Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
Kevin Rudd has declared he will challenge Australia’s prime minister Julia Gillard as leader of the Labor party on Monday, saying he wants to “finish the job” he began before she ousted him. Mr Rudd, dumped as leader in 2010, attacked Ms Gillard as treacherous and untrustworthy and insisted she would not be able to win the next election. Mr Rudd attacked Ms Gillard’s political record, saying she urged him to dump his carbon pricing scheme as prime minister – a move that is credited as initiating his decline. –Jonathan Pearlman, The Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2012
KEVIN RUDD commissioned advice on ”repositioning” his ill-fated climate change policy, including scrapping it, two months before he dumped it, leaked documents show. Mr Rudd yesterday placed the blame squarely on Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan for forcing him to drop the policy but the Herald has obtained a departmental briefing commissioned by Mr Rudd showing he began the process that led to the policy being deferred indefinitely. –Phillip Coorey, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 2012
The bloodletting inside the Labor Party is nothing short of animalistic. This week, many of the parliamentarians of the federal ALP have cast aside any semblance of unity and torn at each other in unrestrained frenzy. Australian Labor makes the US Republicans look almost charitable to each other by comparison. Labor, at its lowest standing in the public eye in the 40-year history of the Nielsen poll, does not seem well-placed to afford the luxury. — Peter Hartcher and Phillip Coorey, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 2012
Labor’S chances of salvaging anything from the current leadership debacle are receding as fast as you can say “disunity is death”. This is not garden-variety disunity, it is a full-scale nuclear war that, almost uniquely, is taking place within the party of government. It is as crazy as the military acronym suggests – MAD, or “mutually assured destruction”. –Mark Kenny, Adelaide Advertiser, 25 February 2012
Related articles
- Julia Gillard challenges Kevin Rudd to fight Labor Party leadership contest (independent.co.uk)
- Rudd, Gillard shape up for Labor battle (news.theage.com.au)
Galaxy, Neilson and Newspoll have all been brought forward to be out this weekend instead of during next week as they should.
All three make the following statements obvious:
– Under Gillard, Labor would be destroyed with predicted swings between 5-8% (in Aussie politics anything greater than 5% swing is massive). Guaranteed loss and lots of job losses for their MP’s.
– Under Rudd, Labor would still be a contender to retain power, though the job would be hard. Possible win and MP’s keeping their jobs.
– Liberals look to win power under either leader.
If I were a Labor MP in a marginal seat I’d be looking to the future and assessing whether I still wanted my job after the next election, even if in Opposition it’s better than being embarrassingly fired by your electorate.
My prediction: Gillard currently leads Rudd 2 votes to 1, but I think over the weekend and when the ballet is actually taken on Monday morning, a number of Gillard supporters will change their vote. But I don’t think Rudd can get the win. If Rudd can get 45+ votes (52 votes are needed for the win), that causes a huge embarrassment for Gillard who continuously harps on about how all of caucus supports her.
End of the day, Labor is dead next election. It’s a choice of how dead they want to be.
I know it’s already been covered, but the Liberal party in Australia is supposed to be in the ‘classic liberal’ tradition.
What this is supposed to mean is small government, free markets, personal freedom – the original meaning of the word.
The main difference between the Liberal Party in Australia and the Republican party in the USA (from my observation) is a total lack of religious related policy. Hence you will never hear a debate in Australia about things like evolution or abortions like the ones that seem to dominate republican positions. So while both parties align with the conservative side, the Liberal party is (supposed) to be a bit closer to a libertarian view on many issues. Of course, it never works out like that, because of the individual personalities involved. The Liberal party is quite new – it has only existed for about 70 years or so. The other conservative party is the National party, which is much older, and is primarily a rural-based conservative party. Together, the Liberal and National parties act together and don’t contest elections against each other, deciding on who gets to contend in what seat. They are generally referred to as ‘the coalition’. The National party only gets a small part of the portfolio, however.
The Labor party is descended from the British Labour party – and is purely trade unionist in makeup and outlook. However, due to declining union membership (below 20% of the workforce) they have increasingly turned to ‘progressive’ policies and increasingly are made up of academic characters.
The Greens are a party full of useful idiots, ex-communists and starry eyed dreamers. They haven’t got a clue except for ‘capitalism bad’. They don’t actually say ‘socialism good’ but somehow pretend you can run a modern economy on moonbeams and rainbows. They are far-left, and have policies on everything from closing down power stations to throwing open the welcome mat to anyone who really wants to live in the country, reserving the biggest welcome for those from countries with the lowest standards of living and education.
Australia doesn’t have a popularly elected leader like a President. You vote for your local representative and your state senate representatives. Once all the representatives and senators are in parliament, they elect the leader of the party, who in turn becomes the Prime Minister. The Cabinet positions are the heads of the varoius ministries (finance, defense, health, etc), and the party/PM appoints all of those from the various members of parliament. Of course, in practice, the party already has the leader nominated before an election, so you know in advance who the PM is going to be, but of course they can change their mind at any time, which is what they did to depose Kevin Rudd and install Julia Gillard. And now they are thinking about changing back. And of course, the nominated leader has to win their ‘seat’ before they can become PM – in practice, they all come from ‘safe’ seats which never change hands, but it has happened a couple of times in history.
Kevin Rudd is a policy wonk who came up via the public service and diplomatic circles, while Julia Gillard is a former student radical who was a member of all the internationalist socialist groups until about 10 years ago. She is hard-core trade union background and pure socialist, but pretends not to be because she knows such views aren’t accepted by voters today.
The leader of the opposition (Tony Abbott) is very much a student of the former PM John Howard, and while he is a conservative Catholic, he doesn’t actually have any religion oriented policies.
Tony Abbotts big claim to fame was that he was the first mainstream Australian politician to start pushing back against carbon taxes and pricing. That’s how he rolled the prior leader of the Liberal party, and that’s how he destroyed the popularity of Kevin Rudd to the point where Gillard successfully challenged for the leadership of the party (and hence the PM role). Gillard was actually instrumental in getting Kevin Rudd to dump his carbon pricing scheme, and she didn’t want to have any part of it, hence the ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’ line. But she ended up having to deal with the Greens – a position the socialist within her liked anyway, so she went with a carbon tax and broke her own promise. From there on, all Abbott has had to do is keep reminding people of the broken promises, and Gillards’ own incompetence has pretty much taken care of the rest.
Still, the issue of carbon taxing is the overriding one in Australian politics, and it’s already clear that the politician who drives the silver spike through it’s heart and kills it forever is going to be the one who wins the spoils. So far, this looks like Tony Abbott, but he could easily fluff it between now and then.
Australia needs a “Come On” movement to counter the “Get Up ” movement. Australia will soon have the biggest , draconian and most expensive carbon tax in the world when the new comes into the effect. The standard procedure is for the country to issue certificates to existing generators equivalent to the their emissions less the commitment made by the country under the Kyoto Protocol. For example, If the country generates 1 million tons of CO2 and the country is committed to reduce by 8 per cent its emission, it will give the power plant a credit certificate of 920,000 tons. The power plant will only have to buy certificates for 80,000 tons if it maintains its emissions at 1 million tons. If it increases it emissions to say 1.1 million it is only goiing to pay or buy certificates for 180,000 tons. Under the Australia carbon tax, the power plant will have to pay for the full 1 milliopn tons and if it increases its emissions to 1.1 million it will have to pay for the full 1.1 million. Incidentally the Australian carbon tax is almost equal to the current carbon credit price in the EU trading scheme. If the power plant institute energy efficiency measures and it is able to reduce the emission to 900,000 tons, it gets credit for the 20,000 that could partly pay for the cost of energy efficiency upgrading. ( of course the government may have other models for distributing the emission allowance to give more credits to socially important generators)
Based on the Australian government compliance to the Kyoto Protocol, the Australia is fully compliant with its commitments and it does not have to tax carbon emission. australia is one of the few developed countries allowed to increase its greenhouse gas emissions. It is allowed to increase by 8 per cent.
Cassandra King said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 7:59 am
It might be a coincidence, but I wouldn’t bet on it!
woodNfish said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 8:36 am
Get real! Labor has three factions: Left, Centre Left and Right. The Liberal/National Coalition has two: Wets and Drys. There have been many Wets who were to the left of Labor’s Right. Green support has largely come from disaffected Labor and Coalition supporters.
Richard deSousa said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 10:38 am
In public :-)))) That said, there are pictures of the Liberal ex-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer wearing fishnet stockings 🙂
John from CA said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 8:55 am
Given that she’s a member of the Left faction, that’s not a particularly stunning conclusion.
johanna said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Bingo!
Australian Labor will lose the election, because Gillard will win the leadership spill on Monday morning, 10:30 AEST.
I think it will go like this:
Gillard wins. Then in 18 mths time (probably less), Tony Abbott of the LNP win the next general election, comfortably.
If Rudd decides at a second tilt at the leadership between now and the next election, he will face the following:
A..Lack of time. When he loses on Monday, he will have been essentially “put back into his box” for at least 6 mths. If he then gets another sniff on for the leadership he will need at least 8 weeks of back room dealing. That puts him just 12 mth (probably less) out from the election.
B.. In that 12 mth period, he will have to confront the very real possibility of another GFC, this time without a MASSIVE war chest of cash (which Abbott’s predecessor built up over 12yrs) to soften the blow.
C..The possibility of a Republican POTUS in Nov 2012, who will kill off any hope of an international Carbon Trading Scheme, making the Australian look even more foolish and unsustainable.
D..A cabinet of untested freshmen (to us a US term) front bench ministers, because many of the sitting, experienced MP’s have publicly said they will not be part of his cabinet.
E.. Going into the election carrying the weight of the lame duck Carbon tax, which he can’t do anything about, because of the Green’s controlled senate. Although it wasn’t his plan, he’ll be lumped with it because it was a “Labor” plan.
F.. Going into the next election with a tired, battered party who hasn’t had a good thing written about them since Rudd said “sorry” to the Australian aboriginals all those years ago.
The probelm is, that Abbott cannot repeal the carbon tax because of the way the legislation has been drafted. The tax creits are essentially “assets”, and has such it would be unconstitutional for the Gov of the day (future) to tamper with the value of them.
Chris Watson said @ur momisugly
February 24, 2012 at 1:58 pm
And he is immensely popular in his home state of Queensland. Go figure!
Doug Cotton said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 2:28 pm
A surprising number of electors recall voting for candidates who were not standing in the electorate they voted in! Neither Gillard, nor Rudd are favoured by the electorate at large. The electorate seems just as disaffected by Abbot. Interesting times…
Spiny Norman said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 11:50 am
Agree, but most of the disaffected returned after the dissolution of the DLP. There were several in the Branch the Git was secretary of back in the 80s. Not sure about the “conservative” tag as they were Centre Left; the Git was unaligned and more conservative than they were. Politicz is a strange business and an unpleasant place for anyone with integrity which is why I quit.
brc said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 4:08 pm
The Git notes that the new leader of the opposition in Queensland is having to stand for election in an unsafe seat because none of his colleagues in safe seats were willing to give up their incumbency. It will be quite a laugh if the Coalition gain the majority of votes, but their leader fails to win his seat! Winning it seems to be a big ask at this stage.
“Kevin Rudd is a violently egotistical, abusive, raging man of very bad character, and bad character for me is the single disqualifying quality in a national leader.”
Kevin Rudd is nothing other than a “brand”, carefully crafted by his spin doctors and a compliant Australian media, designed to do one thing, and one thing only… Topple John Howard in the 2007 election.
Since then…nulla.
L. said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 4:51 pm
My belief is that you are correct that if an election were held at this juncture, then the “government” would lose. They would lose regardless of whether the parliamentary leader is Rudd, or Gillard. Old adage: no party ever wins an election, ruling parties lose them.
@The Pompous Git:
I disagree with you. If the Coalition expect the voters to simply hand them government, they may be as disappointed as Mark Latham was when he expected the same thing. Voters want someone to vote *for*. I don’t think they simply vote against governments. Although, if there ever was an exception, this exceptionally unpopular Labor government could well be it.
For those wondering why I put the scare quotes around government in my previous post:
The government of Australia is currently Queen Elizabeth II, The Queen of Australia. She governs through her representative, the Governor General. If, as seems increasingly likely, the Queen’s Australian parliament refuses to perform the duties required of them by the Australian Constitution, then it behoves the electors to know what their powers are under that Constitution. I will illustrate with an example:
Let’s say that we the electors decide to do something for schizophrenics (and just coincidentally The Git who is a nicotine addict). If a majority of electors inform their representative in parliament that it is their WILL that a bill to repeal the tobacco tax be introduced to parliament then the representative is bound by the constitution to do so. Should the representative refuse to do so, then the electors can request that the Governor General remove the representative from parliament and call a bye election to find a replacement. If the GG refuses, then we can request the Queen of Australia do so as she is also bound by the Australian Constitution to implement the WILL of the electors.
There used to be a very well written, short booklet written by a Queensland senator called “Your Will” IIRC. Sadly, the person who borrowed it, lost it. If anyone reading this has a copy they could lend, copy or sell I would really like to read it once more.
Kevin Rudd is an extreme narcissist. Like all people with narcissistic personality disorders, he is extremely charming when he wants to be (ie in public appearances, when talking to foreign diplomats, with friends and family etc). In private he is impossible to deal with for those who work for him. In this link a former speechwriter of his details his failings http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-20120224-1ttxx.html
Pompous Git: I think this may be what you are looking for: http://www.ourconstitution.org/your_will.php?pid=1
Chris Watson said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 5:53 pm
I suspect that this might be because you haven’t been involved at the level of politicz the Git has. The paradigm example was the fall of the Bjelke Petersen parliament. You must be aware that the party faithful will reflexively vote and that the day is carried by the Undecideds. They are more numerous now than they were 25 years ago and that is very telling.
Of course no party “expect(s) the voters to simply hand them government” and it’s not what the adage said. It’s a very noticeable that voters tend to prefer the devil they know than the one they don’t. The incumbents always start with a great advantage over the opposition that is eroded, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
This coming election is most certainly looking like a huge vote against the ALP & Greens, but showing remarkably little joy for Tony Abbot which I must say surprises me.
all political parties in Australia – LEFT, RIGHT, GREEN – have, as policy, a CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME.
Labor (equivalent to US Democrats) also has a CARBON DIOXIDE TAX, which begins in July of this year; it will be imposed on the so-called top 500 polluting industries.
Part of the taxes raised will seemingly go to the UN (never mentioned by politicians or MSM).
Part will go to what are defined as “trade-exposed” industries and politically ordained “renewable” industries, and part will go to compensate aged and other pensioners. low-income families etc., who will be hardest hit by the rising electricity bills (already up considerably due to renewable energy obligations) and all the other associated rises in goods and services, caused by the CARBON DIOXIDE TAX.
the Liberal Coalition (US Republicans) has pledged to repeal the CARBON DIOXIDE TAX (if possible) if they win the next National election, but they have not even spoken about their own policy for a CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME, which still stands.
it is possible to argue that to have an EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME, without the CARBON DIOXIDE TAX, would be an even worse outcome for many, many Australians.
as with the UK, the Australian voter is CAGW-screwed whatever politician or political party is in power and, sadly, the MSM is still spinning that getting up a Carbon Tax/Emissions Trading Scheme is somehow vital for political survival, even tho the public want none of it. go figure.
“This coming election is most certainly looking like a huge vote against the ALP & Greens”
I beg to differ there Git… I suspect the Greens will pick up more than a few disenfranchised Labor souls. There is no way the rusted on Laborites will vote LNP, and the Greens represent the closest thing to the Labor party. Furthermore, “protest” votes tend to go the way of the smaller parties.
If Turnbull wasn’t 100% behind carbon pricing, he would be in government now.
“all political parties in Australia – LEFT, RIGHT, GREEN – have, as policy, a CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME”
Agreed, however… I firmly believe that the LIB’s only have one as window dressing or “bet hedging”. I fully expect that should they get in, their version would either:
A.. Not see the light of day due to it being the wrong time (GFC Mk.2 being the excuse),
or
B.. Implemented in a much watered down capacity. Just enough to be technically implemented, but by and large “token” in effect.
@woodNfish, you beat me to it.
John says:, February 24, 2012 at 7:50 am
“I believe its:
Labor = leftist
Liberal = conservative
Green = whackos”
No it is:
Labor = communists
Liberal = conservative
Green = whacko communists
Labor Gillard “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”
(one big fat lie) Bad person.
Liberal, Tony Abbot, will oppose carbon tax in opposition, will repeal carbon tax if elected.
Potential to be good person.
Green, Bob Brown, with the balance of power actually running the country and Labor policy.
IMHO total fruit loop.
Greens = watermelons (green on the outside, red in the middle.)
Greens = avocado, (green with a hard nut in the middle.)
Greens want to shut down power stations and industry, they want 100% renewable energy (not nuclear), love the wind farms, love solar, hate mankind……
Alex Heyworth said @ur momisugly February 24, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Oh bless you kind sir! Yer blood’s worth bottlin’. 🙂