Australia’s choice

February 26th, 2012 at 7:00 am by David Farrar

One commentator said that the ALP caucus has to choose between a leader they hate and a leader Australia hates.

One pundit has the count as 68 for the leader Australia hates and 26 for the leader the caucus hates with 7 undecided.

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18 Responses to “Australia’s choice”

  1. Murray (8,832) Says:

    Run the country for the roughy 3.5 seconds they have left before Australia demands an election.

    These two are like demented rats fighting over who is going to be incharge of the bit of driftwood they’re going to float off the shinking ship on.

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  2. Pauleastbay (3,746) Says:

    Why does looking at Kevin Rudd remind me of looking at Clayton Wetherston with a smile?

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  3. tvb (3,317) Says:

    This whole soap opera which is an ugly argument about personalities around Rudd’s management style will damage the ALP perhaps for a very long time. This must please Tony Abbott but he is not without his problems in his caucus. And he has Malcom Turnbull waiting in the wings. And early election perhaps later this year now looks increasingly likely.

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  4. Peter (1,093) Says:

    Like fighting about whos in charge of a plane, 10,000 ft up, after the wings have fallen off.

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  5. Kimble (3,696) Says:

    Rudd is unfit to lead because he has crippling, undiagnosed, emotional issues. Anyone who has worked with him reckon “control freak” has too many positive connotations to be a decent description of the man.

    Gillard is a backstabber, and incompetent to boot. She is taking the blame for every (failed Labour policy (read: every headline grabbing major Labour policy), and rightly so.

    Still, half of Australia is still likely to vote for their “team” and to line their own pockets with higher taxes and more spending.

    Lets pause for a second and consider what we would think of a company with the budget of the Federal government whose board, chairman, and chief officers acted like this. How successful would their next round of public offerings be?

    Fortunately for this crowd, their public offerings are 100% bought under threat of imprisonment.

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  6. tom hunter (3,852) Says:

    Observing this Labor party disaster in Australia I’m reminded of the fact that both of these clowns were once hailed by left-wingers as being vastly superior to their Liberal party counterparts. Not just smarter (Kevin speaks Mandarin, not like that primitive, reactionary moron, Howard), but more decent and compassionate: Gillard was the one many lefties really wanted as she had a solid history of left-wing activism and beliefs, while Rudd was distrusted as being Blair-like in policy approaches. Still, in both cases, they were held to be superior to anything on the right-wing.

    And it’s the same with a whole history of left-wing leaders: Tony Blair, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, …. the list is endless. For all the embarrassed laughter about Brown nowadays, I well remember the various promotions of him from left-wingers as Blair was pushed to stand-down. My favourite in this was Anita McNaught as the “UK Correspondent” for Nine to Noon several years ago, breathlessly describing how everybody was just so impressed by Gordon’s huge increases in government spending on healthcare and everything else. This was real, traditional Labour party stuff, the reason they were there, and people could not wait for Blair to finally go so that there could be more of it.

    Idiots!

    So I was interested to see this link the other day to an article written in 2000 during the Gore-Bush campaign fight, because what it identifies then has grown even worse in the years since, The Class War Gore Could Lose:

    So what’s the matter with merit? Absolutely nothing — assuming that merit can be measured. But what if it can’t? Do good college grades tell us who is better at life in its wider scope, and not just college courses? Do they tell us who would be a better president?

    The problem with the meritocracy is that it believes it’s certifiably better at everything. It has demonstrated a proficiency at reasoning skills, and therefore thinks every problem can be solved entirely with that proficiency. If this were indeed correct, then Herbert Hoover would have been a better president than Franklin Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter would have ranked higher than Ronald Reagan.

    Another problem with the meritocracy is that it doesn’t really believe in majority rule, because if we already know who the smartest people are, why should we bother to solicit the opinion of anyone else?

    This has caused, not consciously but very, very pervasively, a restructuring of our institutions to avoid the will of the electorate

    It’s not just the US, it’s everywhere. Take a look at most of the comments from leftists here on this blog on any given day (smart leftists I mean, not morons like Youza or Luc Hansen) and then, if you can stomach it, switch over to Public Address or the The Dim Post to see endless examples, all the while keeping in mind that if we already know who the smartest people are, why should we bother to solicit the opinion of anyone else?.

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  7. BlairM (2,020) Says:

    It’s a bit like having to choose between whether your kids should be babysat by Graham Capill or Jules Mikus. The phrase “Two bald men fighting over a comb” is an old one, but still apt.

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  8. tom hunter (3,852) Says:

    .. the The Dim Post

    Sigh!

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  9. Viking2 (9,497) Says:

    Rudd warns his colleagues

    Sunday, 26, Feb, 2012 6:13AM

    Kevin Rudd is warning his colleagues the Australian Labor Party will be routed at the next election, unless he’s reinstated as leader.

    He’ll challenge Julia Gillard in an effort to get back his old job tomorrow.

    Mr Rudd says if he doesn’t win the vote, Labor will be tipped out of office in a landslide which would set it back a generation.

    Doesn’t rudd realise that’s going to happen either way.
    He’s a destructive maniac.

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  10. PaulL (5,198) Says:

    Does surprise me somewhat. ALP are toast, why would you want the leadership? Whomever is leader when they lose will get the bullet. Combet or Arbib or Smith or someone similar will then take over. Or maybe they’ll do what the libs did, and let a succession of barely competent has-beens take turns being leader, ruining each of their ambitions and encouraging them to resign, then settle on someone who can actually run the party (again, Combet, Arbib or Smith).

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  11. DJP6-25 (1,100) Says:

    Viking2 11:50 am. I’d settle for Labour being set back a generation. Three would be nice. But one is good too.

    cheers

    David Prosser

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  12. centreforward (32) Says:

    Rudd appears to have an electoral mandate from the public – something Gillard has not achieved. Irony is that he does not have much support in the ALP Caucus.

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  13. PaulL (5,198) Says:

    centreforward: how would Rudd have an electoral mandate? Nobody voted for him, and opinion polls don’t count. If he replaces Gillard he’ll be just as unelected as Gillard was when she replaced him. In between she won (sort of) an election, so has a mandate. The upside of her knifing is that she moved pretty quickly to an election to confirm her position – odds are that Rudd wouldn’t.

    I find it amusing that he’s destroying the Labor party, but I certainly don’t see him replacing Gillard and being accepted – I’d expect it would actually make Labor’s position worse.

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  14. SHG (232) Says:

    he does not have much support in the ALP Caucus

    That’s one way of putting it. Another would be “He is so disliked by the ALP Caucus that many of them would rather lose their seats than see him return to the leadership”. Another would be “He is the most hated man to have ever set foot in Canberra, and the public service, parliamentary services, and the ALP Caucus would rather commit suicide than ever work for or near him again.”

    He is hated in Canberra. Not just disliked – HATED.

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  15. Tautaioleua (162) Says:

    This reinforces the failure of our people-empowered democracy. The people chant for Kevin RUDD, and yet within the valves of the Labour party there is passionate opposition.

    The choice should be an obvious one. Those in Canberra are there to represent the Australians that are not. When has it ever been any different?

    RUDD was elected Prime Minister, Gillard was not. It’s Jenny Shipley all over again.

    :P

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  16. SHG (232) Says:

    Tony Abbott just won the ballot with a score of Gillard 71, Rudd 31.

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  17. RRM (7,264) Says:

    RUDD was elected Prime Minister, Gillard was not. It’s Jenny Shipley all over again.

    Except that Gillard has a bit of a MILF thing going on, and Shipley… not so much…. ;-)

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  18. RightNow (5,395) Says:

    RRM – a) Gillard’s got no kids and b) yuck!

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