Thank you Kevin Rudd.
That’s got to be the first time I’ve written that sentence
since he sent me a thousand dollars while I was on holiday in Spain.
While Kevin Rudd’s re-ascendency to the Prime Ministry has comprehensively answered
some questions, it has also immediately posed a series of others: When will the
election be? Can Kevin really turn things around for Labor before then? And, if
the Prime Ministry is held by a man now, does that make everyone who disagrees
with him a misandrist?
I’m really not sure what I personally make of the whole
showdown. Part of me is happy to see Kevin restored, almost as if it’s bringing
some cosmological natural justice back into balance. But part of me also remembers
the night he was axed in the first place.
Even as a right leaning hyper-conservative nutcase, I hadn’t
minded seeing Rudd defeat Howard too much in 2007. It was definitely the right
time for a Labor government to bring the Australia political pendulum back into
balance. He was all charisma and smiles, and brought promises of a fresh new
energy in Australian Politics.
It didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. By the
time 2010 rolled around, Rudd’s polling was sinking to levels that the Labor
party could not possibly carry into a federal election, largely because there was a
perception that the Prime Minister, for all his charm and stage presence, could
not be trusted to deliver on the promises he had made to the country. So with a
federal election defeat looming, the knives came out and the leadership was up
for grabs.
Sound familiar?
I remember being very annoyed that the press conference
cut right into the middle of Hey Hey It’s Saturday, and then later that evening
suffering confusion on an almost existential level as I went to bed hoping for
success on Julia Gillard’s part. When I woke the next day, I was happy to
discover we had our first female Prime Minster, but disappointed that the
Socceroos, despite beating Serbia, had been knocked out of the World Cup
finals.
And then came “Moving Forward,” the Real Julia and the
Carbon Tax. And before we knew it, we’d swapped one credibility challenged
Prime Minister for another. And that's a real shame because Gillard - despite the
precariousness of the government’s hold on the House of Representatives - has
done some pretty cool things. NDIS, NBN (sort of) and uniform education
standards have all been there, right alongside the budget deficits, petrol watch
schemes and pink batt debacles.
And now we’ve come full circle. Kevin Rudd is back in
power, and the Socceroos are off to Brazil. But given that Gillard’s ousting of Rudd
was largely responsible for a hung parliament and a minority government, the
question of whether ousting Julia Gillard as leader will undo the damage that
has been done to the Labor brand, or damage it even further will be the
defining factor of the election, whenever it is held.
Oh yeah, and Tony Abbott will be there too.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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