The NEXT coming Oz election thread!

We asked for this. We re-elected them again and again and we elected a bunch of lock-step state governments.

The state and territory premiers and chief ministers just folded after all that chest-thumping. I wonder what they were told that made them turn into sooks. I suppose it was covering their whatsits.

You know, "if someone blows a train up in my state at least they can't say I didn't support the draconian legislation."

Draconian legislation probably isn't the answer but politicians are indulging in risk management of their own careers.

Gillard gains credibility despite Latham

30sep05

FAR from being a kiss of death, as many commentators would have it, Mark Latham's endorsement of his former colleague Julia Gillard as the Australian Labor's Party next leader could turn into a political resuscitation, benefiting both Gillard and the party.

The initial caricature reaction has been to show Gillard as suffering from an endorsement from a former leader who is being written off and attacked by all and sundry after his kiss-and-tell diaries besmirched scores of reputations. Latham's spray against the Labor Party, politics and politicians in general and Kim Beazley in particular has severed his relations with the bulk of the ALP and soured its image with the public.
Latham's personality and mental state are openly dissected and discussed, he has been publicly diagnosed as having a narcissistic personality and asked if he would have been an unstable prime minister. In an orgy of publicity and recrimination, Latham and his erstwhile colleagues have been tearing at their own and each other's entrails.

It has been completely in public and comes only a year after people were being asked to vote for Latham as prime minister. As a result, whether people are Labor supporters or not, young or old, interested in politics or not, everyone has an opinion on Latham. There are people at football matches and ten-pin bowling games who are openly regretting their decision to vote for him at the last election and others decrying the damage he has done to their beloved Labor Party.

The latest Newspoll survey, taken last weekend, showed that despite concern about high petrol prices, industrial relations reforms and the sale of Telstra, the public pushed the Coalition into a 10-point lead on primary votes and Labor's primary vote to its lowest under Beazley this time as leader, just 34 per cent.

In the rush to limit the damage from Latham's personal observations about the character and health of Beazley and the former's damaging plans for policy changes, the ALP seems to have forgotten that among all those people who have an opinion are many who agree with Latham. The initial attraction of Latham's youth, enthusiasm and radical agenda-setting is still a powerful force among an electorate who see an older and conservative John Howard facing in Beazley a third-time runner with a tendency to be more conservative than the Prime Minister.

This is where Gillard's role as the most senior defender of her former leader is crucial for her and the ALP.

Gillard's defence of Latham has been multifaceted and carefully calibrated. At each level there is room for Gillard's standing within the public to rise and in so doing salvage some lost Labor support.

At a primal level Gillard has offered public support for Latham as a human being. No matter what people think of Latham's views of Labor, there surely can't be too many people who cannot look at his hauntingly defiant face and feel that there is someone in turmoil.

The public feels it, and since many don't attach as much importance to the stature of the Labor Party as the federal Labor MPs, the natural human reaction of some sympathy for someone facing ostracism is probably stronger outside parliament than within.

It is also a reaction that is likely to grow with time rather than diminish.

Gillard, and Latham's last Labor mate, frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, are demonstrating an admirable forbearance in the face of Latham's destructive behaviour. Gillard has publicly warned her ALP colleagues not to resurrect the self-destructive culture of the ALP in recent years and to try to avoid a competition for the worst epithet to be cast in the former leader's direction.

Gillard's appeal has gone further than just personal support. She has publicly pointed to the danger of returning to the undermining that went on during Simon Crean and Latham's leadership. Gillard said this week that she had been loyal to all her leaders: Beazley, Crean, Latham and Beazley again. This is not something many on the frontbench can claim after three leadership changes and two challenges in the past four years. She also has declared that she will not challenge Beazley for the leadership, which highlights a curious power shift in her direction and away from foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd.

By being loyal to Latham, but carefully repudiating his party disloyalty, Gillard has demonstrated an attractive humanity and a loyalty to Labor and its leadership. All of this helps her image and provides an opportunity for her to claw back Labor supporters who have been turned off the ALP and politics by Latham's raw disclosures.

An Ipsos Mackay survey taken after the release of The Latham Diaries has found 34 per cent of people are less inclined to vote Labor. More important, the survey has found 17 per cent of people who voted Labor last year are less inclined to vote Labor.

That is, almost one in five Labor voters suggest they are less likely to vote the same way at the next election, either because they are shocked at what Latham hid from them or because they agree with hiscriticisms of the ALP, its factions and personnel.

For an Opposition that suffered one of its worst defeats in history at the last election, with a primary vote of 37.6 per cent, the prospect of having an even lower primary vote would preclude Labor from government for decades.

The survey suggests another blow for Labor: 33 per cent of Australian Greens voters say they are less inclined to support Labor. This is crucial for Labor; for years it has relied on a large flow of Greens preferences to get over the line in tight seats and lift its two-party-preferred result.

This apparent disenchantment with machine politics could turn voters away from Labor to alternatives: the Greens and independents. The desertion of Labor primary voters and Greens preference voters on anything like this scale at the next election would mean the ALP is unelectable.


Gillard's endorsement from Latham's political grave and her careful defence of his positive legacy may prove to be a kiss of life.

Hmmmmmm.....wishing and hoping and ....

Q1 .... How many months before this woman becomes leader of the opposition?

A month will be too long. Okay I'll stop it. I'm guessing. Six months. Please.

Q2 .... How long before she becomes prime minister?

Please, please, please make it at the next election.


Q3 .... Who will she choose as her deputy?

<thinking> <still thinking>

Well if I were advising her I'd say Bob McMullan. My reasoning is that McMullan is both an electoral and policy wonk, wonk being a good thing. He is smart enough about the system and the party to guard her back and still help make good policy.

This is good therapy msolga, I feel better already just envisioning it