Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership looks terminal after a move by factional leaders to unseat him in favour of Julia Gillard.
Rudd has agreed to a leadership ballot tomorrow, but it appears Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has the numbers and Crikey understands Rudd will struggle to muster a decent vote against his Deputy. Julia Gillard has declared she will be a candidate for the leadership tomorrow after an extended meeting with Rudd and key ALP powerbrokers, including party Solon John Faulkner, this evening.
One of the causes of tonight’s mayhem was today’s revelation that Rudd had asked his Chief of Staff, Alister Jordan, to canvass ALP Caucus about his level of support in recent days. The fact that Rudd did not personally undertake the exercise has deeply offended a number of Caucus members, and played to the perception Rudd is a technocrat who does not really belong to the ALP.
Rudd held a press conference at 10.30 this evening at which he finally provided the sort of direct, blunt communication that had been missing from his performance for most of 2009, declaring he would not be driven to the Right on the issues of asylum seekers or climate change. However, his performance, in which he railed at party factional powerbrokers, looks too little too late to save his position.
43 Comments
Live by the sword die by the sword Mr. Rudd. The very same people who put you there are about to move you elsewhere.
The speech was very reminscent of the last stand of Rees.
Looks terminal.
What a complete and utter farce. The Coalition must be rubbing its hands with glee.
M
^ On the contrary, the coalition should be very worried. Gillard will emasculate Abbott, and the Libs know it.
Rudd’s press conference was all rather sad. Too little, too late.
Plus he was talking nonsense.
He *did* move to the right on AS and Climate Change.
That’s where he lost his *real* support base with the voters.
They’ve stopped listening and he’s toast.
It’s a dirty business, but there are never any clean assassinations. Nonetheless, should Gillard win and choose Tanner as her Treasurer, then head off into an election, the Libs will be floundering like fish out of water.
(Abbott, don’t for get to cancel those Kevin O’Lemon ads)
I’m with Socratease. Gillard will dismantle abbot like he’s made of Lego.
The Lib’s current strategy seems to be keeping Abbott out of sight and out of mind, but he’s got to show up for the campaign, and then he’ll win the election for Labor.
After such a self interested and destructive move, many Labor supporters will desert a Gillard government in droves. Gillard will be an easy target – BERs etc. It will be too easy to depict her as a puppet of the factions – sound familiar? And look how successful THAT move was. Rudd has been the most successful first term Labor PM ever, and they want to dump him just as the polls are turning around again?
From 25 June to 23 August it is Non sitting days for Parliament, so any interaction between Gillard and Abbott would have to be in the media and not in the House, so yes the Coalition have a right to be worried – Abbott vs Gillard in the Media and Debates = disaster.
I’d say you could run Billy Snedden or Billy McMahon or Bob Katter or Dennis Ferguson against Tony Abbott and they’d win (check the approval ratings…). It is likely Ms Gillard will completely destroy Mr Abbott, but so will Mr Rudd.
The right has gone insane. Obviously the ALP wants to be in Opposition (which is impossible for them to achieve.)
The real winners from this?: the Greens!
Now was the time for Gillard to show her loyalty to Rudd and to the Labor Party. Pity she let it all go to her head. Hopefully she will be gone tomorrow.
For me, Rudd’s star began to fade after Copenhagen, where he made sure that he was seen to be a key part of the negotiations. He came back a loser and dropped the whole thing. Strike 1.
He told all and sundry to expect a “whacking in the polls”. A stupid thing to say even if true. Strike 2.
He decided to fight the mining industry with a new tax within cooee of an election. Strike 3.
And, in case there’s an appeal against any of the above, he surrounded himself with inexperienced political “advisers”, which amounts to 3 strikes before he got to the plate.
And it’s just occurred to me: Julia and Kevin (and the left) have done this to damp down and end the speculation. That makes sense.
Interesting times, interesting times.
It’s great to see breaking news showing up on Crikey, Mark Scott hasn’t been wandering around telling you guys to go 24/7 has he?
I sincerely hope Socratease is correct but you can be sure The Australian will shriek non-stop from here to the election that Labor are in chaos and should not be trusted to run the country etc etc.
One can be a Gillard fan (though my fave is Tanner, who I hope will be deputy rather than Swan) without both feeling some discomfit at what they are doing to Rudd and deep misgivings about the outcome. This is way outside historic Labor traditions and will have other unforseeable complications–how much is our democracy now determined by bloody weekly opinion/popularity polls?
And I sure hope this will not mean a backflip on the RSPT. But there you go, on the other hand we want a total flip on the kind of CPRS/ETS.
Rudd did communicate well in the press conference. If had said “If you want climate action you have to have an ETS; we need a price on carbon” a bit more over the past few months, he wouldn’t be in the pickle where he finds himself now.
IN Rudd’s press conference tonight he said all the right things, but it was 1984 double speak. He did abandon a price on carbon, he did move to the right on refugees. He also did his party a great disservice by highlighting that factional people were moving against him and not the ‘people of Australia’.
Also using an arrogant, rude staffer to do your caucus head count is incredibly poor form.
I for one look forward to a return to a proper functioning cabinet with cabinet solidarity and accountability.
I hope Gillard goes early to the polls and I hope Rudd does the ‘decent’ thing tomorrow morning and step aside and leave the PM role with some dignity intact.
Tim Villa Crikey were last to this story – not first.
I,m not happy because I dont believe it is the way to behave. Crean didn,t get to contest an election as leader which I thought was also wrong. Since Menzies retired the liberals have been constantly engaged in this sort of thing. The extreme right ousted Turnbull and from what has been said the right faction has moved against Rudd. Party/leadership loyalty it seems rest with the centre and the left in most cases these days. I,ve no doubt Gillard will wipe the floor with Abbott but will that matter to the electorate ? One thing though is that Abbotts short period of being invisible will by necessity be over. Instead of Rudd being attacked by the media Gillard will be getting the so called honeymoon. In saying that I,m assuming Gillard has been pushed into the leadership spill by weight of numbers. I,d trust her with my life and its a pity , from media reports, that Rudd didn,t.
@sickofitall: Yes, the ballot is designer to end the speculation, and the only way to end speculation is for Rudd to lose and disappear to the back benches … or preferably into the fog of oblivion. The history of democracies shows that once a leader is challenged, they are irreparably weakened and even if they win, the subsequent challenge is not far away. In the end they are always doomed.
Rudd was a mistake from the outset.
He was always a technocrat and a nerd. John Howard was a dork in the same way as your uncle with the bad comb-over was a dork, but he never pretended to be anything other than a dork.
KRudd the nerd tries to be ‘cool’ and relevant, but fails dismally. Witness the “fair suck of the sauce bottle” language disaster. Nobody says that! And he defended himself to the death on that issue…dumb.
KRudd has always been overly verbose in his choice of words. That’s un-Australian. Abbott might talk a load of rubbish, and occasionally over-cook the message, but he speaks in a very Australian ‘plain’ fashion, and it’s a winner. Latham had this gift too, but unfortunately had too many fair-weather friends in caucus (Rudd’s problem too).
So what of Gillard? She might be the factional favourite right now, but she’s from the Left, so we know she can’t last. I think they’d have been better off sticking with Rudd until the election. Switching now looks like panic, which it is. And I can’t stop thinking that Gillard’s first community cabinet would be held at Fountain Gate shopping centre.
@geomac: Under Crean, Labor would have been in the wilderness for decades. He was a worse communicator than Rudd, but what’s more to the point, he had zero electoral appeal. Like his father before him, he was seen to be a nice guy but a bore. He was a dead man walking.
And try to find the apostrophe key.
@leigh bentley: You underestimate Gillard with that third rate sexist jibe.
It took NSW Labor 14 years to morph from a victorious Bob Carr into a hapless Kristina Keneally. It’s taken Federal Labor 2 and a bit.
Gillard made the same decisions Rudd did. She also spins just as hard in interviews. What’s the difference? Oh, she pays more attention to the likes of Mark Arbib and Paul Howes. That may be a recommendation for party hacks, but it won’t win votes. Certainly not mine!
@sickofitall at 11:27 pm
Correct. Rudd was most likely going to win despite his lamentable presentation recently, and yes the Labor Right has gone slightly nuts. Have they not learned anything from their machinations in NSW? For a start this is going to remind NSW voters of Iemma and their state chaos.
So yes, the question is not whether Gillard will outperform Abbott in the media or anywhere, she will. But how is Joe Voter going to react to this perfidy, even if it was not initiated by Gillard. This is dangerous territory and the role of the media and how they present it will be critical (remember Murdoch destroying Whitlam after 35 months and his winning two elections in 18 months?).
Possibly another factor that forced this is that the party may have tried to get assurances from Rudd about standing aside next term, although once you start down that road….
Socratease
I did well at St Joeys tech South Melbourne in applied science maths and science but only average at english. As long as my comment is legible and coherent I,ll leave editing type grammar to others. Crean may have been all the things you say but he deserved his chance. As for the wilderness scenario well politics changes very quickly as can be observed by 3 liberal leaders since Howard lost. Who would have seen the coalition losing in 2007 from a 2004 election win viewpoint ?
geomac.
No, the changing of a leader while in opposition is completely different to changing Prime Minister. One can feel sympathy for Crean, as I did, while agreeing that he was not the right choice, just as Beazley was not (after how many attempts?).
But let’s try to look at the glass half full. Surely they will revert to a more collective and ministerial system of government. This is actually the most talented bunch of front benchers I have seen and it has been nuts that a gang-of-four with ultimate decisions are taken solely by the great leader.
Tony Jones is interviewing Garrett from Morocco–personally I hope Peter G gets the full environmental responsibility now (I doubt Wong even wants it and her talents would be better elsewhere.)
I like Julia but I thought she was smarter than to trust the ambitious Bill Shorten and Paul Howes. They’ll roll her as well when the time comes.
Geomac,
Your English report cards probably said “needs to try harder”. It’s not too late for that.
Who ever said that politics is fair? Nobody gets past pre-selction believing that politics is fair.
The brutal fact of modern presidential-style politics is that if a leader doesn’t poll well then he’s for the chop. The person who leads a party to an election is seen to be that party, and those in marginal electorates strive to be photographed with him or her.
@Michael James: I agree too! as I do with most comments here. I will say that Simon Crean’s main issue was also his greatest strength – he had to manage all the factions and reform the party. It seems now that his work was in vain…
And @James Burke: devolution is a terrible thing isn’t it? Keneally is the worst Premier we’ve ever had, – maybe only Askin was worse – but even he managed to administer the state, even if he was more corrupt than Bjelke-Petersen…. My astonishment is that Rudd, for all his faults, made first term mistakes.. overpromised, underesteimated his own influence, et cetera…
I think I’m through voting Labor….
Time for julia Gillard to take the helm. An added bonus that we will have our first Female PM. Rudd let too many people down in too many ways – including us. the first tim eI had ever voted Labour. If Gillard gets in (and we hope she will) there will be 2 more votes for Labour from this house. If not, our vote will be going elsewhere.
@sickofitall
I think I’m through voting Labor….
Your Crikey moniker makes me think you’re through with voting for anybody.
I like Gillard, but my respect for her has diminished somewhat. She is now at the mercy of factional politics, and between Gillard and Abbot, party politics in Australia has been set back 20 years.
I have oft referred to Rudd as a lemon, but find myself inexplicably on his side. Partly perhaps because one of the very worst things about Rudd is Swan…
@Socratease. True. Alas. but true.
@socratease – how is making the obvious comparison between Julia’s speech and Kath & Kim “third rate” and/or “sexist”? Or did you completely miss the K&K link? Stop being a troll and go talk to a few swinging voters to see exactly how much you over-estimate Julia’s electoral popularity.
I suppose the power brokers think that a Gillard riding a brief honeymoon can get them across the line.
Expect a snap election announcement now.
For all his faults Rudd was devoted to improving the lot of all Australians.
I guess we can kiss an August Election goodbye.
With Gillard at the helm, I expect to see Abbott torn into shreds (and he won’t like that, not from… a woman!), and a willingness to negotiate with The Greens. Hopefully she’ll also bin the Filter and tell Conroy to pull his head in.
So KRudd will be gone and Dillard is the replacement, oh dear, oh God oh my oh my!
JOHNFROMPLANETPLUTO; That’s right. Make her look like twat even before she’s elected. The conservatives must be mortified re the thought of Gillard getting the job!
BELLISTNER: “With Gillard at the helm, I expect to see Abbott torn into shreds (and he won’t like that, not from… a woman!), and a willingness to negotiate with The Greens. Hopefully she’ll also bin the Filter and tell Conroy to pull his head in.”
My thoughts exactly.
Gotta go and get some breakfast..
So many journos got it so, so wrong. How?
So much spin. I must sit.
Anyone to block this stupid internet filter. I’m sick of pollies sucking up the the far Christian right. Please Julia – come out of the atheist closet.
I think Gillard will get a BIG jump in the polls and she will call an election earlier than Rudd would have. Then she will win.
If she delays, her poor record on Education Building, Laptops for kids and elsewhere will haunt her and it could be a tight race.
The issue for her is that she was a key player in the Kitchen Cabinet and how will she shake this?