illuminating as many people clearly believe the new PM should reveal to the public exactly what transpired with the alleged leadership deal.

The most worrying result for Ms Gillard, who may be just one day away from calling an election, is that if Mr Rudd is the source of the leak to Laurie Oakes, it signals that the former PM is now well and truly off the leash and may continue to dump on his successor and her factional boosters in the lead-up to polling day. 

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: Is it payback time for Kevin?" »

Today’s National Press Club appearance by Prime Minister Julia Gillard was a pretty banal address - a lot more going forwards etc - with one exception: a question by Channel Nine’s Laurie Oakes.

Oakes put it to an uncomfortable looking Gillard that on the night of the leadership challenge there was actually a deal done with Rudd on a leadership handover - one that she reneged on that same night.

“Can I ask you is it true that Mr Rudd told you that night that he was working towards an October election,’’ Mr Oakes asked.

“Is it true that Mr Rudd indicated to you that if closer to the election polling showed that he as an impediment to the re-election of the government and that if that leading Labor figures ... agreed he would voluntarily stand aside.’’

Continue reading "Can Gillard stay mute on the night she rolled Rudd?" »

One of the strange laws of journalism is that on the rare occasion you take an extended holiday or head off on a plum job overseas, all hell breaks loose and you end up missing one of the biggest stories of your lifetime. One journalist colleague operates as a kind of reverse disaster indicator, having timed his past holidays to miss both September 11 and the Bali bombings, and also the deaths of Princess Diana and Steve Irwin.

And so it was that in the middle of the unprecedented 18 hours of bloodletting which saw Kevin Rudd knifed in a Caucus revolt which installed Julia Gillard as prime minister, I was somewhere near Kruger National Park in Nelspruit, South Africa, draped with FIFA passes and getting ready to watch the valiant but doomed Socceroos take on Serbia in the final game of our 2010 World Cup campaign.

It was an odd sensation sitting in the Mbombela Stadium and following the demise of our former PM via texts, tweets and websites half a world away, weirder still returning to the hotel at 2am to learn that Sky UK was on the hotel’s TV system and had gone live to Canberra for Kevin Rudd’s excruciating final press conference as Prime Minister.

Continue reading "Leaders who lose it - the high price of preciousness" »

The passing of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership has caught many publishers off-guard and this website is among them. Last month we launched a subscriber competition offering entrants the chance to win a $1000 Tiger Airways voucher for the best description of Kevin Rudd in five words or less. In the middle of the competition we sort of lost the prime minister.

We are not alone in this predicament. Both Annabel Crabb and David Marr have just released books about that guy who used to be PM – you know, what’s his name – and satirist Jonathan Biggins is putting the finishing touches to a book about the Ruddster due out in September.

The interesting thing about our competition is that in the initial weeks the entrants reflected many of the gripes and grievances which cost Rudd his job, and as it came to a close last week, and with Julia Gillard securely installed as PM, it turned into a derisory reflection on the Rudd era.

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: Kevin Rudd in five words or less" »

Just in case you haven’t realised, Australia has a new prime minister. Very few of us were prepared for this (least of all that bloke called Kevin who’s currently squatting in The Lodge), and it happened so suddenly, Australia still doesn’t know quite what to make of it.

To put it bluntly, by being female, Welsh, and a redhead (or a ranga, if you prefer), Julia Gillard has left us spoilt for choice. So which direction do people take in categorising her?

At this point, many people would venture into Facebook groups or Twitter, but all you’re going to find out is what a few random, vocal people are posting. Like a secret recording device, the true voice of the people is held by Google.

Continue reading "Searching the web for the real Julia Gillard" »

The last letter Kevin Rudd signed as Prime Minister the night before he was rolled by Julia Gillard was a plea for compassion from the Australian people.

At just after 6 pm on Wednesday night a delegation representing a new Charter of Compassion, set to be presented in Parliament on Thursday, was led down to the Prime Minister’s office.

The group was to have Kevin Rudd sign a letter supporting the charter, an initiative of ethical foundation Ted.com, which was set to be read out at the next day’s launch.

Continue reading "Rudd’s last act: a plea for compassion" »

The Australian public’s reaction to last week’s execution of their Prime Minister came in two courses. The first: “Don’t break the eggs!”  The second: “Nice omelette!”

By chance, I was observing focus groups on the night Rudd was rolled and the general feeling was one of surprise, anger, even outage, “it’s our job to throw out a leader, not their’s”, a sense that something fundamentally undemocratic was occurring. 

But more remarkable than this emotional reaction, was the fact that it was so fleeting, having vented people who ready to move on and embrace our first female Prime Minister.

Continue reading "Leadership change should spark primary rethink" »

The comparisons are obvious. Julia Gillard has been installed by factional powerbrokers as leader of a Labor government in a certain amount of trouble.

She’s yet to be tested by the electorate, oh, and she was born overseas. But while Kristina Keneally’s ascension to the top of the NSW ALP was met (by me included, right here on The Punch) with a cynical roll of the eyes, Australia’s first female Prime Minister is a different story.

Gillard didn’t have to front the media yesterday declaring “I’m nobody’s puppet, I’m nobody’s girl.” And that’s because, unlike Keneally, she’s not.

Continue reading "Why Julia Gillard is no Kristina Keneally" »

There would be greater reason to celebrate our first female Prime Minister, were it not for Labor factional warlords using a woman as a last resort.

With the streamers still settling in Labor ranks and Emilys List members around the country popping champagne corks at the anointment (not election) of our first female PM, it’s worth reflecting on a few other “historic firsts”.

What about the “first” female State Premiers?  Think Carmen Lawrence in WA, Joan Kirner in Victoria, Kristina Keneally in NSW and Anna Bligh in Qld.  All were installed, not elected, all were handed a poisoned chalice, all were used as a last resort, all were part of and inherited dysfunctional, rotten-at-the-core Labor Governments.

Continue reading "Historic first, or just a re-run of history" »

With the election only months away, will Julia Gillard’s elevation into leadership be enough to consolidate Labor’s electoral support and help them secure a second term?

Speaking to voters in Sydney today just over an hour after Gillard was elected Labor leader unopposed in Canberra, almost everyone knew about it and had a view on her impact on the national political landscape, though many reserved judgment on how it would affect their vote.

But broadly the people The Punch spoke to saw Gillard’s leadership a change to be excited about, and a great step forward for Australia in terms of gender equality.

Continue reading "Gillard as leader: will she make voters look twice?" »

Julia Gillard has always been one of the best Question Time performers of this parliament. Join us here from 2pm to see if being Prime Minister has added to her despatch box skills.

Forgive the analogy but this is the first time I’ve covered an Australian leadership spill from South Africa while holding a vuvuzela. But if Julia Gillard succeeds in her 11th-hour leadership coup it wll be the most inspired last-minute substitution since Timmy Cahill came on in Kaiserslauten against Japan in the 2006 World Cup. Let’s watch those two goals again. Ahhhh.

There’s a consensus in politics that last-minute leadership changes reek of desperation. But this one confirms the cold reality that Labor probably cannot win under Kevin Rudd. It’s likely that the party has research which is deeper and richer than any of the published polls showing the situation is even bleaker than that - that Labor definitely cannot win under Kevin Rudd. This would explain the speed with which so many members of Caucus in key factions such as the NSW Right and Victorian Right have swung behind Gillard to form what looks like a mortal anti-Rudd bloc.

The two areas of greatest weakness for Kevin Rudd are the Julia Gillard’s two greatest strengths. They are communication and policy implementation - kind of crucial in politics, needless to say.

Continue reading "Arise Julia Gillard, the Tim Cahill of politics" »

Today Kevin Rudd is set to fight for his political life, and the chances are he will lose.

How did this happen? How does a man who was the most popular Prime Minister since Bob Hawke just eight months ago, now face the humiliation of being deposed by his colleagues before the end of his first term?

Last night’s factional execution gives as much of an insight into how Kevin Rudd rose to power as it does this political disaster he now finds himself in. The problem was this: he was never really an Australian Labor Party leader in the true sense of the word.

Continue reading "Rudd’s last stand" »

1.55pm: Well, thank you so much for joining us on this live blog over the past 18 extraordinary hours. The Punch will now resume our usual daily coverage of House of Representatives Question Time here. Please join us to see how our first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, performs in the hot seat.

1.50pm: Greens leader Bob Brown has just described Julia Gillard as “such a high quality woman.”

1.14pm: Tony Abbott is holding a short press conference.

The Labor Party have dumped their leader but they haven’t changed their policies. They’ve changed the salesman, but they haven’t changed the product. Julia Gillard made it clear that she is committed to the same policies, the dud policies, Rudd was committed to.

1.10pm: BHP has just announced it will pull it’s RSPT attack ads, as requested by the new Prime Minister.

12.58pm: Julia Gillard is about to be sworn in at Government House in Yarralumla. Our first female PM sworn in by our first female GG.

12.38pm: And the press conference is over with a round of applause. Her performance was confident, clear and no-doubt reassuring for some members of the ALP.

12.35pm: Gillard has indicated she has to leave soon so she’s not “diabolically late” to see the Governor-General and be sworn in.

12.31pm: Gillard said she would stay in her own home instead of the Lodge until when and if she wins a general election.

12.30pm: Am glad to see the Prime Minister-elect pulled herself together very quickly after a slightly shaky start. She’s speaking clearly, with authority - Tors.

12.26pm:

Hard work matters, but for families like mine, quality government services matter, and for families like mine being treated properly in your work place matters.

12.24pm: On being the first female PM:

I didn’t set out to crack my head on any glass ceilings.

12.23pm:

This isn’t my first day in the parliamentary building, I’ve been here since 1998, and I would defy anyone to analyse my parliamentary career and find that I have done anything but made up my own mind.

12.22pm:

I believe my track record as a member of parliament bears this out ... I believe in consultation, I believe in getting the best.

12.20pm: On where how the Rudd Government had lost its way:

I believe that we have on a set of issues… not delivered the kind of stability the Australian people expect.

12.16pm: On Rudd’s future role in the Government:

Today is obviously a difficult day for Kevin, for his family.. there are plenty of time for those discussions.

12.15pm: Gillard says the election will be “in the coming months”, but in the meantime she’s asking for the Australian people for their “consideration and support.”

12.14pm: Swan says of Rudd that it’s a tough day for the former Prime Minister “but he’s worked very hard.”

12.12pm: Wayne Swan has described Julia Gillard as a “first class deputy Prime Minister, she will be a first class Prime Minister.”

12.10pm:

We should not be afraid of the future. There are some days I delight you, on some days I will disappoint you.

12.08pm:

Ultimately Kevin Rudd and I disagreed about the direction of the Government. I believed we need to do better.

12.07pm: On the mining tax Gillard said:

To reach a consensus we need to more than consult, we need to negotiate.

She also said the Government RSPT advertising campaign will be cancelled, and has called on the mining industry to do the same.

12.06pm: Gillard says she believes in man-made climate change, and thinks we need a price on carbon.

12.04pm: She’s given credit to Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and Peter Costello for putting the economy in the position to survive the GFC, “and particularly to Kevin Rudd” for guiding us through it.

12.02pm: “Hardwork and teamwork” have been Gillard’s “compass” during her tenure as Deputy Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd’s deputy.

I love this country and I was not going to sit idly by and watch an incoming opposition cut health, cut education and slash worker’s rights.

I take my fair share of responsibility for the Rudd Government’s record.

I also acknowledge that I have not been elected by the Australian people.

12pm: Julia Gillard’s press conference has started with the words she is honoured to lead the country she loves. She too is emotional, with a shaking voice and damp eyes.

Continue reading "As it happened: Julia Gillard becomes our first female PM" »

This is the week when another round of disastrous opinion polls was meant to spark a mass uprising within the Labor Caucus, as members convinced they were facing one-term oblivion hitched their wagon to Julia Gillard.

Everything was in place, a bunch of unsourced comment pieces predicting a move on the PM, an early Newspoll published in Monday’s Australian. And then? Well apart from a slight narrowing in preferred PM, no real movement in the polls.

Entering the spirit of leadership speculation, Essential Research asked our own series of leadership questions. What emerges is a completely different story – the failure of Tony Abbott to convince voters he is the man to lead the Coalition to the election. Now before you all start flaming me (again) for being a Left-ist agent of the evil ALP, let’s have a look at the questions we asked.

Continue reading "The real leadership story: Abbott remains unelectable" »

Inspired by season two of Masterchef, the Canberra press gallery is feverishly cooking up a storm over an apparent leadership challenge to Kevin Rudd. But while too many cooks appear to be spoiling the journalistic broth in our Nation’s Capital, there are 5 good reasons why Rudd will lead the ALP to the next Federal election.

It’s too close to the election

Any political strategist will tell you that it does not make political sense to change leaders so close to an election. Changing leaders this close makes the race a more even playing field, something that the government wants to avoid. The contest becomes about two new leaders trying to win familiarity with the electorate (Gillard and Abbott), rather than a contest between a known quantity (Rudd) and one that is recognised but risky (Abbott).

The major advantage of an incumbent is that voters are more comfortable with the devil they know. While Tony Abbott is well known in the electorate, he is untested as a political leader.  Rudd is a known quantity as a leader and the Australian electorate, while annoyed with him, are likely to stick with the devil they know.

Continue reading "Five reasons Rudd will lead Labor to the next election" »

POLITICAL dropout Peter Costello is unlikely to have spent even a minute watching A-Pac’s live feed of this mundane ALP national conference. There’s every chance the footy-mad ex-treasurer is mooching around the house in his black and red tracky dacks watching Essendon tapes, his mind focussed on tomorrow’s do-or-die clash with West Coast as the Bombers try to keep their spot in the eight.

Had he tuned into proceedings from Darling Harbour, John Howard’s perpetual political bridesmaid would probably have had a bit of a knowing grin at watching Julia Gillard make her own transformation to the position he held for so long - warm-up act to a bloke who has no real intention of ever leaving the prime ministership.

Costello has spoken about the sense of tedium and frustration which accompanied his bib-and-bub act with John Howard at the annual Liberal Party conventions.

Continue reading "Julia is looking more and more like a future leader" »