Do you know anything about Australian politics? Big Tony doesn't have a 'caucus', that is purely a Labor invention where they all sit down to get their orders from the union bosses.
So Kruddy announces his intention to resign to the whole world before he even tells his boss! Gillard should get in first and serve him notice of termination from his post as foreign minister AND from the Labor party. This little twerp was too gutless to tell Juliar to her face and too gutless to make the announcement in Australia. To make such an announcement from a foreign country, in a press conference broadcast to the whole world, without any notice and without first discussing it with the PM and his cabinet colleagues is unforgivable and a huge embarrassment to the Australian government. The prime minister cannot possibly tolerate this behavior from any minister, least of all from a senior cabinet minister. Her response must be swift and severe. Clearly, out of spite, hatred and revenge Kruddy's agenda is to embarrass and damage the standing of the Labor government and put himself and his huge ego at the centre of media attention. Someone who pulls a stunt like this is not and never was fit to be prime minister and is not even fit to be an elected member of parliament.
Dont forget someone leaked the video of KRudd raging against his advisors a few days ago. I'd say underhanded stuff has been going on for awhile in the ALP.... remember how they booted KRudd from being PM. I think its time Australia wakes up to that is the ALP culture. The Libs leadership battles have been comparitively civilized. Didnt Bill Shorten argue till he was blue in the face a couple of nights ago on Q&A, blaming the whole leadership speculation thing on the Libs and the media as a beatup and distraction! Just shows when a culture accepts the joke that all politicians are liars because there are limits to transperancy, that it allows it to become a reality at a much broader scale. Maybe the reality is its actually Libs vs Liars vs Potsmokers Party (PP) vs Farmers. I know Liberals can lie too, but I'm talking about the breadth and extent ie becoming the culture of the ALP - because they are even telling lie's to each other now by the looks of it.
The oft-repeated notion that Rudd's leadership was "chaotic" demands a little more scrutiny. Firstly, it originates mainly from the people who knifed him, so it's transparently self-serving. But look at the struggles Rudd faced on implementing policy and it's clear that those opposing forces were the very ones making Rudd's life difficult, trying to rein him in, forcing him to compromise on election promises, etc. So there's a massive hypocrisy in those same people then saying "he was combative and chaotic". Of course he was if the dead weight of the ALP party machine was running interference at every turn. Personally, I'm all for a feisty, uncontrollable PM if he's battling against the back-room boys in a valiant attempt to implement policy - and realise the vision that was sold to the electorate.
And? Rudd did not make a challenge, he resigned. He obviously didn't have the numbers to make a challenge, and so he's quitting kamikaze style to try and do as much damage to the govt as possible. That doesn't mean that there was ever any serious movement from the caucus away from Gillard and behind Rudd, that's the media beat up and what the Libs kept asserting. We'll find out on Monday though. Howard and Costello lied and schemed for years in a struggle for leadership. The difference was they kept it mostly inside the party, which is the convention for such things. Not mounting an extremely public campaign like Rudd did which has done little to convince the caucus and only served to undermine the party. The Rudd Faction is what is killing the ALP atm. His centralized government with all the power concentrated in the PM's office is not how the ALP wants to run the country and I completely agree with them. The Libs scrabbling around for leaders over the last few years were just classic stabbing in the back "betrayals". But again, private, within the party, not as a long drawn out public event. Rudd was trying to play a sort of war of attrition against Gillard, and unsurprisingly Gillard has been forced to respond. This is Rudd's last throw of the dice. He's no Menzies, he's more of a Latham. I can't see him ever getting back in the big chair.
Rudd hasnt resigned yet has he, I thought he has announced his resignation to take effect in a few days. That's why they are having the leadership poll next week and the loser gets sent to the kiddies corner, er I mean backbench. Leadership issues will always be a part of politics, what is different here is the depth of childishness of how the ALP does this v the more mundane and comparitively polite way the Libs do it.
Umm, that was the whole freaking point! To catch her off guard. He didn't just decide to resign on a whim. He went to the US and resign there for a reason. He played his cards well.
He doesn't have the numbers and so will go on the backbench. But come election year, Gillards supporters will jump ship and support Rudd. All he needs to do is bide his time and wait.
That's right, he did it for several reasons and they were all about Kruddy, Kruddy, Kruddy. Kruddy first, Kruddy second and Kruddy every other way. He didn't give a rats arse that he was embarassing the Australian government with his actions. If he isn't swiftly sacked from his position and expelled from the Labor party Gillard will look like a gutless wimp and be doubly embarassed. He did it from afar because he is a coward. He made sure there was plenty of distance between himself and is enemies. He doesn't have the courage to stand up to them face to face. He has proved this twice in the past when he couldn't stand up to a bunch of half starved, unarmed refugees who refused to get off one of our own coast guard vessels then again when he capitulated to Juliar and ran sniveling with his tail between his legs. He also did it so that he could get two media storms. One when he made the announcement and then again when he arrives back in Aus. No doubt the idiots in the media will play right into his hands and give him what he craves. The little twerp has been sulking and planning revenge ever since Juliar took his lollypop away.
You have a better word for it? Essentially it is a caucus. Labor does have union influences but only a fool would think that big businesses have no effect on the Liberal Party.
He resigned as Foreign Minister. And are you serious about the Libs being "polite"? They are not "polite" about it, they just keep it INTERNAL as Gillard did when taking over from Rudd. They do not mount public media campaigns and actively and obviously undermine the standing leadership. Newspoll has Gillard leading Abbott as preferred PM, and has done for a few months. So, is Gillard the problem? I don't think so. Sending Kevin to the back bench will probably help party polling, he needs a bit of humility that one. Rudd might as well be on the Libs payroll for all the good he is doing the party atm. The shift is not away from the ALP and to the Liberals either, it's away from the ALP to Independents and greens. And the election should still be about 18 months away, which again is plenty of time for the ALP to turn the numbers around.
Well, at least 'Australian Pork Limited (APL) is caring for the future of Australian pork'. http://www.apl.au.com/pages/index.asp Can't hold that against the unions, can we?
The business community and the religious right have joint ownership of the Liberal Party. No-one will be leader of the Liberal Party without the support of one of those groups. and the unions do not own the Australian Poker League
The unoins do own the Australian Porker League, how do you think the queen of porkie pies got placed in the top sty?
No, only Labor has a caucas. The opposition has a shadow cabinet. Do you think big business has no pull with the Labor Party? Better take the blinkers off mate.
Labor had a shadow cabinet while in opposition, as does every opposition. The Liberal Party has a parliamentary caucus that contains all liberals in parliament. Maybe you should research your politics. I agree that big business does have an effect on the Labor Party but ultimately the unions are more important to the ALP than businesses. Don't make statements that have no basis, it makes you look stupid.
Only the Labor party uses the term 'caucus'. The Liberal/National coalition does not use the term, they have a parlimentary party or parlimentary group. Pretty much the same thing but the unions aren't there to give them their orders. The unions own the Labor party, they fund it.
It's irrelevant whether the Libs choose to call their MP's a "parliamentary group". It's perfectly correct to use the word "caucus" to describe it, it's not a term that is unique to the ALP.
In Australia the term is only used by the ALP who now have taken 'ownership' of the term. The Lib/Nat coalition will not use the term because of this. In Australia 'caucus' is a Labor Party thing.
I think people are sick of Rudd for different reasons then they are sick of Julia, but the sick for Julia is fresher then the sick for Rudd - but that only explains the polls... so the ALP itself then will just revert to whoever they are tied too with deals and friendships which will likely support Julia because she is the front(wo)man for the big unions, while Rudd was just the poster boy they trotted out when everyone thought it was kool to hate on Howard back in the day. So Julia FTW.
They seem to be voting based on who they like best, not who is best to win the election. Rudd already won an election very convicingly, Julia hasn't.
Rudds polling numbers just before he was replaced were almost as bad as Gillard's are now. He was on track to lose the election, that was certainly the sentiment at the time. Internal polling from the ALP indicated that Gillard was the preferred leader then too, came up again on 4 corners the other night. Then when she took over as PM her numbers went way up initially, then came back down. Why exactly is Kevin so much more likely to win the election than Gillard? And @adultmale: You can use "caucus" for any political party, the ALP don't "own" that term. The fact that Libs choose to call it a "parliamentary group", or whatever, is neither here nor there. They mean exactly the same thing.
