Thursday, February 23, 2012

The Battle for Labour



Kevin Rudd had my support in 2007.  Not that K-Rudd or Kevin 07, however you want to remember him, struck me as an appealing character, more that I thought one J. Howard had overstayed his welcome as Prime Minister.  Rudd campaigned well and won a huge victory for Labour.
Whether it was the size of the victory or just his unbelievable self-confidence, but on that very night, K-Rudd made his first autocratic decision and it was about being autocratic. He announced at his acceptance speech to the campaign team that he and he alone would decide who the ministers in his cabinet would be.  Remember that the Labour Caucus (the parliamentary members) selected the ministers. 
Perhaps the time had come for the leader to choose his own cabinet; it makes sense. Yet I’m pretty sure that a few jaws dropped when he made that speech. It was a sure sign of a fairly autocratic approach to leadership. It seems, in retrospect, that that was a fairly good indication of the style of leadership he was to employ as Prime Minister.
There is no doubt that K-Rudd is an intelligent man and yet if you accept the “in” theory of multiple intelligences, he seems to lack in social intelligence. It is difficult to believe that he was very popular at school. He is in fact your classic nerd. Is that a reason to discount him as PM? Well that is something I wish to explore in this article.
Rudd had popular support and came in with a challenging program of reforms and projects. By 2010 his popularity was waning and the truth is that he had not achieved very much. I distinctly remember at the time that I, as an outside observer, could not understand why with such a comfortable lead in the polls, K-Rudd was constantly apologising for not achieving.  The fact was, that he had achieved very little in 3 years of government. In his defence he had a minority in the senate, which made things difficult.
The “overthrow” of K-Rudd was a quick coup that took the nation by surprise. There were no real signs of it coming, which means to the credit of the coup leaders, there were no hints of disloyalty in the public arena and no leaking to the press.
At that particular point of time, I felt great sympathy for Kevin, despite the fact that I actually believed it was a good move. I thought it was a good move for several reasons. The Rudd government was not managing to get much of its political agenda through the parliament, and it started to look unsure of itself. I believe had the coup not come when it did, The Rudd government would have imploded or at the very least, fallen at the next election.
Now some people think Julia Gillard is a “Bogan” a derogatory term for working class Australians. While it is true, her accent would support that contention, I know her to be anything but. What is true is that she is closer to the working class than Kevin in background and identification. She is also far less pretentious than Kevin.
No-one expected Kevin to accept the decision easily, but since then he has been like a little boy who wants to stop the game, because it’s his ball and he’s not being invited to play. Going so far as to sabotage the election campaign of 2010. It was never said, but it was clear. Kevin saw himself as bigger than the party and more important than the party.

Those who believe that “where there is smoke there is fire”, will understand that Kevin has been smouldering for the last year and a half and has been very careful never to deny he wanted the leadership back. That lack of denial was always enough to make it a fall-back position for the Coalition whenever they had run out of something negative to say about the government. 
 So to borrow a term from an ex- Prime Minister, this is the leadership battle we had to have. Kevin’s claim to be a “happy little vegemite” as foreign minister never rang true.


P.M. Gillard has taken the initiative away from K-Rudd by calling for a leadership ballot on Monday.  She also made it quite clear that if she is unsuccessful she will go quietly to the backbenches and relinquish any claim to leadership ambition and that she expects the same of Kevin.
Truth can be damaging. The vote is a caucus vote and Labour would be advised to tone down the vitriol in public and keep in house.  However in order to win, Kevin needs to convince that he would be a better bet than Julia come election time. It is in his interest and not the party’s, to keep the battle in the public eye. Once again self interest ahead of Party interest.
Because of the sabotage in the last election campaign, Julia has had to work with a minority government, dependant on the independents in the parliament to keep power. It has been an extraordinary balancing act and she has done it with aplomb.
It is worth noting that the independents in the lower house will do everything to ensure that there will not be an early election as that would certainly endanger their own seat in parliament. These independents have found it easy to work with Julia and have made it particularly clear that they wouldn’t like to work with Tony Abbott. One imagines that if push came to shove, they could work with Kevin. Oakshott and Windsor are fairly committed to Julia. Bob Katter couldn’t care, because he thinks he’s a “shoe-in’. 
The Tasmanian, Wilke, is starting to make noises about how he could work well with either Rudd or Abbott. Funnily enough I don’t think they could work with him, but I guess he’ll have to find out for himself.  One can be sure that he will vote against everything that a Gillard government brings to a vote.
Well now I’m going to call it for Julia. She has the numbers in Caucus where it counts. As far as I’m concerned she comes out of this smelling of Roses.


No comments: