tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/alp-leadership-spill-5052/articlesALP leadership spill – The Conversation2013-07-03T04:47:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157192013-07-03T04:47:38Z2013-07-03T04:47:38ZIs this the end of the gender wars?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26712/original/g9znfkdf-1372748479.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1000%2C793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In most of our workplaces and institutions there are subtle, cumulative, insidious judgements and responses that serve to reinforce the powerful status quo of leadership.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Accounts in the media over the past week explain, or rather rationalise, the downfall of our first female Prime Minister. One-time feminist warrior <a href="https://theconversation.com/kevin-rudd-defeats-julia-gillard-expert-reaction-15567">Eva Cox</a> found that Julia Gillard failed to communicate and bring people along. More <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-political-tragedy-of-julia-gillard-15588">critical assertions</a> suggest that Gillard’s ambition exceeded her political talent. Defenders speak of a warm individual in interpersonal contexts and a well-run parliamentary office.</p>
<p>Such extreme leadership events and commentary beg the question: What are our expectations of our nation’s leader, our Prime Minister? And, as Gillard proposed, is gender “everything” or “nothing”?</p>
<h2>Prime characteristics</h2>
<p>In formal terms, one would expect that the Prime Minister, regardless of gender, would have a nuanced understanding of their role in terms of constitutional responsibilities, the formal mechanisms of the parliamentary system and its interface with the bureaucracy of the public service.</p>
<p>We expect our Prime Minister not to be pre-occupied by short-term wins, but to pursue agendas that position the nation for the future. In this context, the Prime Minister has to have the capacity to lead the governing party effectively but also temper this with a constant eye to the long-term good of the nation, even when this demands political compromise and politically unpopular decisions.</p>
<p>In Australia (I hope) there is an enduring expectation that our Prime Minister will pursue policies that reflect fundamental national values of equality and inclusiveness.</p>
<p>Ticks for Gillard against the above.</p>
<p>But these are just some of the formal expectations. In practice, there are an equal number of nuanced traits - often unspoken, taken for granted - and even sub-conscious expectations upheld by the party, the media and the public.</p>
<h2>Rising to the top</h2>
<p>First, we cling to the notion that a national leader achieves their position through a legitimate process. Gillard is not the first to have achieved the position of Prime Minister in compromised circumstances. But she is the first woman to have done so, and this act was contrary to that of loyal deputy. Legitimacy of process underpins authority. Rudd has been quick to reclaim that legitimacy, to negate the easy comparison of “palace coups”.</p>
<p>Second, a national leader has to meet the ill-defined but powerfully felt image of “statesman”. I use the term statesman quite intentionally rather than the gender-neutral term “statesperson”. In Australia, we have never previously had a stateswoman national leader, so our expectations are shaped by those who have historically occupied this role. </p>
<p>It appeared that international leaders saw Gillard as a statesman, but is being a successful statesman more than the ability to tread the international stage effectively? Does being young, female, unmarried and, in relative terms, ungrounded in the political terrain, preclude fitting the expectations of the statesman? In searching for the statesman, did we then find fault in our Prime Minister’s dress, choice of partner, domestic lifestyle, and penchant for that particularly feminine art, knitting? In a woman did we find the unseemly parliamentary banter and adversarial politics unbecoming?</p>
<p>Third, a national leader cannot be seen to be driven by personal ambition – their motivation has to be in the nation’s best interests. Yet it was ambition that was seen to have propelled Gillard into the role of national leader and ambition that drove her determined and successful bid to form a minority government. It has been suggested that ambition is a fine trait in a man but not in a woman. Women need to develop the skills to ensure that we are perceived to have succeeded despite ourselves. Being sponsored by senior male colleagues, preferably statesmen of repute rather than “faceless men”, helps. Such statesmen reinforce the legitimacy of our political lineage.</p>
<h2>Strengths and weaknesses</h2>
<p>Women have many strengths, but also profound weaknesses. At the risk of generalising, one of our failings is to focus on achievement, expecting that this will be recognised and rewarded. The desire to change the world and make it a better place is an admirable ambition but fraught with risk, especially if we do not stop to look around to see who is coming on our journey. Gillard embarked on an ambitious and ultimately successful reform agenda. Yet she was deemed “wooden”, “cold” and lacking “media presence”. Despite her ambitious achievements, she failed to cultivate our trust, and her resilience, which she evidenced in spades, proved no substitute for trust.</p>
<p>Gender is not everything or nothing, but it is the powerful and pervasive lens through which our leadership narratives are read, and against which we are judged. The research tells us that gender discrimination is now subtle and nuanced, played out in informal spaces and subtle interactions. Women in leadership are judged differently to male counterparts, even when exhibiting comparable behaviour.</p>
<p>The public and media scrutiny of Gillard was not always subtle. The unseating of Gillard does not flag the end of the “gender wars”. In most of our workplaces and institutions there are generally not wars, not even skirmishes - there are subtle, cumulative, insidious judgements and responses that serve to reinforce the powerful status quo of leadership. This discrimination is less visible than the misogyny that Gillard had the courage to name, but unless we eliminate it the optimism Gillard expressed for coming generations of women leaders will remain ungrounded.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accounts in the media over the past week explain, or rather rationalise, the downfall of our first female Prime Minister. One-time feminist warrior Eva Cox found that Julia Gillard failed to communicate…Sharon Bell, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155642013-06-29T02:17:51Z2013-06-29T02:17:51ZThe leadership war is over – where to from here for the ALP?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26264/original/jkxn54vf-1372291539.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The problem for Gillard has always been the 'Rudd-factor', and arguably her prime ministership never got off the ground.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s 43rd federal parliament has proven that politics is anything but boring. </p>
<p>Capping off a day when the two independent kingmakers, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, <a href="https://theconversation.com/country-independents-bow-out-but-play-to-the-end-15542">announced</a> that they would not contest the upcoming election, Kevin Rudd <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudd-wins-the-game-of-thrones-15573">won a party room ballot</a> for the Labor leadership and has been sworn in again as prime minister. </p>
<p>The battle between Rudd and Julia Gillard has been raging ever since Gillard toppled Rudd in 2010. Following his removal from the prime minister’s office, Rudd became foreign minister but <a href="https://theconversation.com/ambitions-to-lead-labor-as-kevin-rudd-quits-as-foreign-minister-5517">challenged Gillard</a> in early 2012. </p>
<p>Although he lost that contest, in March 2013 his supporters <a href="https://theconversation.com/julia-gillard-may-have-won-the-vote-but-the-alp-remains-desperately-dysfunctional-12981">again pushed</a> for him to have yet another go at toppling Gillard. In one of the more bizarre episodes in Australian politics, Rudd refused to run.</p>
<p>But now that Rudd has returned, what now for the ALP? Can Rudd, the “comeback kid”, defy the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-24/labors-primary-vote-drops-below-30-per-cent-in-latest-newspoll/4774760">previously poor opinion polls</a> and pull off a stunning election victory later this year?</p>
<h2>The Rudd factor</h2>
<p>The big problem for Gillard and the Australian Labor Party has always been the Rudd factor. Rudd’s regular media appearances, coupled with images of him being swarmed by voters while travelling around the country, served to remind people of his charms and built a perception that he was still a popular figure.</p>
<p>As though to fuel flames of division within Labor, opinion polls consistently also showed Rudd to be a more popular leader than Gillard.</p>
<h2>The role of opinion polls</h2>
<p>Opinion polls played a central role throughout Julia Gillard’s prime ministership. Since 2011, they have shown that it would be almost impossible for Labor to win the next election. </p>
<p>While it is common for governments to face poor opinion poll results, Gillard never had clear air to try and articulate her government’s policies. Everything the prime minister did was overshadowed by Rudd’s presence.</p>
<p>This always made Gillard’s position very difficult. It is often the case that any leader needs to keep an eye on potential challengers from within their party, but Gillard’s troubles were compounded by the fact that she also had to work to maintain the support of the cross-benchers to retain government.</p>
<p>Like any leader, Gillard also made a number of tactical choices that could have worked in her favour but didn’t. The decision to present herself as “the real Julia” raised questions about her authenticity early in her term in office.</p>
<p>The decision to introduce carbon pricing at the start of her prime ministership arguably made her an easy target for the opposition who worked hard to brand her as an untrustworthy leader. The decision to recruit Peter Slipper caused more problems that it was worth.</p>
<h2>Gillard’s legacy</h2>
<p>Despite her turbulent prime ministership, Gillard’s legacy is safe. As Australia’s first female prime minister, she was able to implement big picture policies like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, pricing carbon and introducing reforms to health and education. These were precisely the issues Rudd struggled to resolve while he was prime minister from 2007 to 2010.</p>
<p>Gillard also appeared to have re-introduced notions of cabinet government. Unlike Rudd, who was roundly criticised by his colleagues for not listening to them and making snap decisions on his own, Gillard sought to work with her ministers to avoid her predecessor’s errors.</p>
<h2>Personality not policy?</h2>
<p>An interesting feature of the Rudd-Gillard battle has been the focus on the personalities rather than policies of the two figures. There are, however, some important policy differences that Rudd may try to act on during his second prime ministership.</p>
<p>Rudd’s commitment to the emissions trading scheme was part of his undoing in 2010. It remains to be seen whether he will alter the government’s carbon pricing scheme.</p>
<p>Rudd has also altered his position on same-sex marriage. Stating that he had changed his view on the issue following a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/gay-marriage-change-a-personal-journey-rudd-20130520-2jx65.html">“personal journey”</a>, Rudd, unlike Gillard, believes that same-sex couples should be allowed to wed as long as religious institutions did not have to marry them. The question is now whether he will pursue this policy change in parliament.</p>
<p>As prime minister in 2008, Rudd ended the Howard government’s so called Pacific Solution asylum seeker policy which made Labor appear <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/national/rudd-govt-softens-asylum-seeker-laws-20080729-3mgo.html">“soft” on the issue</a>. </p>
<p>Labor’s asylum seeker policy has also been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-04/western-sydney-labor-mp-breaks-silence-on-asylum/4733128">blamed</a> by some Labor MPs for contributing to poor opinion polls. This very complicated area of policy will once again prove to be a challenge for Rudd. How he approaches this may be the key in turning the party’s electoral fortunes in some seats.</p>
<h2>A different leadership style?</h2>
<p>Rudd will also try to position himself as a very different leader to Gillard. He can differentiate himself by forging a more combative relationship between Labor and the Greens. This would weaken claims that the government was unduly influenced by the minor party. Similarly, Rudd could also seek to distance himself from the independents.</p>
<p>In announcing his intention to stand in the leadership ballot, Rudd positioned himself as a safe pair of hands by arguing that a “strong, proven, national leader” was needed to combat Tony Abbott. He also claimed that it was the pleas of people that motivated his run for the top job again.</p>
<h2>The problems for Labor</h2>
<p>Labor now finds itself in a very difficult position. After having so openly criticised Rudd’s leadership qualities, the Labor caucus now finds itself hoping the man they threw out three years ago still has the popularity and ability to galvanise support within the electorate and save their jobs.</p>
<p>This may be a masterstroke by Labor. After all, Bob Hawke replaced Bill Hayden on the day the election was called in 1983 and served as prime minister until 1991. On the other hand, this may yet signal to voters that Labor is disorganised and divided. Similar tactics of changing the leader was used by Labor in state elections in NSW and Queensland which led to very poor results.</p>
<p>In any case, Rudd and Labor have only a limited amount of time to try to gain the support and confidence of voters. The next short period in Australian politics will give an indication of whether this commotion was worthwhile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zareh Ghazarian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia’s 43rd federal parliament has proven that politics is anything but boring. Capping off a day when the two independent kingmakers, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, announced that they would not…Zareh Ghazarian, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156212013-06-28T05:28:30Z2013-06-28T05:28:30ZSwitching carbon from fixed price to ETS: should Rudd do it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26414/original/3rnv8qsv-1372396798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reducing carbon pollution has bi-partisan support. It wouldn't hurt to re-open debate on the method.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">takver/flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Carbon pricing has helped to destroy three political leaders - Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard - since 2009. Why would a re-minted Prime Minister Rudd want to touch such a poisoned chalice in the short time he has to recapture the hearts and minds of the Australian electorate? What are the economic and political risks of doing so?</p>
<p>Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the “Sorry” speech marked the high points of the Rudd Prime Ministership. When he baulked at taking the carbon pricing scheme through Parliament in 2010, Rudd lost many of the faithful who voted in the Labor Government in 2007. Having labelled climate change the “greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our time”, his fall was so much more damaging.</p>
<p>Many would say that Prime Minister Gillard’s tenure was doomed when she allowed the Opposition and the media to frame the fixed price of the emissions trading scheme as a carbon “tax”. What may have been a simple attempt to avoid being seen as pedantic over a definition proved to be a fatal own goal.</p>
<h2>The problems with a fixed price</h2>
<p>There have been three killer problems with the initial fixed price arrangement. One, it could be so easily labelled a tax – a problem at any time but worse when Gillard had ruled out a tax during the 2010 election campaign.</p>
<p>Two, in compensating low-income households by adjusting the tax system, the Government locked in the cost side of the ledger. Yet the revenue side is determined by the combination of the price and the volume of emissions. This is fine while the price is fixed, which it is for the first three years. It is not fine when the price is set by the emissions cap and by currently low international prices. Current expectations of the price for 2015-16 suggest there will be a hole in the budget worth many billions of dollars.</p>
<p>The third reason is that the current price of above $23 has never looked like being in line with international prices, most notably the European price. If it had turned out to be much lower, the Greens and others on the environmental advocacy side would have protested. Much higher, as it has turned out for now, and the business lobby and those opposed to emissions reduction in any form would have done the same.</p>
<h2>Reasons to switch quickly…</h2>
<p>There are three main arguments in 2013 for moving quickly from a fixed price to a market-priced mechanism with a fixed emissions cap. First, it would distinguish Rudd 13 from both old Rudd and the failures of the Gillard regime. Second, it would take the fight up to the Opposition by neutralising the “carbon tax” argument.</p>
<p>The members of the Government’s emerging leadership group are already consistently emphasising the use of carbon price rather than tax. It might even make climate change an election issue again. There is bipartisan support for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020. What does not have bipartisan support is the path to that objective. A real debate on the merits of an emissions trading scheme against the Opposition’s Direct Action policy has been sadly lacking to date.</p>
<p>Third, the change would open a constructive dialogue with business. Individual companies and their industry associations such as the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group have vigorously lobbied for a move away from the current fixed price. Ironically, if tight caps more aligned with tougher global climate change commitments become a reality, business groups may just as quickly turn back to fixed - in that scenario, low - prices.</p>
<h2>…and reasons to keep things the way they are</h2>
<p>Why might a move from a fixed to a floating price be a bad idea? The original rationale for the fixed price, remember, was largely to provide price certainty. The business lobby wanted a fixed low price, the Greens a fixed high price. The resulting compromise, also based on forecasts of international prices, was wrong and was always going to be so.</p>
<p>Assuming the market-based price would be well below $20 - perhaps as low as $10 a tonne - the revenue shortfall against the fixed compensation would be revealed. Compensation might need to be adjusted, at some political cost. A low price would be likely to trigger a major disagreement with the Greens, particularly since they already see the current fixed price as too low. Also, moving from a fixed price earlier than the scheduled date of July 2015 would require the setting of emissions caps, which is both politically difficult and hard work.</p>
<p>On balance, there are strong arguments for committing to an early move to a market-based emissions trading scheme as the core climate change policy. The arguments against are most likely manageable. Yet such a move will force Prime Minister Rudd to create a narrative that explains how he got it wrong the first time, connects with international action now taking place in countries such as China and the US and rekindles the climate change flame of Kevin 07.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Wood owns shares in Origin Energy, BHPBilliton and other ASX200 companies.</span></em></p>Carbon pricing has helped to destroy three political leaders - Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard - since 2009. Why would a re-minted Prime Minister Rudd want to touch such a poisoned chalice…Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155952013-06-28T05:04:45Z2013-06-28T05:04:45ZEthical lapses by journalists contributed to Gillard’s demise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26357/original/9225f5yw-1372378577.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How much of a role did the media play in the political demise of Julia Gillard as prime minister?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tony McDonough</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An integral power of the media is that of portrayal: the act of determining how people, events, ideas and organisations are described to the public, and therefore how they are perceived by the public. In this way, the media constructs for us our understanding of the world beyond our personal knowledge and experience.</p>
<p>For those of us who have never met Julia Gillard, our perceptions of her are based almost entirely on what we see, hear and read of her in the media. These perceptions are then reflected in public opinion polling, and the publication of these poll results tends to reinforce the perceptions. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.</p>
<p>Eventually, in this case, the poll results <a href="http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/482708/20130625/pm-julia-gillard-kevin-rudd-tony-abbott.htm">got so bad</a> that Gillard’s parliamentary colleagues <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/rudd_revenge_gillard_gone_oVg8nYB5lGzC2WkcTa346I">replaced her</a> as Labor leader with Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>So of course it is true to say the media played a part in the demise of Gillard as prime minister. The harder question is: did the media play a part that was ethically wrong?</p>
<p>Some elements of the media, notably commercial radio talkback shock jocks Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Chris Smith, clearly did. Their depictions of, and remarks about, Gillard were disgustingly offensive. Not only were they sexist, extremist and malicious, but in Jones’s case involved encouragement of the idea that the prime minister should be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsaVpepMyA8">dumped at sea</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Age newspaper’s editorial on June 22 called on Julia Gillard to resign.</span>
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<p>And then, of course, there was the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/pr-sacks-host-over-gay-grilling/story-e6frg996-1226664133319">infamous question</a> about the sexual orientation of the prime minister’s partner Tim Mathieson. In the world of commercial radio talkback it was open season. </p>
<p>Portrayals of Gillard by other elements of the mainstream media, especially the newspapers, were generally less grotesque. But they raised important ethical issues just the same. </p>
<p>The most common, and in some ways the most difficult to pin down, concerned the passively neutral way in which they covered the grossly disrespectful public attacks on her. </p>
<p>An egregious example was the coverage of the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3171851.htm">rally outside Parliament House</a> in 2011. The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, gave licence to sentiments such as “ditch the witch” and “bitch” by allowing himself to be photographed in front of placards bearing those words.</p>
<p>Of course the media had to cover that: it was news. The ethical challenge, which the media in general failed to meet, was to provide context that might have de-legitimised such crudity. They could easily have done so by obtaining, and giving substantial prominence to, voices of authority on such topics as political discourse and sexism.</p>
<p>Eventually, when the opportunity was handed to the media to call this behaviour for what it was, most outlets blew it completely. It was left to the international media to recognise the significance of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOPsxpMzYw4">“misogyny speech”</a>, in which Gillard assailed Abbott for his attitude towards her as a woman and his licensing of the crude language on the rally placards. </p>
<p>The Canberra press gallery could not see the context at all. For them it was all about the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3171851.htm">political entrails</a> entangling Gillard and the then-Speaker, Peter Slipper.</p>
<p>This failure to provide contextual completeness was one of the recurring ethical weaknesses in the media’s coverage of Gillard’s leadership, and was most evident in the way the media reported the relentless undermining of her leadership by Rudd’s backers. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Talkback radio host Alan Jones accused Julia Gillard’s father of ‘dying of shame’ among other invective comments about the former prime minister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAp/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
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<p>The <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/special-features/labor-mps-admit-they-have-begun-packing-their-offices-ahead-of-an-anticipated-election-wipeout/story-fnho52jp-1226658298358">media stunt</a> by two of Rudd’s supporters a couple of weeks ago in packing up their parliamentary offices because, so it was said, they were in despair at their re-election prospects, was a prime example. Nothing in the coverage suggested the contextual truth: that this was a media stunt by Rudd supporters to further undermine Gillard’s leadership.</p>
<p>The media can say that it is their job to impartially report what people say and do. This is true. But it is a failure of impartiality to suppress relevant available facts – in this case the known nature of this office-packing activity.</p>
<p>Impartiality is not achieved by passive neutrality. It is achieved by giving as full an account as possible, fairly and on the basis of an independent-minded assessment that gives due weight to all the available evidence.</p>
<p>The News Limited newspapers, especially The Australian, long ago gave up any pretence of impartiality in the coverage of national politics. They provided a regular diet of content calculated to turn voters against the former prime minister.</p>
<p>The Fairfax newspapers generally tried harder to be impartial, but there was a remarkable turnaround last week. The Age – as if its own pre-occupation with polls and personality politics had nothing to do with it – came out with a vacuous and hypocritical <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/for-the-sake-of-the-nation-ms-gillard-should-stand-aside-20130621-2oo6e.html">front page editorial</a> saying that Gillard had to go, otherwise the voters would have no chance of focusing on the issues. Really.</p>
<p>While the mainstream media were thus engaged in their own systemic failings, <a href="https://theconversation.com/misogynists-and-nut-jobs-gillard-stares-down-blogosphere-9045">elements of social media</a> were sordid beyond description, wallowing in pornographic depictions of the prime minister and making slurs of the most degrading kind. </p>
<p>Fortunately the mainstream media kept well away from this material, but it showed how the licensing of vulgarity in public debate can lead to magnified crudity in social media. This, in turn, can create an atmosphere in which even lower standards of public debate are tolerated.</p>
<p>The media’s role in the demise of Julia Gillard as prime minister was complex. Part of it was a consequence of the media just doing its job. But part of it also was the result of ethical failures. These included crude abuse and incitement to hatred on commercial radio talkback, while among other mainstream media the failure of impartiality, failure of contextual accuracy, and the willingness to exploit rather than challenge debased public discourse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An integral power of the media is that of portrayal: the act of determining how people, events, ideas and organisations are described to the public, and therefore how they are perceived by the public…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155912013-06-28T03:44:05Z2013-06-28T03:44:05ZWhat can Rudd do to win back business?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26373/original/hj5737tp-1372385135.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rudd needs to rebuild a relationship with the business community.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The relationship between the former Gillard government and business reached a very low point when last March, a peak business body complained that the business community was being treated with “a complete lack of respect”. The change in leadership offers an opportunity for the Labor party to mend this relationship.</p>
<p>It is difficult to point out a particular reason or event that caused the deterioration in the relationship between the previous government of Julia Gillard and the business community. </p>
<p>Such deterioration might even be surprising for some given that a commitment to “fixing” the mining tax — as a result of a very effective campaign by the mining companies — and not to introduce a carbon tax were an important part of the narrative surrounding the replacement of Kevin Rudd as prime minister in June 2010 and the subsequent election campaign. </p>
<p>However, there are two key sources of business discontentment. First, the lack of competitiveness as a nation; many businesses cannot compete with imports and exporters are finding it harder to compete internationally and some blame the government for that. Second, a perception, rightly or wrongly, that the government changes policy direction with the news cycle and legislation is rushed through parliament. </p>
<p>This diagnosis is important because it sets the broad parameters for defining what actions our new PM can take to repair the relationship with business. The issue of policy reversals and rushed legislation is complex and goes considerably beyond economics. Therefore, I will instead focus on our lack of competitiveness, its relationship with recent policies and what Kevin Rudd can do about it to improve the relationship with business.</p>
<h2>Improve our competitiveness</h2>
<p>The lack of competitiveness is by and large, but not exclusively, a result of the high Australian dollar caused by the mining boom. Regardless of who wins the election, our economic institutions (for example, floating exchange rate, independent central bank, and low tariffs) will likely result in the Aussie dollar making its way towards long-term purchasing power parity, and considerably below parity with the US dollar. </p>
<p>However, some of our lack of competitiveness is self-imposed and not driven by the vagaries of the global economy. This includes the increased burden of regulation and red tape, a phenomenon spanning different governments, and a cumbersome Industrial Relations system. Recognition by our PM that red tape has increased under the watch of Labor governments and a commitment to reducing it will offer at least a symbolic gesture that can contribute to a more positive attitude towards government by businesses.</p>
<h2>Address industrial relations concerns</h2>
<p>Industrial relations reform requires a more sophisticated discussion around two issues. First, if voters think that the current level of protection afforded to workers by the existing regime is appropriate, then the PM can at least ask the question of whether the same level of protection can be achieved by a simpler and less costly system. </p>
<p>Despite some existing rhetoric, real unit labour costs (non-farm) are lower now than when the Coalition lost the 2007 election. In fact, real unit labour costs fell steadily between 1985 and 2010, and have remained broadly stable since then. This means that it may be possible that a more efficient industrial relations system can lead to a better allocation of resources and lower business costs while maintaining real wages at current levels. </p>
<p>The second issue, more thorny for both Labor and the Coalition, is whether the existing level of protection is too high and increased competitiveness needs to be achieved at the cost of a further decline in real unit labour costs. </p>
<p>Framing industrial relations reform along these lines will allow the PM to ask the genuine question of whether our current industrial relations system can be improved without affecting the level of protection to workers, and this ought to appeal to businesses. This might also force the Coalition to more clearly articulate how they view these two interrelated issues, which would also be welcomed by businesses. </p>
<h2>Bring about tax reform</h2>
<p>The lack of competitiveness can also be associated with our inability to reform our tax system. While the Henry Review favoured a reduction in the company tax rate, other, more ambitious reforms have also been canvassed but discarded. Chiefly amongst these reforms was the introduction of an Allowance for Corporate Equity (ACE), which would have enabled firms to deduct an imputed return on equity. </p>
<p>By construction, an ACE eliminates the taxation of normal returns on equity, while still taxing economic rents. A normal return is the investor’s opportunity cost of capital. Economic rents are returns in excess of the normal return and are usually either firm or location-specific. </p>
<p>The former emerge, for example, because of a particular technology, know-how, or entrepreneurship skills. The latter are associated with the business’ location in Australia, such as in the case of mineral resources or oligopolistic industries. While tax reform is a long and hard road — just remember how long it took to introduce the GST — the new PM can signal Labor’s commitment to fundamental tax reform and articulate more precisely how tax reform can address the competitiveness challenge.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether Labor wins or loses the election, its relationship with business needs mending. This does not mean that Labor has to “do what business wants”. As I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/business-lobby-yearns-for-a-long-term-view-but-offers-a-contradictory-wish-list-13574">indicated elsewhere</a>, there is no coherent view from business on how best to address the significant challenges we face as a nation. Instead, the new PM has an opportunity to provide a more coherent narrative, which has been lacking over the last three years, of how if re-elected he intends to address our lack of competitiveness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Flavio Menezes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The relationship between the former Gillard government and business reached a very low point when last March, a peak business body complained that the business community was being treated with “a complete…Flavio Menezes, Professor of Economics, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155922013-06-28T02:32:03Z2013-06-28T02:32:03ZChange the name but ‘Gonski’ has a future under Rudd<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26402/original/2qcpfcyn-1372393844.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced changes to the ALP's education reforms.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Newly reinstated prime minister Kevin Rudd has publicly committed to Labor’s school reform agenda and extended the deadline for states and territories to sign up to the National Plan for School Improvement.</p>
<p>In a press conference, he has emphasised the plan goes far beyond school funding, to enhanced school autonomy, revised curriculum, greater performance testing and more. He also urged dropping the term “Gonski” in favour of a clearer term that better communicates the content and intent of the full schooling reform package to parents, teachers and voters. Better Schools seems his preferred handle. </p>
<p>(Conveniently, this is already the name of the government’s <a href="http://www.betterschools.gov.au/">official website</a> for the reforms.) </p>
<p>The National Plan for School Improvement was Julia Gillard’s political raison d’etre. She commissioned the Gonski Review - named after its author, businessman David Gonski - as education minister back in 2010 and spear-headed the intergovernmental negotiations as part of her <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/%E2%80%9C-national-plan-school-improvement%E2%80%9D-speech-national-press-club-canberra">education “crusade”</a>. She has said repeatedly that enabling every child to get a good education is the reason she went into politics.</p>
<p>But Gillard is no longer prime minister, and schools minister Peter Garrett who shared her commitment has also <a href="http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17775782/garrett-bows-out-of-parliament/">resigned</a>.</p>
<p>Rudd’s speech today suggests a similar level of commitment, but a fresh approach.</p>
<h2>A bumpy ride</h2>
<p>In case you missed it, mere hours before <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudd-wins-the-game-of-thrones-15573">Kevin Rudd returned as Labor leader</a>, the legislation underpinning the government’s landmark “Gonski reforms” <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4945">passed the Senate</a> unamended and after only a few hours of debate.</p>
<p>The Australian Education Bill (2013) now establishes needs-based school funding formula across all sectors injecting an additional A$14.5 billion for schools over six years – that is, if all states and territories sign up and contribute one third of the cash. It will also enshrine far greater Commonwealth involvement in schools to implement other elements of the National Plan.</p>
<p>Education is one of Labor’s most popular policy fields. And the “Gonski” reforms - particularly the school funding elements - remain a key point of difference with the Coalition, who say they will dismantle the reforms if an “overwhelming majority” of states and territories do not sign up. </p>
<p>However, as <a href="http://maralynparker.com/2013/06/27/julia-gillards-vision-for-schooling-will-live-on/">some analysts have suggested</a>, it is possible the reforms may drop lower on the government’s crowded to-do list, or be lost in the noise surrounding the leadership change.</p>
<p>And that may be a problem. Now that National Plan for School Improvement has passed the parliamentary hurdles, everything rides on the negotiations with the states towards Rudd’s new deadline of July 14. The new PM also indicated some flexibility on the funding offers on the table, stating he was a “reasonable man” and would have a “good think” about what was put to him by the premiers, emphasising, however, that at the end of the day, it was all about the national interest.</p>
<h2>The more things change…</h2>
<p>It is important to note that this isn’t the first leadership change since these intergovernmental negotiations began. Two other government leaders have been abruptly dumped by their colleagues – Victorian premier <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/baillieu-government-in-crisis-talks-after-mp-geoff-shaw-quits-liberal-party/story-e6frgczx-1226591459409">Ted Baillieu</a> and Northern Territory chief minister <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/3/13/politics/terry-mills-ousted-nt-chief-minister">Terry Mills</a>.</p>
<p>Despite this, negotiations have continued. The fact that the NSW Liberal government <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-backs-gillards-gonski-schools-plan-13692">quickly signed up</a>, while Tasmania’s Labor government <a href="http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/06/28/382321_tasmania-news.html">hasn’t yet</a>, demonstrates that this goes beyond party politics and individual leaders.</p>
<p>But signing up to these reforms involves <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-a-gonski-anyway-13599">more than simply caring about public schools</a> or <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4636848.html">accepting a “bucket of cash”</a>. There are hefty conditions attached. In order to receive additional Commonwealth funding for their public schools, state governments must contribute large funding increases from their own limited budgets, commit to grow this funding by at least 3% per year, and agree to unprecedented Commonwealth involvement in the running of schools and school systems, including decision-making processes, additional reporting, and changes to teacher training and support. </p>
<p>The complex and inadequately scrutinised legislation raises additional questions about the scope and impact of the many ministerial directives and Commonwealth regulations which could even be <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/gonski-reforms-facing-a-constitutional-challenge/story-fn59niix-1226667834572">unconstitutional</a>. Remember, this unprecedented power over schooling – including the power to financially penalise states and perhaps even schools that don’t do as the government wants - would be in the hands of whoever wins the federal election – for example, Tony Abbott.</p>
<h2>State of play</h2>
<p>Despite concerns about how the reforms might jeopardise <a href="http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/media_room/media_releases/tasmania_committed_to_pursuing_gonski">GST revenue</a>, Tasmania is reportedly on <a href="http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1595847/state-on-cusp-of-gonski-resolution/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer1332d&utm_medium=twitter">the cusp of signing up</a>, and is <a href="http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/media_room/media_releases/tasmania_committed_to_pursuing_gonski">confident of working constructively</a> with Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia still appear unlikely to sign up, but haven’t <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/queensland-education-minister-johnpaul-langbroek-says-miracle-is-needed-for-state-to-sign-up-to-gonski-schools-reform/story-fnii5v70-1226670384088">completely closed the door</a>. These governments may yet be angling for a more generous offer, like <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/denis-napthine-enticed-by-gonski-lotto/story-fn59niix-1226664169434">that offered to</a> Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory recently. On this issue, Rudd has indicated some flexibility.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/victoria-rejects-gonski-offer-20130626-2owpb.html">Victoria’s counter-offer to the Commonwealth this week</a> is one such example. It is a striking contrast to their earlier statements that additional funding of this magnitude was not required. It is also seems to contradict their significant funding cuts to schools and TAFEs since coming to power in 2010. </p>
<p>While this new offer is undoubtedly better for Victorian students - <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/gonski-schools-plan-pass-the-senate/4782554">$2.8bn extra over six years</a> - it is unclear where this money would come from. A lot rides on the new treasurer Chris Bowen’s approach to the budget. Victoria also demanded it retains the right to distribute the funding as it sees fit - an odd demand, considering this right was never in jeopardy.</p>
<p>We don’t yet know who Rudd’s new schools minister will be, although <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=GB6">Senator Jacinta Collins</a> is a strong contender. As the parliamentary secretary for school education, she is already well versed in the minutiae of the reforms, and her promotion on Wednesday night to manager of government business in the Senate and deputy leader of the government in the Senate indicate support and respect from the Rudd team.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/26/gonski-school-education-reforms-senate">Gillard government was very clear</a> that states that do not sign up do not get extra funding for their public schools, a position reflected in the legislation that has separate funding formulae for public schools in participating versus nonparticipating states. Rudd’s position on this is not known – and the possibility of amending or getting around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-government-would-struggle-to-repeal-gonski-hybrid-13512">“Abbott-proofed”</a> legislation on this matter is questionable, at least in the short term, even if parliament returns for a final sitting before a later election date, as hinted by Rudd in his comment about “getting policy settings right” and “fresh ideas”. </p>
<h2>Why it can’t stop now</h2>
<p>The reforms have the potential to improve on the current funding arrangements in many ways. But they are still unfinished. If no progress is made in the intergovernmental negotiations, the result would arguably be worse than the situation the reforms were supposed to fix.</p>
<p>It would mean additional funds are allocated to Catholic and Independent schools (at least in the short term), and to public schools in NSW, South Australia and the ACT. But the majority of public schools – those in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory who have not yet signed up – would be left with an unchanged or worse funding situation.</p>
<p>Given disadvantage is concentrated in public schools, these incomplete reforms could therefore exacerbate the inequalities and the miss-matched decision-making powers that Gonski sought to expel from Australia’s education system. This is because the legislation increases the control and involvement of the level of government furthest removed from classrooms.</p>
<p>The past few days have shown that 24 hours is a long time in politics. Many weeks or even months remain until the federal election. If more states sign up, it is likely the reforms will remain – bringing additional funding to schools (especially public schools) and additional control over them to whoever wins that election. If more states do not, then much more is up in the air.</p>
<p><em>This piece was updated to reflect the announcement made by Kevin Rudd on schools funding reform on Friday afternoon.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bronwyn Hinz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Newly reinstated prime minister Kevin Rudd has publicly committed to Labor’s school reform agenda and extended the deadline for states and territories to sign up to the National Plan for School Improvement…Bronwyn Hinz, PhD Candidate and Tutor, School of Social and Political Sciences & Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155982013-06-27T20:31:32Z2013-06-27T20:31:32ZOnce bitten, twice shy: Labor again betrays the Australian people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26322/original/6fqgfwkw-1372313341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is the decision to re-install Kevin Rudd as leader of the ALP and of the country an affront to Australian democracy?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The decision by the Labor caucus to minimise the electoral damage in September and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/rudd-prevails-over-gillard-in-leadership-ballot/4783422">return Kevin Rudd</a> to the party leadership was short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive. </p>
<p>More importantly, it operated to confirm the damaging sense, growing over recent decades among the Australian public, that politicians act cynically in their own interests. And with his decision to not move a motion of no confidence in the new administration, opposition leader Tony Abbott made his own contribution to the growing problem of voter alienation.</p>
<p>“They’re just in it for themselves” is the sentiment which best captures how the average voter currently thinks about their democratically-elected political representatives. Why did 57 caucus members vote to reinstate Rudd as prime minister on Wednesday? Because they were worried about their own seats – and therefore their jobs – come the election.</p>
<p>Labor powerbroker Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/shorten-forced-to-swing-the-axe-20130626-2oxln.html">provided the public rationale</a> for the caucus decision half an hour before the vote. He reminded Labor parliamentarians that the main game was the September election, and the primary objective was keeping Abbott out of Kirribilli House. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/men-flay-gillard-in-poll-15228">polls</a> had long said that Labor would not achieve that primary objective while led by Julia Gillard. The only alternative was Rudd. It was a no-brainer.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that Shorten was not being genuine in that speech. His passionate defence of his party’s policies against those of the opposition may even be admirable. But in equating the interests of his party with the interests of the nation, he – and the Labor caucus – made the gravest of political mistakes for the second time.</p>
<p>The mistake was to ignore the question which for decades now has been nibbling at the integrity of Western parliamentary democracies. How can the relationship between state and citizen be repaired?</p>
<p>For the past 30 years, the relationship between state and citizen has been in what seems a permanent decline. Governments, with the assistance of journalists in the mass media and increasingly meek and ineffectual parliaments, have imposed wave after wave of significant, way-of-life-changing reform on voters, who rarely get a say on its implementation. </p>
<p>Sometimes that reform is genuinely in the public interest, though the public may not know it yet. A more expansive immigration program and a scheme to reduce carbon dioxide pollution are instances in Australia. </p>
<p>However, there are some occasions that reform is demonstrably not in the public interest, including the removal of workers’ protections, the replacement of income and profit-based taxes by consumption taxes, and the pursuit of budget surpluses over public infrastructure. </p>
<p>But only rarely are voters offered a genuine choice between alternatives. More often than not, the major parties agree at the level of fundamental philosophy, so that the choice available to voters is akin to a customer who prefers yellow paint being confronted by a shelf displaying different shades of brown.</p>
<p>The result is an increasingly cynical electorate which becomes ever more despondent about the prospect of turning up to the local primary school every three years to vote. Last year <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institute-poll-2012-public-opinion-and-foreign-policy">the Lowy Institute found</a> that only 39 per cent of young Australians were prepared to say they backed democracy unequivocally. What to do about this cynicism is the key question at the heart of democratic governance in Australia today.</p>
<p>This is not an argument for base populism: not for running opinion poll-driven administrations which pander as much to majority prejudice as they do to genuine public interest needs. Rather, it is an argument for governments - and those politicians who inhabit them - to take much more seriously their responsibilities as democratic representatives of the people. </p>
<p>That is why the panicked decision of the Labor caucus must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Yes, Westminster conventions allow it. Yes, Labor was facing a probable annihilation under Gillard. But no, political parties should not be allowed to put their own private interests before the broader public good in a way that further encourages dangerous voter cynicism.</p>
<p>One does not need to be a supporter of Abbott or the Coalition to support a no confidence motion. It is enough to be a supporter of democratic renewal. The voting public were entitled to have the new administration tested by the cross-benchers in their representative institution. </p>
<p>However, despite three years of running perhaps the most negative and cynical opposition in modern Australian political history, Abbott baulked at the final chance to move a motion of no confidence in the new Rudd administration. In this way, he merely participated in what increasingly appears to be, to borrow <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3149592.htm">his own phrase</a>, a “conspiracy of the parliament against the people”.</p>
<p>In any case, this latest switch will not help Labor. One of the expressions of contemporary voter cynicism is that we prefer the idea of the leader who isn’t: when Rudd was prime minister, Gillard was preferred; when Malcolm Turnbull was opposition leader, Joe Hockey was popular. </p>
<p>Now we prefer Rudd and Abbott to Gillard, and Turnbull to Abbott. Anger at the self-serving nature of Wednesday’s decision will soon overwhelm any honeymoon popularity Rudd attracts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decision by the Labor caucus to minimise the electoral damage in September and return Kevin Rudd to the party leadership was short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive. More importantly, it operated…Russell Marks, Honorary Research Associate, School of Social Sciences, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155882013-06-27T20:30:40Z2013-06-27T20:30:40ZThe political tragedy of Julia Gillard<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26336/original/dgnfshbj-1372326694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While she may look elsewhere, ultimately Julia Gillard has no-one to blame for her political demise but herself.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of the 2012 winter, an influential supporter of Julia Gillard laid out for me the intricacies of the Labor caucus’ power structures, the labour movement’s web of personal antagonisms and the federal government’s dire predicament. At the end of his treatise, with a wide-eyed look of resignation and a despairing tone, he summed up:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The whole show is f—ed and no-one can work out how to unf— it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few weeks later, a highly experienced Labor figure with deep knowledge of public attitudes to the Gillard government and how to harness voter support shared his assessment. He’d concluded that Labor was headed for defeat and had lost the capacity to independently influence the 2013 election outcome because the bulk of voters had lost any desire to listen to the government. </p>
<p>An avowed agnostic on the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard question, he averred that the only way Labor could re-enter serious consideration would be if the Liberal-National Coalition made a series of major public blunders.</p>
<p>Both encounters came after the introduction of the carbon tax, which Gillard had consistently told her MPs would be the moment when the dark electoral clouds would part for the government, and only a few months after Gillard had thrashed Rudd in a caucus ballot and declared that the leadership question had been settled for all time.</p>
<p>And yet, Gillard managed to hang on as Labor leader for almost another year, right up until Wednesday of this week. With Gillard having surrendered the leadership to Rudd in decisive but not overwhelming fashion, it seems that 26 Labor MPs who in February last year backed Gillard found, to borrow the aforementioned Gillard supporter’s eloquent term, a way to “unf—” the government. They did so by switching back to the man Gillard thought she’d vanquished.</p>
<p>In doing so, they have at least created the possibility that the ALP can moderate, or perhaps even avoid, the electoral nightmare that was likely to consume the nation’s oldest political party. Or maybe not. Rudd’s return affords an opportunity for Labor, but that is all.</p>
<p>The caucus’ decision also implies, heavily and unavoidably, that it made a mistake by elevating Gillard to the leadership on June 24, 2010.</p>
<p>The truth is that the Australian Labor Party nationally has in the past three years experienced its most rancorous divisions since the split of the 1950s. Unlike the period of the split, which occurred in opposition and guaranteed many more years of it, the party has endured these divisions while holding office, and the enmities have, for the most part, grown from ego rather than ideology.</p>
<p>If the events of the past few days are to have any meaning, they need to be seen in the context of what has happened to the Government since early 2010. First things first: Julia Gillard’s downfall as prime minister is one of the greatest personal tragedies in Australian politics.</p>
<p>It is a tragedy because Gillard’s ambition ultimately exceeded her political talent, and to the very end she would not see it. Her <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/julia-gillard-speaks-about-defeat/4783950">speech</a> delivered after her caucus defeat on Wednesday night attributed her removal as leader to only two causes: a loss of fortitude among past supporters who buckled under external pressure and sexism directed at her as the nation’s first female prime minister.</p>
<p>There was no acknowledgement that she had lost the confidence of most of her colleagues because of her own performance.</p>
<p>The pattern of failing to fully own her errors was set early during the 2010 election campaign when she said that she would no longer conform to her handlers’ directives and from that point voters would see <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/the-pulse/gillard-vows-to-unleash-the-real-me-as-polls-flatline-20100802-111q2.html">“the real Julia”</a>. Notably, it was the advisers who had made the big mistakes. Her mistake had been to follow their advice.</p>
<p>Gillard had been a brilliant deputy to Rudd, an earthy foil to his high-flown nerdishness. But as leader, she rarely looked comfortable and did not seem at ease with the natural authority that comes with the nation’s highest political office.</p>
<p>Nor did she have the benefit of a deputy who could perform as well as she had. Indeed, in Wayne Swan she had one of the least effective communicators modern politics has seen. It has become a mantra for Labor and its supporters to bemoan the fact it does not get the credit it deserves for its handling of the economy.</p>
<p>The media gets the blame which, to a degree, it should. But Swan was charged with selling Labor’s economic policy from December 2004 until last Wednesday. Should he not shoulder most of the responsibility?</p>
<p>Gillard’s defenders in the party room and in the electorate produce a list of reasons for her removal: Rudd’s refusal to accept his loss of the leadership and leaks aimed at harming her; sexism; a ferocious, sometimes unhinged approach from some people in the opposition; harsh treatment by the media.</p>
<p>There is something to all of them. She definitely was the target of vicious, sexist attacks. The media was quick to turn on her and some elements were relentless in their dismissive attitude. The opposition treated her time as prime minister as one unbroken crisis.</p>
<p>And Rudd did undermine Gillard. The leaks against her during her first weeks as leader either came from Rudd or people sympathetic to him and they hurt her. One revealed that she had <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/07/28/leaks-tarnish-gillards-shine/">opposed</a> a rise in welfare payments chiefly on the basis of Labor’s political interests.</p>
<p>Another far more damaging leak, put directly to Gillard during an appearance at the National Press Club, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/rudd-denies-leaking-details-of-leadership-challenge-deal-20100716-10e75.html">suggested</a> that during a long meeting with Rudd on June 23, 2010, she had undertaken to give him several months to repair his faltering leadership. During a break in the meeting, she was told by her supporters that she already had the caucus numbers stitched up, whereupon she returned to Rudd and withdrew her undertaking: she was challenging him.</p>
<p>To this day, this leak is regarded by many on the Labor side as appalling treachery, which it was. But one thing needs to be said: it has not been challenged successfully on the grounds of veracity. The real damage was not in the act of leaking but in its substance, which presented Gillard as someone who would put her ambition ahead of her word.</p>
<p>From that moment, her troubles never left her. Her trustworthiness was in question but voters were still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt – until she committed after the 2010 election to a carbon tax.</p>
<p>Gillard favoured an emissions trading scheme until early 2010, when in the face of an onslaught by Tony Abbott and some bad polls she urged Rudd very strongly to put the policy on ice until there was a cross-party consensus. Rudd, revealing his own severe propensity for misjudgement, accepted that advice. Then Gillard replaced him as leader and once again favoured an ETS. </p>
<p>During the 2010 election campaign, Gillard promised to refer the issue to a hazily-designed <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/pm-pledges-peoples-assembly-on-climate-20100722-10myh.html">“people’s assembly”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCwoj35d3M">vowed</a> there would be no carbon tax. After the election, under pressure from the Greens, she dropped the idea of the assembly and adopted a temporary carbon tax as Labor policy. But, incredibly, rather than emphasising its temporary nature and perhaps calling it a levy, which has a different meaning for many voters, she declared that she was happy to call it a tax.</p>
<p>That sealed the trustworthiness question and it’s why there was no recovery in Labor’s polling numbers after July 1 last year. Too many voters resented the way she had pursued the policy much more than the policy itself.</p>
<p>The argument in defence of Julia Gillard is that her government managed to get hundreds of pieces of legislation through a parliament in which Labor did not have majorities in its right in either house. This included the signature reforms of new education funding arrangements and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Again, the argument has merit.</p>
<p>But the story must also include the failed idea of a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/no-refugee-centre-for-us-east-timor-20110328-1cdlo.html">processing centre in East Timor</a>, the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/slipperhood-architect-gets-his-christmas-wish-20111124-1nx7t.html">enlisting of Peter Slipper</a> as Speaker of the House, the crazy idea of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/gillard-sets-september-14-election-date/story-e6frfkp9-1226565039127">setting a September election date</a> in January and the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pm-does-the-softshoe-reshuffle-20130202-2dra8.html">departure of two Cabinet members</a> two days after the announcement, the costly architecture of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-mining-and-governing-policy-made-on-the-fly-is-likely-to-flop-12261">minerals resource rent tax</a>, and the threat in late 2011 to force a parliamentary vote on the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/mps-opposition-scuttles-gillards-malaysia-swap-deal-20111013-1llvb.html">Malaysia solution</a> as a wedge tactic against the Coalition which was withdrawn when she realised she would lose.</p>
<p>Worst of all, it must also include the oft-repeated pledge by Gillard and Swan to <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/treasurer-wayne-swan-to-pledge-to-deliver-15-billion-budget-surplus-this-year/story-e6freooo-1226349256978">return the budget to surplus</a> this year. The signs were there in mid-2012 they could not deliver but they kept promising it until the end of the year. Incredible.</p>
<p>Neither Rudd nor the media nor pollsters nor the nation’s sexists forced these errors. They were entirely the work of a politician who, like all leaders, was fuelled by immense personal ambition but who could not learn from her mistakes. Sadly, the journey Gillard took to the summit deprived her of some of the skills and the sense of legitimacy she needed to fully inhabit the role she had sought so desperately.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Carney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the middle of the 2012 winter, an influential supporter of Julia Gillard laid out for me the intricacies of the Labor caucus’ power structures, the labour movement’s web of personal antagonisms and…Shaun Carney, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156002013-06-27T20:30:24Z2013-06-27T20:30:24ZGrattan on Friday: Kevin Rudd and the narrative of the house<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26331/original/xmz6nnb9-1372319536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd wants to mess with Tony Abbott's head.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2010 PM Kevin Rudd faced off against opposition leader Tony Abbott at the National Press Club in a debate about health policy.</p>
<p>Three months later Rudd would be deposed by his own party. One criticism by colleagues was that he’d become obsessed with health, tramping around the nation’s hospitals with his eye off other areas.</p>
<p>But on that March day he trounced Abbott who, as a former health minister, should have been competitive. The incident underscores the strength of Rudd as campaigner.</p>
<p>Rudd yesterday was challenging Abbott to debate him on all sorts of issues. “We are going to be debating debt and deficit at the National Press Club”, he said.</p>
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<p>We’re back to the future in more than just the fact of Rudd’s resurrection.</p>
<p>You can feel the busyness in the air, as he’s being briefed to the eyeballs.</p>
<p>Politically, he’s messing with his opponent’s mind, as well as directing the voters’ gaze away from the government’s problems to the sunny uplands of vision and optimism.</p>
<p>Never mind that half a dozen ministers jumped off the frontbench (without even having to be pushed) when he defeated Julia Gillard, or that Craig Emerson, Peter Garrett and Stephen Smith - who remains Defence Minister - have announced this week they will quit parliament.</p>
<p>Such departures are hardly votes of confidence in his powers as electoral saviour. Smith, who holds a marginal seat in West Australia, said he could not take another three years after serving two decades. But earlier this term, when Gillard’s leadership was in trouble and Rudd was considered unacceptable, Smith’s name was canvassed as a possible compromise candidate. Presumably at that stage he intended to stay on.</p>
<p>Any other leader would be discombobulated by the shambles. But not Rudd. He is being very consultative because he is aware of all that old criticism of his style, but at heart he’s a one-man band.</p>
<p>He can also live in a parallel universe. Who else would have exhorted MPs, in his first remarks in the House as restored PM, to “let us try, just try, to be a little kinder and gentler with each other in the further deliberations of this parliament”?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, he sailed through yesterday’s question time – the last of the hung parliament – with little trouble.</p>
<p>No, he wouldn’t provide an election date but strongly indicated he’d vary Gillard’s September 14. He said had to talk with colleagues, and consider the local government referendum (which has its own timetable requirements), the early-September G20 meeting in St Petersburg, and the clash with Yom Kippur.</p>
<p>Whatever the considerations, he probably wants a date chosen by him not her. Anyway, why wouldn’t he give the Liberals, who’ve been making their arrangements around the date Gillard so conveniently announced, a more uncertain environment? The speculation is that an August date is possible - but that would mean ditching the referendum.</p>
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<p>He brushed off attacks on his integrity, over breaking his pledge not to challenge Gillard, by simply turning the tables, pointing to Abbott’s statements about Malcolm Turnbull when the latter was opposition leader. “I think it’s not a time for pots calling kettles black”.</p>
<p>The Liberals have a mountain of negative character references about Rudd from Labor colleagues who have previously unloaded on him. The grabs are devastating.</p>
<p>But the question is: has the public factored that in? After all, Rudd has been sky high in the opinion polls well after many of these things were said.</p>
<p>If those lines have lost their bite, the opposition will have to be careful about dwelling on them excessively.</p>
<p>Rudd yesterday declared there has been too much negativity – that Australians are looking for “a positive vision”. Gillard was always painting Abbott as Mr Negativity; the pitch had some success but she was a poor messenger. Rudd should be able to drive the point home more forcefully (with the qualification that Abbott knows he has a problem and has been working on the positives).</p>
<p>Mark Latham as Labor leader used to trot out the “ladder of opportunity” as his storyline. Rudd’s narrative, which got a major workout yesterday, is that of the house.</p>
<p>The Labor party, he said, wants to build the house up. “It takes time, brick by brick, laying the foundations, setting the walls, installing the roof. This is how we see the task of nation building.”</p>
<p>Even defence and emergency management are part of the house story. “These are all about how we maintain the securty of the house. We are building the walls to make sure they are robust against those threats which may come against us”.</p>
<p>The roof is for the protection of all – including the disabled, the sick, the pensioners.</p>
<p>But Abbott’s politics “is about not building the house up. His comfort zone is tearing the house down”.</p>
<p>Get used to the house, a simple political metaphor in a country big on home ownership.</p>
<p>Rudd’s strategy is about making people feel good about themselves and their nation, having them think on what is going well, even while some things need improving, and seeking to neutralise Abbott’s exploitation of their discontents.</p>
<p>He’ll also promote the idea of “new” more constructive politics, which elevates the discourse into something more civil and constructive, seeking to cast Abbott as practicing aggressive “old” politics. This picks up on community disillusionment with the way politics has been operating especially in the period of the hung parliament.</p>
<p>The public opinion polls and the parties’ own tracking will be important for both sides in formulating their tactics as the election nears. This week’s huge change in Labor has opened something of a vacuum. We don’t know whether people will be cynical about Rudd’s duplicity and less enamoured when they see him day to day, or whether they will be (and stay) as enthusiastic as ever about the man they didn’t want thrown out.</p>
<p>In other words, has Rudd Mark 2 returned to power coated with teflon? If he has, the Coalition will have to adapt its tactics quickly.</p>
<p>Rudd is talking buzz words and ideas – energy, engaging with young people and “cooking with gas”, politicians working together rather than shouting at each other all the time.</p>
<p>He’s creating a sense of momentum. The new ministry is expected today; the swearing in will be Monday. He’ll talk to Victorian premier Denis Napthine about the Gonski funding ASAP. Can he clinch a deal where Gillard failed? Apparently Rudd is now quite keen on Gonski despite some earlier speculation that he wasn’t.</p>
<p>He plans to fulfil Gillard’s commitment to visit Indonesia for leadership talks next week. She was accused of making the trip a political exercise, even though it is part of a regular dialogue. If he goes Rudd will be able to put a more “statesman” frame around it; he may also emerge appearing to have “done something” on boats (whether or not it amounts to anything substantial).</p>
<p>The boats issue is one of the most difficult policy challenges he has. In search of a solution, he meanwhile lectures Abbott about the need for the opposition leader to get briefed.</p>
<p>Another challenge is dealing with the business community. He has sent the signal that he wants to improve what has become a very bad relationship. Even if there were a superficial improvement, however, it is hard to see big or small business doing anything but being polite, while waiting in the expectation of a change of government.</p>
<p>What success the Rudd government has in selling its economic credentials to the wider community will partly depend on how well new Treasurer Chris Bowen performs. Wayne Swan has been widely seen as an ineffective salesman of Australia’s economic successes. Bowen versus Joe Hockey, who has been presenting more sharply in recent months, will be an interesting match up.</p>
<p>Around Labor, one of the big questions is whether Rudd will be be different second time round. A little, no doubt – anyone who’s been to political hell and back will have learned a bit.</p>
<p>Has he changed fundamentally? Probably not. But then, for Labor’s purposes just now, he probably does not need to have remade himself. If, between now and the election, Labor had a reprise of Kevin 07 that would suit it just fine.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In March 2010 PM Kevin Rudd faced off against opposition leader Tony Abbott at the National Press Club in a debate about health policy. Three months later Rudd would be deposed by his own party. One criticism…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/152242013-06-27T04:47:22Z2013-06-27T04:47:22ZMen at the helm – mad, bad and dangerous to know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/25956/original/d46ndbbg-1371777761.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C667&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sixties style - Mad Men characters Roger Sterling and Don Draper still show men how it's done in business and politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor may have “ditched the witch”, but does the ejection of Julia Gillard from her seat of power close the book on the debate about sexism that she championed and the role of women in leadership? </p>
<p>Our first female prime minister is gone, but the feminist challenges she raised, and the battles she fought, are far from forgotten. They continue to sound their clarion call from the depths of a business and political culture that regresses increasingly to the <em>Mad Men</em> days. </p>
<p>We may think that we have left behind the attitudes found in the award-winning television series, where sexism and discrimination is overt and celebrated, but the legacy of the 1960’s remains deeply embedded in our DNA and that of our organisations.</p>
<p>But corporate and government leaders have an influence footprint that transcends the boundaries of these organisations, and they must exercise it by showing the way for a more mature, ethical and sustainable society where men and women are equal partners.</p>
<h2>Board games</h2>
<p>Thanks to the big stick of the ASX corporate governance guidelines, <a href="http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics">women now hold 15.6%</a> of board seats compared to 8.3% three years ago. However, the rate of progress has stalled. In 2011, 68 women were appointed to the boards of ASX 200 companies. In 2012, this dropped to 41 and in 2013 there have been just nine appointments.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.mallesons.com/Documents/Directions_2013_Final.pdf">2013 report</a> by law firm King & Wood Mallesons found that only 13% of directors regarded diversity as a key priority, compared to 63% the previous year. According to the authors, directors believe the diversity issue has been adequately dealt with. Good intentions have also not translated into action on gender issues: four in 10 companies do not have policies or targets in place, according to a <a href="http://www.bain.com/offices/australia/en_us/publications/creating-a-positive-cycle.aspx">2013 gender parity report</a> by <a href="http://www.bain.com/">Bain & Company</a> and <a href="http://www.cew.org.au/">Chief Executive Women</a>.</p>
<p>Failure to harness female talent continues for the following reasons:</p>
<p>First, there is a dissonance between corporate citizenship and profitability. Business has a social licence to operate irrespective of commitment to diversity. Reputational capital is acknowledged as a major strategic asset; however, most companies under-invest in corporate citizenship efforts, including diversity, and their <a href="http://landor.com/#!/talk/articles-publications/articles/2012-global-corporate-reputation-index-citizenship-deficits-limit-reputations/">citizenship ratings</a> significantly lag their ratings on other basic performance attributes, such as quality and innovation.</p>
<p>Second, the business case is too often biased towards one-dimensional frameworks that encourage perverse drivers of business practice that privileges the short term and immediate over the sustainable and ethical. It is these very business frameworks that led to the corporate disasters associated with GFC and more recent examples of corporate malfeasance. They treat female labour as disposable, embracing or dispensing with it according to the vagaries of the economy.</p>
<h2>Art of leadership</h2>
<p>Third, it is hard to shift old-aged paradigms that align leadership with masculinity in the minds of both men and women. </p>
<p>By the sixth iteration, popular-culture heroes like James Bond might be expected to portray a softer, more sensitive male presence. Not so Daniel Craig, the most recent 007, who has been described as an ideally muscular Bond, less of a gentleman and more of a street fighter than previous incarnations. </p>
<p>In the business world, such masculine language and imagery has been co-opted to portray leadership – often as individualistic acts with back-stories of larger-than-life characters. Brash, driven, tough, the new adventurer, bold enough to challenge the status quo, leader as a helmsman, captain of a ship, eager and fearless young entrepreneur, corporate saviour - these are the descriptors for CEOs of the future, highlighted in recent research from Fortune 500, <a href="http://www.haygroup.com/au/">Hay group</a>, IBM and <a href="https://www.kornferry.com/">Korn/Ferry</a>.</p>
<p>While many of these traits raise a man’s status in masculine cultures such as Australia and the US, where competitiveness, assertiveness and ambition are valued, they are likely to make a woman less acceptable. Moreover, society reinforces masculinity at the helm. <a href="http://workingwithourselves.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/executive-presence-report-g-dagley-2013.pdf">Recent Australian research</a> indicates that both men and women nominate men as leadership exemplars, with women nominating men more often than men do. </p>
<h2>More than words can say</h2>
<p>Fourth, is the vilification of women. While subtle, hidden and subversive sexism has been acknowledged as a benign but virulent force that continues to stymie women’s progress, the rise of shameless and overt vilification of women is of major concern. </p>
<p>I refer to the increasing culture of tirade against female authority and the disrespectful depiction of women as an acceptable part of infotainment, a form of larrikinism that brings comedic levity to our political debate. </p>
<p>The mock menu of “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – Small breasts, Huge Thighs & Big Red Box…” was not an aberration. It was the continuation of a verbal-abuse diet that was regularly meted out with impunity, a slap on the wrist at most: “ditch the witch”, “a menopausal monster”, “a lying cow”, “a horrible mouth on legs” and “political slut”, “get over it Julia, you’ve got a big arse”.</p>
<p>This ranting is not benign humour but the slippery slope of degradation that normalises disrespect for women in everyday discourse and is responsible, in part, for the unconscionable abuse and violence against women in our society. It provides a red light to masculine cultures, such as the defence forces that are once again exposed for recidivist sexism and misogyny at the highest ranks, with footage of soldiers engaged in sex. It fuels the default position of sporting bodies with displays of off-the-cuff commentary from high-level sporting officials that women should “shut up in public”.</p>
<p>As a society we hold ambiguous feelings towards women, particularly those at the helm, and attempts to address discrimination and sexism so far have been insufficient. More leadership is needed now. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Piterman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor may have “ditched the witch”, but does the ejection of Julia Gillard from her seat of power close the book on the debate about sexism that she championed and the role of women in leadership? Our…Hannah Piterman, Adjunct Associate professor, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155722013-06-27T04:44:17Z2013-06-27T04:44:17ZRudd’s return marks the victory of opportunist politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26286/original/3zjsz6vm-1372302625.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ultimately, it was Julia Gillard's failure to find a 'narrative' to weave her policies together that cost her the Labor leadership to a more opportunistic Kevin Rudd.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The morning Julia Gillard was deposed as Australia’s prime minister many of the British newspapers carried a picture of her <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2348746/Julia-Gillard-LOSES-leadership-contest-challenging-old-rival-Kevin-Rudd.html">knitting a present</a> for the future heir to the British (and presumably) Australian throne. </p>
<p>There was something very sad in this image. How had Gillard, once attacked for living in a house with an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/Spike/Gillard-bares-all/2005/01/23/1106415457103.html">empty fruit bowl</a>, come to this?</p>
<p>Watching a coup via distant internet is bizarre. The ABC news site carried a series of mindless tweets, presumably because the blogosphere can tolerate anything but silence. My Facebook messages breathed indignation, with most of my friends convinced Gillard was the victim of misogynist bullying.</p>
<p>I would be more convinced of this had Gillard herself not come to power by a similar, if less anticipated, coup. It is hard to accept the thesis that her fall was due to the machinations of nasty male machine politicians when she was made prime minister by similar means. She has also endorsed one of the less impressive party apparatchiks for the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3785427.htm">seat of Batman</a> despite Labor’s commitment to finding more safe seats for women.</p>
<p>It is certainly true, as Anne Summers has <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/abbott-needs-more-women-at-the-top-20130612-2o48q.html">elegantly demonstrated</a>, that Gillard was constantly assailed by a viciousness that was clearly infused by deep-seated - indeed, pathological - sexism. It is also true that the concerted campaign of the Murdoch press and some of our shock jocks to deny her legitimacy has few parallels in recent history: although Whitlam faced a similar campaign of vituperation.</p>
<p>But when you remember that Gillard was elected leader because a majority of the Labor caucus believed she had a better chance of winning in 2010 than Rudd did, it is difficult to blame those caucus members who applied a similar logic three years later in deposing her. Remember, too, that she and Rudd combined their support to overthrow Kim Beazley as Labor leader. It was also her performance as deputy prime minister that convinced her colleagues she was a better bet than Rudd.</p>
<p>The real cause for regret is that just as she found it difficult to give a convincing explanation of how her policies would differ from Rudd’s, his return is equally without any commitment to a significant shift in vision for Australia. Should he bring forward the election date to August he can only run on the record of the current government, while simultaneously explaining why its leader needed to be replaced. This is the same dilemma Gillard faced last time.</p>
<p>The polls that caucus read three years ago let them down, leading to a hung parliament (which Gillard managed with remarkable political skill). My hunch is that caucus has similarly misread current polls. Many people will have a vague sense of satisfaction that what was portrayed as a stab in the back has now been avenged, but will still vote to change the government.</p>
<p>In the end Rudd may save a few seats in Queensland and NSW, but he cannot save the government. The most interesting question about Rudd is whether he will stay on as Leader of the Opposition, and indeed whether his remaining colleagues would want him. One wonders what deals may have been done to win over Bill Shorten, whose role as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/bill-shorten-the-man-who-knifed-two-prime-ministers/story-fnho52ip-1226670420184">Labor kingmaker</a> has now been further cemented.</p>
<p>One larger political question revolves around whether Rudd can lift the Labor vote sufficiently to deny Abbott control of the Senate. Whether a post-election ALP will have the emotional and intellectual resources to re-imagine themselves as a convincing party of government is also up for debate.</p>
<p>Unfortunately Gillard and Rudd shared an unwillingness to maintain a convincing progressive position when put under pressure. Rudd gave way on climate change after <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/greatest-moral-challenge-turns-out-to-be-rudds-dearest-folly-20100428-tscw.html">declaring</a> it the “greatest moral challenge of our time”, and Gillard has steadily shifted her <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/gillard-survives-caucus-backlash-over-asylum-seeker-crisis/story-e6frfkp9-1226669428926">stance on asylum seekers</a> without at any time showing genuine empathy for people willing to risk their lives to seek refuge.</p>
<p>Rudd’s <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/kevin-rudd-declares-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage/story-fncynjr2-1226647193111">belated support</a> for same-sex marriage reeks of the same opportunism as Gillard’s opposition to it does. In contemporary Australia no Labor leader can survive by sounding as if they belong to the Greens, who have been consistent on all of these issues. But one wonders what a leader with the reckless courage of a Gough Whitlam would identify with the ALP’s politics in 2013.</p>
<p>The final undoing of Gillard was not, I believe, due to misogyny, but rather to her inability to articulate a clear vision of where she wanted to lead Australia. Her tragedy was that many of the pieces were there in the actual policies she pursued, but she never found a narrative that weaved them together.</p>
<p>Gillard has much of which to be proud, but she never communicated the personal warmth and commitment that one sees in her face-to-face. Yes, this is a greater challenge for a woman, particularly perhaps for a woman on the political left who faces the implacable belief of conservatives that they have the right to govern. </p>
<p>Rudd now inherits the great dilemma of all current “left” leaders. Despite the global financial crisis it is the parties of the right who seem to have most profited from the downturn brought on by the excesses of capitalism. When he penned long articles for The Monthly, Rudd seemed prepared to grapple with this question, even perhaps to move away from the faith in market solutions which is the legacy of the Hawke/Keating years. That he reached out to business in his initial speech suggests he is not inclined to pursue the logic of his own analysis.</p>
<p>Gillard did not fall because she was a woman, but undoubtedly she encountered increased hostility because of her gender. One is reminded of the comment about actress Ginger Rogers, namely that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The morning Julia Gillard was deposed as Australia’s prime minister many of the British newspapers carried a picture of her knitting a present for the future heir to the British (and presumably) Australian…Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155712013-06-27T02:29:08Z2013-06-27T02:29:08ZWill the buck stop with Rudd on fixing the hospital system?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26267/original/cp85p53g-1372295736.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The key question is whether the new prime minister regards the hospital system as having been fixed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/David Crosling</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the key platforms of the first Rudd government was to reform the health and hospital system. The key message from then-prime minister Kevin Rudd was that the health, and particularly hospitals, system would be “fixed” within two years of the 2007 election. </p>
<p>If the health system didn’t improve – and hospital waiting times weren’t reduced – by his deadline, he’d hold a referendum to propose that the Federal government take responsibility for public hospitals. “I’ll work cooperatively to get our hospitals fixed. But in the end, the buck will stop with me,” Rudd promised. </p>
<p>Six years on, what’s the status of Rudd’s health reforms? And can they be resurrected?</p>
<h2>Rudd’s vision</h2>
<p>The first Rudd government established a comprehensive review of the health system through the <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/nhhrc/publishing.nsf/content/nhhrc-report">National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission</a> (NHHRC) and the prime minister and his health minister Nicola Roxon undertook over a hundred public consultations around the country on health reform.</p>
<p>The final meeting of the <a href="http://www.coag.gov.au/node/86">Council of Australian Governments</a> (COAG) before Rudd’s demise was held in April 2010. With the exception of Western Australia, the Commonwealth and states/territories agreed to the following key reforms to the Australian health system:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The Commonwealth would become the majority funder of Australian public hospitals, by funding 60% of the agreed cost of all public hospital services delivered to public patients such as operations, scans and therapies </p></li>
<li><p>Over time, the Commonwealth would have funding and policy responsibility for all GP and primary health care services, and aged care services, including those run by states</p></li>
<li><p>Responsibility for hospital management would be devolved to new <a href="http://www.yourhealth.gov.au/internet/yourhealth/publishing.nsf/content/lochospnetwork#.UcuHBD5dNHg">Local Hospital Networks</a> in order to increase local autonomy and flexibility so that services are more innovative and responsive to local needs. The Commonwealth would also have a role in overseeing the arrangements at state and territory levels</p></li>
<li><p>Local Hospital Networks would be paid on the basis of a nationally set price for each service they provide to public patients under <a href="http://www0.health.nsw.gov.au/resources/Initiatives/healthreform/pdf/NHHN_Agreement.pdf">Local Hospital Network Service Agreements</a> with the states. Small regional and rural hospitals would continue to be paid through block funding </p></li>
<li><p>New, higher national standards and transparent reporting would provide information about the national, state and local performance of the health system.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>New structures to support these reforms included a <a href="http://www.ihpa.gov.au/internet/ihpa/publishing.nsf">national independent pricing authority</a> and a <a href="http://www.nhpa.gov.au/internet/nhpa/publishing.nsf">national health performance measurement authority</a>.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth also agreed meet the cost increases from the growth in population and demand, with a additional A$16 billion guaranteed for hospitals through to 2019, even if it’s more than required to meet actual costs increases.</p>
<p>To finance the new arrangements, the states and territories (with the exception of Western Australia) agreed to the Commonwealth’s retaining a proportion of the GST revenue, in recognition of its increased funding responsibilities.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hfe2Q6Sj4IU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd: In the end, the buck will stop with me.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was an extraordinarily favourable deal for the states. While giving up some GST revenue, they in fact would have rid themselves of the all-consuming health financial burden. </p>
<p>The “takeover” of hospitals was reduced to the Commonwealth having a seat at the table when distribution of hospital funding was determined – not a lot of control, especially as the hospital budgets by and large were to be set via the independent pricing arrangements. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, taking WA’s lead, the other states quickly walked away from the COAG agreements. The whole process was seen as a shambles and perceived as yet another Rudd failure.</p>
<h2>Gillard’s watered-down version</h2>
<p>By the <a href="http://www.coag.gov.au/node/77">February</a> and <a href="http://www.minister.infrastructure.gov.au/aa/releases/2011/August/AA154_2011_COAG_communique.PDF">August 2011</a> COAG meetings, the Gillard government and all states and territories agreed on a revised health reform agenda. Key changes to the April 2010 arrangements included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>No “takeover” of primary care by the Commonwealth, with the existing responsibilities remaining and creation by the Commonwealth of <a href="https://theconversation.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-medicare-local-but-didnt-know-who-to-ask-851">Medicare Locals</a> to coordinate primary care and work closely with local hospital networks</p></li>
<li><p>No role for the Commonwealth in state and territory hospital network planning and a requirement that these networks and Medicare Locals work closely and meet joint performance measures</p></li>
<li><p>No “redirection” of GST revenue to the Commonwealth. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The Commonwealth’s provision of an additional A$16 billion for hospital funding was preserved.</p>
<p>There were also some important additions to the 2011 agreement, including:</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26275/original/2xvwkh67-1372299461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gillard’s reforms include performance targets for emergency department throughput.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>A list of performance criteria for the health system and its various components. This set specific performance targets for emergency departments’ throughput, appropriate waiting times for elective surgery and specific measures for improving health outcomes for indigenous people for children and chronic diseases</p></li>
<li><p>A focus on health policy for the prevention of disease and injury and the maintenance of health, not just treatment of illness. This was the basis of establishing the <a href="http://anpha.gov.au/internet/anpha/publishing.nsf">National Health Prevention Agency</a></p></li>
<li><p>An emphasis on coordination and integration of appropriate services for older Australians and people with complex care needs.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The Gillard reform was certainly a watering down of the Rudd April 2010 agreement, itself a a shrunken version of the original Rudd commitment. Nevertheless, the Gillard outcome at least brought peace across the health sector for a short period and focused attention on making the changes work. </p>
<h2>Rudd redux</h2>
<p>While it’s impossible to predict how the new Rudd government will approach health policy, there is considerable commonality between the first Rudd and the Gillard reforms. This would suggest further radical structural reform is unlikely in the immediate future.</p>
<p>The question that remains is whether the new Prime Minister will regard the system as having been fixed in his original 2007 terms.</p>
<p>The first series of reports from the <a href="http://www.nhpa.gov.au/internet/nhpa/publishing.nsf">National Health Performance Authority</a> (NHPA) suggest that improvements in some key areas such as emergency department waiting times have been patchy at best. While there have been some improvements (such as in Western Australia) in emergency department waiting times, others have stayed much the same.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26268/original/rqn4z9xc-1372297302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radical structural reform is unlikely.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the significant boost in Commonwealth funding for hospitals (the A$16 billion is on top of inflation growth) the public could reasonably expect a quicker return on that investment. While the primary care sector has been given a big structural boost through Medicare Locals, the changes at service levels are not yet apparent.</p>
<p>The big problem that has not been “fixed” is the blame game. It is not clear which level of government is accountable for what and the opportunities for buck passing between the Commonwealth and states are even greater. The Commonwealth will say it has put more money in and the states will say they are tied up new bureaucratic structures that restrict their flexibility.</p>
<p>But is difficult to see what Rudd could do to change the arrangements. First, the current arrangements are set out in agreements between the Commonwealth and each of the states and territories. Changing these agreements would be at best a medium-term proposition. </p>
<p>Second, the case that the health system needs fixing is harder to argue given all the structural changes that have taken place and the perception that these need time to bed down.</p>
<p>Perhaps it will be a wait and see game. But I don’t expect health reform will be high on Rudd’s list of policy priorities – I expect he’d be happy to call it done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Wells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of the key platforms of the first Rudd government was to reform the health and hospital system. The key message from then-prime minister Kevin Rudd was that the health, and particularly hospitals…Robert Wells, Policy Head, Research Assets, Sax Institute; Co-Director, Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155842013-06-27T02:02:33Z2013-06-27T02:02:33ZEt tu, Shorten? Rudd, Caesar and the lessons of political assassination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26265/original/p8trczy8-1372294824.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julius Caesar is slain in Rome by his erstwhile allies: any parallels for Australian politics?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Death of Julius Caesar' by Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Political commentary on the return of Kevin Rudd to the federal Labor leadership will overwhelmingly focus on the present. Why did Rudd refuse to challenge for so long? And what awaits him now that he has returned to power?</p>
<p>Kevin Rudd is no Julius Caesar. Yet the Roman Republic’s distant political culture, both more civilised and far more brutal than our own, has much to teach us about Australia’s current political turmoil.</p>
<p>At the height of his powers in 44 BC, the Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was offered a diadem – the symbol of royalty in antiquity - by his political colleague Marcus Antonius. Caesar publicly refused, declaring “I am not Rex, but Caesar’” in a pun on the Latin word for “King”: then, as now, a relatively common personal name.</p>
<p>Caesar was acutely aware that monarchy was hateful to the ancient Romans whose Republic was established in 509 BC by overthrowing the line of kings who had ruled over them during the previous two and a half centuries.</p>
<p>Yet Caesar had another motive. Acts of this kind represented more than the zeal of his partisans, aimed at installing Caesar as a new King of Rome. The refusal of such honours was itself a recognised form of praise. The Latin term was gloria recusandi: roughly, the glory of refusal. Its enactment allowed the status embodied in the honour to be bestowed upon Caesar, while enabling him to project an image of restraint by publicly, even ostentatiously, declining to accept it. The refusal of power became a form of power in itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26266/original/fh7dcqwk-1372294891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Kevin Rudd display what the great Roman orator Cicero described as “treacherous clemency” towards colleagues and former opponents now he has regained the prime ministership?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukac Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Caesar’s rise to a position where he could be offered such an honour had also been characterised by granting clementia – forgiveness or mercy – to his opponents. Although eventually seen as a virtue, clementia was a deeply problematic concept for members of the Roman elite, who valued the competition between putative equals at the heart of the Roman political system. By its very nature, the act emphasised the terrible disparity in power between the giver and recipient. Its unilateralism neutered that recipient, who was unable to prevent its grant, and marked him out as in the stronger man’s debt.</p>
<p>It is no wonder then that the great orator Cicero wrote of Caesar’s “treacherous clemency”. Another subject of Caesar’s mercy, Marcus Junius Brutus, repaid it by - literally - knifing him near the theatre built by one of Caesar’s recently vanquished adversaries. Brutus subsequently commemorated the assassination by issuing silver coins which depicted, on one side, his portrait and, on the other, two daggers and a pileus: the “cap of liberty” given to freed Roman slaves.</p>
<p>By refusing to challenge until the very end, Kevin Rudd was able to portray himself as the man demanded by both his colleagues and the Australian people. Yet as the newly restored leader of his party, Rudd should be wary of continuing to borrow, however inadvertently, from Caesar’s political arsenal. </p>
<p>He has now publicly declared that he will not engage in retribution against his enemies in the Labor caucus. Yet such grandiose displays of leniency may well serve to sharpen the humiliation of his defeated opponents rather than to heal old enmities.</p>
<p>Rudd would also do well to beware the potential repercussions of such actions, especially on the day that Australians are due to go to the polls: the 14th day of the first month of spring. </p>
<p>The Romans knew it by another name. It was the day before the Ides of March.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nikola Casule does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political commentary on the return of Kevin Rudd to the federal Labor leadership will overwhelmingly focus on the present. Why did Rudd refuse to challenge for so long? And what awaits him now that he…Nikola Casule, Senior Fellow, Australian Centre for Ancient Numismatic Studies, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155612013-06-27T02:02:16Z2013-06-27T02:02:16ZBack to the opposition: bring on the policies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26263/original/4n63vs7g-1372290522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now that the Labor leadership issue has been resolved once and for all, the attention will soon turn to the opposition's attempts to win government at the election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With such unprecedented turmoil inside the Labor Party over leadership it is not surprising that we have all forgotten about the opposition. You know, the government-in-waiting, the other mob, the Coalition made up of the Liberal, National, Liberal National Party (Queensland) and Country Liberal Party (NT). The one led by Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>The need for the opposition to be more than a critic of the government and to articulate its policies <a href="https://theconversation.com/never-mind-the-leadership-what-about-the-opposition-12991">was considered</a> last March, when a push by the ALP to install Kevin Rudd failed.</p>
<p>However, conditions have now changed. With the September 14 election less than 80 days away - and now it might be earlier - the opposition cannot continue to rely on broad generalisations, or to be concerned that their policies might be “stolen” by the government.</p>
<p>The revival of the Rudd prime ministership also means that the focus on the internal leadership woes of the government which distracted media and government attention from the opposition’s policies - or in some cases like with education and health, the lack thereof - has ended.</p>
<p>The Gillard government failed to flush out any of the controversial aspects of the opposition’s policies or would-be polices. Attempts to portray the incoming Abbott government as a cost-cutting, public service slashing government have not worked. After all, Abbott <a href="http://www.news.com.au/money/federal-budget/no-escape-from-cuts-as-opposition-leader-tony-abbott-set-to-back-wayne-swan-and-labors-budget-2013-spending-cuts/story-fn84fgcm-1226643424209">endorsed the cuts</a> that former treasurer Wayne Swan announced in the May budget.</p>
<p>Trying to nail down the opposition’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-says-no-need-for-gonski-funding-reforms-20130421-2i7wy.html">stance on education</a> has also failed.</p>
<p>Seeking to differentiate the Gillard government’s initiatives on disabilities from the opposition’s supposed more stringent views of public spending failed, with Abbott <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3750494.htm">endorsing the proposed new levy</a> arrangements for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.</p>
<p>The flaws in the opposition’s climate change policies – the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/liberal-party-discontent-grows-20130509-2jau3.html">Direct Action plan</a> - were never exposed. Given <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/25/barack-obama-climate-change-strategy">recent developments in the United States</a> on this matter we can expect the Rudd government to be giving this policy area considerable attention. However, the <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/combet-resigns-as-minister-20130626-2oxp6.html">resignation</a> of climate change minister Greg Combet in the wake of the Rudd revival poses its own problems for the government.</p>
<p>Now, with a united Labor Party (relatively) and with the leadership issue off the boil, there will be more scrutiny from a focused government and commentators sceptical about an Abbott opposition. The opposition’s previous unimpeded march to office, though still highly probable, is now going to be more difficult.</p>
<p>The initial challenge for the opposition is whether to focus on all the disaffected comments about Rudd made previously by senior Labor figures or to go for the policy issues.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ4oUYW2xZo">Recycling all the bile about Rudd</a> by his colleagues should be used by the opposition with extreme caution. It is tempting, but voters expect attacks on personalities by political opponents and usually do not like it.</p>
<p>It is clear that the Rudd line - which we have heard previously from Gillard minsters, but will get amplified by the new prime minister - is that Abbott will be a risk to Australia. He will initiate spending cuts, and the spectre of the Newman LNP Government public service cuts will be repeatedly invoked.</p>
<p>Abbott’s supposed reactionary politics and conservatism (read: Abbott’s Catholicism) will be run through issues not only about women, abortion but also in relation to the same-sex marriage issue. It is not accidental that Rudd some weeks ago <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/gay-marriage-change-a-personal-journey-rudd-20130520-2jx65.html">shifted his own stance on this</a>, and his explanations for this make for <a href="http://www.kevinruddmp.com/2013/05/church-and-state-are-able-to-have.html">interesting reading</a>. </p>
<p>That some of Abbott’s own frontbench and potential leader (Turnbull) have <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/turnbull-under-fire-for-gay-marriage-stance-20120707-21ngx.html">different views</a> on this issue make this a potentially difficult issue for Abbott and the opposition.</p>
<p>What Australian voters want is to be told the nature of the issues the nation faces and and the policies needed to address these issues. The time for the opposition fudging policies, for camouflaging difficult options in the government’s own leadership tussles are over. </p>
<p>The phony war is over. The politics of personal attacks, of a government imploding and allowing the opposition an unimpeded march to office is also over. The opposition now has to work to get into office as they should. Bring on the policies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Prasser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With such unprecedented turmoil inside the Labor Party over leadership it is not surprising that we have all forgotten about the opposition. You know, the government-in-waiting, the other mob, the Coalition…Scott Prasser, Executive Director, Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155702013-06-26T21:05:12Z2013-06-26T21:05:12ZTwice bitten, business is likely to approach Rudd with caution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26245/original/hhp72rsv-1372246873.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor's economic record has had hits, but also misses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You have to wonder how many times the Labor party will make the same mistake. Immediately prior to the 2010 election the party dumped Kevin Rudd and replaced him with Julia Gillard. The net effect of this was to ensure that the government could not run for re-election on its record. Now immediately before the 2013 election the party dumped Julia Gillard and replaced her with Kevin Rudd. The net effect of this will be to ensure the government will not be able to run on its record.</p>
<p>Now this observation is true, irrespective of what you think of either record.</p>
<p>To be blunt, the record isn’t good. The Rudd government was marred by excessive spending on the stimulus packages of 2008 and 2009. The bungled implementation of the stimulus spending that led to house fires and deaths and knocking down perfectly good school halls only rebuild them was not a record anyone would want to run on. Then there was the mining tax. </p>
<p>The Gillard government has similar problems – the broken promise of “no carbon tax under a government I lead” has been fatal to her re-election prospects and the continual promises to re-balance the budget has seen her economic credentials shredded. The revised mining tax raised very little revenue.</p>
<p>To be generous – bad luck and poor circumstance have contributed to the problems the government faces. But there has been a fundamental problem of competence. Rather incompetence. Former finance minister Lindsay Tanner famously remarked that the Rudd government didn’t dot the i’s or cross the t’s. The Gillard government was no improvement.</p>
<p>So here is the rub: what difference will a change in prime minister have on business confidence at this stage of the electoral cycle? In my view, none.</p>
<p>Kevin Rudd has been able to convince his colleagues that he is a reformed man. He has learned from his mistakes. This must be a good thing – yet, the challenge for any prime minister isn’t that they learn from their mistakes but that they have a vision for the nation and policy ideas to implement that vision.</p>
<p>Yet we know that Rudd had no policy ideas in 2008. After ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, apologising to the Stolen Generation, and dismantling the Howard government’s border protection regime, Rudd had no ideas. He summoned 1000 of the best and brightest of Canberra for a summit to brainstorm ideas. The only idea to come out of that was the mining tax – we all know how that turned out.</p>
<p>Rudd now has to articulate what ideas he has. Bear in mind that the parliament rises this week and won’t sit again before the election. So there is little opportunity to implement any new ideas. At the same time several ministers have resigned their positions, so who will do the work? He must take any new ideas to an election. Also he must win that election.</p>
<p>This is what business will be considering – can Rudd win an election? The answer must be “no”. In video games you can always hit the re-set button. In real life – that option is simply not available. To win an election Rudd must invite the electorate to imagine the last five years hasn’t happened. That next time will be different. I doubt he will succeed.</p>
<p>Rudd will be a lame duck, caretaker prime minister. His job will be to save as many Labor seats as he can. In the meantime consumers will continue to be cautious, business will continue to be cautious, and voters will get to clean up the mess.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sinclair Davidson is an Senior Fellow with the IPA.</span></em></p>You have to wonder how many times the Labor party will make the same mistake. Immediately prior to the 2010 election the party dumped Kevin Rudd and replaced him with Julia Gillard. The net effect of this…Sinclair Davidson, Professor of Institutional Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155652013-06-26T21:04:28Z2013-06-26T21:04:28ZRudd brings Labor disaster relief, hopes of better<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26242/original/r8j69sm5-1372244772.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now that he's deposed Julia Gillard, what lies ahead for Kevin Rudd in the election campaign?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt / AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal Labor caucus has decided to put aside its disdain for former leader Kevin Rudd and return him to the Labor leadership. The reason for this is simple: with Julia Gillard as leader, Labor was heading to a massive electoral defeat in both the House of Representatives and probably the Senate as well. </p>
<p>Kevin Rudd, it seems, is being viewed as the party’s only hope to avert electoral disaster. Here something of interesting transition in caucus’ thinking has occurred reflecting how dire is the party’s situation in the polls. </p>
<p>The last time Rudd was talked about as leader those advocating his return spoke of his ability to win an election. Now the hope is that Rudd can simply avert a disaster.</p>
<p>Questions now arise as to what happens next. Rudd’s return to the prime ministership will be followed by a ministerial re-shuffle. Given the antipathy that exists between Rudd and so many of the current front bench, the change in personnel in the government will be extensive. </p>
<p>There will be many casualties with Wayne Swan, the treasurer under Gillard, arguably being the most senior. Of not unrelated interest will be any change in the new Rudd government’s approach to the policy debate, and here it will be interesting to see if the carbon tax survives.</p>
<p>It will also be interesting to see what happens when the new Rudd leadership subjects itself to a parliamentary session. There might be dangers in Rudd going to the lower house to confront the cross-bench independents, especially if they were to decide to indicate a willingness to support Tony Abbott as prime minister. </p>
<p>In such a situation Rudd would have to tend his resignation to the governor-general and advise her to call on Abbott to form a ministry. Opposition leader Tony Abbott could then go to the next election as prime minister. Clearly there are important constitutional issues associated with the leadership transition and the role of the governor-general could be crucial in determining exactly when the election will be held and who the prime minister will be.</p>
<p>The Liberal-National opposition have been baying for an August 3 election, but that was when Gillard was prime minister. Were Rudd to move to an immediate election the opposition would be denied the opportunity to attack the new government in the parliament. </p>
<p>Rudd would also be hoping to exploit a bounce in support for Labor amongst the electorate that has been hinted at by the opinion polls. Once the election is called Rudd and Abbott would be locked in a policy debate and the controversies associated with the theatre of the parliament – including the contribution of a number of the independents some of whom have decided to retire rather than face their constituents – would be overshadowed. Expect an August election.</p>
<p>The resurrection of Rudd is all about the Labor party being influenced by opinion polls. These polls indicated that Labor MPs holding seats with margins up to 10% could be defeated. This has clearly influenced the thinking of a number of Labor MPs who voted for Gillard in the last leadership ballot.</p>
<p>These polls have been indicating that Labor is in serious trouble in every state except Victoria (but even in that state there have been signs of a corrosion of support especially in seats beyond inner Melbourne). In Queensland, NSW, South Australia and (at least according to Newspoll) Western Australia the collapse in primary support for Labor is at such low levels that, if they were replicated in the Senate, the Coalition would be in with a chance to win control of the upper house.</p>
<p>The critical question now is how the Australian electorate responds to what has happened. For all the drama of the leadership transition, the fact remains that the ALP has done nothing to dispel the notion that it is at war with itself. Labor strategists will be hoping that something of a euphoric response to Rudd’s return translates in to voter support. </p>
<p>The chances are that it will not. As a former Labor leader who was himself the victim of a challenge once put it, you can’t expect people to vote for you to run the country if you can’t run yourself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Economou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The federal Labor caucus has decided to put aside its disdain for former leader Kevin Rudd and return him to the Labor leadership. The reason for this is simple: with Julia Gillard as leader, Labor was…Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155732013-06-26T13:45:48Z2013-06-26T13:45:48ZRudd wins the game of thrones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26248/original/xsfymrbb-1372251212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd is once again the Prime Minister of Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor has finally made the decision it ought to have taken long ago, but the counter-revolution has been extremely bloody and there are bodies all over the place.</p>
<p>Not only is there a new Prime Minister but a new deputy PM (Anthony Albanese), and a new Senate leadership combination (Penny Wong, Jacinta Collins).</p>
<p>Six cabinet ministers have quit the frontbench – Wayne Swan, Greg Combet, Stephen Conroy, Peter Garrett, Craig Emerson and Joe Ludwig. Garrett and Emerson will resign from Parliament at the election, as will Julia Gillard, who pledged before the ballot to go if she lost.</p>
<p>Rudd has been restored to the leadership three years to the week after he was pushed out.</p>
<p>In his mind, his return journey has all been about righting a wrong, seizing back what was his – the power, the Prime Ministerial Office, the Lodge.</p>
<p>This rang through his news conference tonight, when he said: “In 2007 the Australian people elected me to be their PM. That is the task that I resume today …”</p>
<p>Rudd’s tortuous course back has been costly to the party and contributed to, although is not responsible for, Gillard’s failures.</p>
<p>His 57-45 margin was comfortable but far from the draft he wanted.</p>
<p>The latest lunge at the leadership by the Rudd forces was much better organised than the one of February last year, let alone the March fiasco when Rudd didn’t stand.</p>
<p>One big difference is that caucus members, faced with horrifying public and private polls, have become more desperate.</p>
<p>It is a great pity they did not have the political nous and hard headedness to realise a year ago that he was their best option. Labor’s prospects would be much better.</p>
<p>Rudd has had to make a liar of himself, after he said in March he would never again be leader of the Labor party.</p>
<p>Today he took responsibility for going back on his word, saying three things had made him change his stand. These were requests from his colleagues, his belief that the Australian people deserved a competitve choice at the election, and his fear that without that Tony Abbott would win the greatest landslide since federation.</p>
<p>In the enthusiasm of tonight Rudd’s so flagrantly breaking his word is lost – seen as one of those things politicians do in these circumstances. Nevertheless it may fuel the cynicism in an already cynical electorate.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26247/original/bkqxf7pb-1372248670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Bill Shorten’s deathknock (though not entirely unexpected) announcement that he was switching sides was important and symbolic – and also involved going back on his word. Only a few hours before the ballot his spokeswoman said he hadn’t changed position.</p>
<p>Shorten’s subdued mood was a massive contrast to three years ago when he helped mastermind, from a Canberra restaurant, the coup against Rudd.</p>
<p>Shorten made no public comments after the ballot.</p>
<p>For him it has been one of the most difficult times in his career. He has been agonising over what to do for the past three weeks, consulting widely. Sources say he only made a final decision in the last day or so, informing the PM late today.</p>
<p>He decided, as he said publicly, that a leadership change was in the best interests of the party, and that it was desirable to be straight with his colleagues.</p>
<p>One factor in his thinking was believed to be the prospect of Tony Abbott getting control of the Senate.</p>
<p>As a future leader of the opposition, it is in Shorten’s interest for Rudd to save as much of the furniture as possible and for the Senate to be kept in a combination of Labor-Green hands rather than swinging to the right.</p>
<p>Shorten did not seek anything from Rudd and nothing was offered.</p>
<p>Rudd will lift Labor’s primary vote, now 29% in this week’s Newspoll. The issue will be by how much - Abbott remains the election favourite.</p>
<p>The new PM is faced with an extraordinarily formidable task in reconstituting the government, pulling the party together, articulating a compelling agenda and fighting an election campaign.</p>
<p>He has to get ministers into key position immediately. Chris Bowen is set to be treasurer. Unfortunately Martin Ferguson, one of those who quit after the March leadership debacle, can’t be brought back because he has already announced his retirement from parliament.</p>
<p>Rudd has said nothing as yet about the election date. If he goes for a poll earlier than Gillard’s September 14 timetable, he will answer the prayers of many Australians.</p>
<p>An earlier date would also assist him with the immediate problems of division and disarray - the pressure will be on for unity – and it also would make maximum use of the honeymoon.</p>
<p>Julia Gillard has helped Rudd by her declaration that she would resign. Time will tell whether Rudd will be victim of leaks during the campaign, as she was, but there will be less motivation because there will be no one on a comeback course.</p>
<p>Rudd’s best quality is his public popularity.</p>
<p>In his news conference he condemned the negativity that has characterised federal politics and declared “I see my role as PM in forging consensus wherever I can”.</p>
<p>But he will not be able to get through just on popularity and generalities and uplifting rhetoric.</p>
<p>He faces tricky questions of policy. The first is what he does about the Gonski school funding program, which Gillard was talking up in parliament today.</p>
<p>Gillard has only two states signed up. Rudd is known to be sceptical about the program, and concerned about its expense. But if he wants to dump it that will be messy, the legislation passed parliament today.</p>
<p>More intractable is the problem of the boats. The opposition can blame Rudd for the restarting of the trade. Maybe he can dodge some of that but what is he going to propose to get the problem under control?</p>
<p>He also has to counter Abbott’s attacks on the carbon tax, by recalibrating the whole issue of carbon pricing - perhaps by promising to bring forward the trading scheme, which would lower the price.</p>
<p>Rudd tonight flagged a strategy of appealing to the youth vote and seeking to improve relations with business. </p>
<p>To young people he said: “I understand why you have switch off. It is hardly a surprise. But I want to ask you to please come back and listen afresh … With your energy, we can start cooking with gas.”</p>
<p>His pitch to business was: “I want to work closely with you. I have worked with you closely in the past, particularly during the GFC … We came through because we worked together. I am saying it loud and clear to businesses, large and small across the country, in partnership we can do great things for the country’s future”.</p>
<p>In her news conference Gillard mentioned the challenge of the hung parliament as well as party divisions for making her three years difficult.</p>
<p>Earlier, the two country independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, who have kept her government afloat, announced they would not recontest their seats.</p>
<p>Their decision is an appropriate epitaph for this strange parliament, which sits for the last time tomorrow.</p>
<p>PS This is the second time that a dog called Reuben living at the Lodge has lost his elite accommodation. The first Reuben was owned by Paul Keating, defeated at the 1996 election. Coups are tough all round.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor has finally made the decision it ought to have taken long ago, but the counter-revolution has been extremely bloody and there are bodies all over the place. Not only is there a new Prime Minister…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155672013-06-26T10:43:52Z2013-06-26T10:43:52ZKevin Rudd defeats Julia Gillard: expert reaction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26239/original/d3v6r5pb-1372242927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd has returned as leader of the ALP three years and three days after he was deposed by Julia Gillard.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kevin Rudd has completed one the great political comebacks in Australian history by reclaiming the prime ministership from Julia Gillard in a party room vote in Canberra tonight, 57 votes to 45.</p>
<p>Earlier, Victorian factional heavyweight Bill Shorten switched his allegiance from Ms Gillard, whom he supported as late as this morning, to Rudd. Rudd is now seen by many as the ALP’s only hope of avoiding an electoral wipeout in the September 14 election.</p>
<p>Outgoing leader Julia Gillard had said prior to the vote that she would resign from Parliament if she lost the leadership ballot.</p>
<p>The result may provide hope for Labor MP in marginal electorates; but first it raises critical constitutional questions over whether an early election will be called. </p>
<p>Expert comment follows: </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Maxine McKew, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at University of Melbourne</strong></p>
<p>The return of Kevin Rudd to the Labor leadership puts some real contestability into the election campaign. Rudd at least, will make Tony Abbott sweat and that’s a good thing. Democracy demands a contest. </p>
<p>The last time that Rudd and Abbott went head-to-head was on the issue of health during a National Press Club debate in April 2010. Even though he was facing off against a former health minister, Rudd wiped the floor with him. Rudd’s leadership represents an immediate confidence hit for embattled government MPs. </p>
<p>He is an energetic and convincing campaigner, a big plus for those defending shrinking margins in electorates across the country, and he is, after all, the bloke who beat John Howard. </p>
<p>Rudd now has a unique opportunity - to lift the national debate above the noxious poison that has been the recent norm, and to re-connect the Labor Party with the mainstream of Australian voters. Does he have a chance? Absolutely. Can he win? If he leads with purpose and moral clarity, he may yet surprise us.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>George Williams, Anthony Mason Professor, Scientia Professor, Foundation Director - Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW</strong></p>
<p>The process now is that Julia Gillard will tender her resignation to governor-general Quentin Bryce, and in doing so will advise the governor-general on who to appoint as her replacement. This is likely to be Kevin Rudd on the basis that he is likely to have the confidence of the parliament, but whether or not he has the numbers could be tested on the floor of parliament.</p>
<p>August 3 is the earliest possible date for Rudd to hold an election of both houses of parliament, while November 30 is the latest possible date.</p>
<p>If opposition leader Tony Abbott calls a no confidence motion and it is successfully passed, you would expect he would be given the chance to form government, and in turn you could see if he had the numbers. It is possible that Abbott would not pursue a no confidence motion - he might not want to become prime minister at the end of the term - but might instead push for an early election.</p>
<p>In these scenarios you look to what the independents as the kingmakers will do. As it is a minority government the Labor leader is not guaranteed to be prime minister, so we wait to see how the uncertainty about their positions will be resolved.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Eva Cox, Professorial Fellow Jumbunna IHL at University of Technology, Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Julia Gillard lost the prime ministership not because she was a woman. She lost the prime ministership because she didn’t connect - there were a whole lot of problems and unfortunately a lot of it’s going to be tagged as a gender issue and I don’t think it was. </p>
<p>I think a lot of the unpleasantness was gendered but I think basically she was not connecting with people and unfortunately it sort of ended up blowing up in this particular way. </p>
<p>It was interesting listening to Rudd’s speech before he went in. He very clearly attacked Abbott on policy and I think that’s what somehow or rather got tangled and it didn’t work. One of the things that I am concerned about is if we do end up with a gender debate on this, that we will end up creating a sort of myth about the whole thing - because every time a man falls over we don’t claim men are incompetent. </p>
<p>When Barack Obama was asked whether his election meant black people had equality, he said, “no, we’ll get equality when we get a stupid black person in power”. I think it’s a bit like that. I think some of the stuff that’s gone around in the last few weeks about gender has really obscured the fact that there has been a major problem of communicating policy within the Labor party. She’s had to wear it and I think we have to blame the party and not the person.</p>
<p>I think Rudd’s got a clearer idea of where it might go and he might actually get some passion back into the party because what it’s been doing at the moment is sort of deadening itself down. There’s no sense of excitement about the Labor party even the fact that they’ve got two fairly good policies, that gets muted down because of all the other ones that don’t work.</p>
<p>I think (Rudd’s leadership) will mean that there won’t be an (electoral) rout. I’ll be very surprised if they got back in but I think at this particular stage it wouldn’t be a rout or they’ll have enough seats in the Senate so as not to give the Coalition government a good go. </p>
<p>Labor has got the capacity to spring back from this because I think there’s a Labor vision. One of the things that Rudd said, and I’ve heard it again and again, people felt the moment they didn’t want to vote for either major party and I think what Rudd will give people is a reason to vote Labor.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Trevor Cook, University of Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Gillard is much closer to the unions than Rudd is, so this move will be problematic for the union movement. Rudd will want to run as a presidential candidate, beholden to no-one in the party. I don’t think he’ll think he owes anything to anyone in the party or the unions. If he has a chance of winning, he has to run on a sort of Peter Beattie platform.</p>
<p>On the other hand the unions have a lot at stake. They don’t want Abbott and they don’t want Abbott with a large, majority control of the senate. It cuts both ways for them.</p>
<p>Bill Shorten did as many union officials do when they reach parliament: he put his future ahead of his past. I think he’s quite serious when he says he’s committed to the Labor party.</p>
<p>I think if Rudd does win, this will be a signal change to the labour movement, the relationship between the union movement and the ALP. Whitlam didn’t have any relationship with the unions, and it didn’t seem to matter that much until inflation hit.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Geoffrey Robinson, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University</strong></p>
<p>I think today showed that ultimately the desire to minimise losses at the next election is what motivated Labor MPs. It took a long time for that to happen but it happened.</p>
<p>Now it’s a matter of the government focusing on the election. The party will unite reasonably well, but voters will not forgive these dramas fairly quickly. The popularity issue isn’t going to be fixed: there is still the carbon tax, the asylum seeker issue, issues about the economy.</p>
<p>Labor now have a slightly bigger chance, but they still don’t have much of a chance. It will minimise some losses, like Queensland, which looks a complete disaster area, and New South Wales as well.</p>
<p>There should be a focus on left wing issues like carbon pricing, asylum seekers. Is marriage equality an issue that can be put on the agenda? This could reel in leftist voters that may have been lost to the Greens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Kevin Rudd has completed one the great political comebacks in Australian history by reclaiming the prime ministership from Julia Gillard in a party room vote in Canberra tonight, 57 votes to 45. Earlier…Helen Westerman, Business + Economy EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155662013-06-26T10:38:49Z2013-06-26T10:38:49ZWas Julia Gillard a ‘real’ female prime minister, or a leader who was female?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26228/original/nvx3tb5z-1372237121.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now that the curtain has come down on Julia Gillard's prime ministership, it should be asked: was she truly a female prime minister or a prime minister who was female?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the time the sun set over Parliament House, and took Julia Gillard’s prime ministership with it in a party room vote, the dissection of her legacy as Australia’s first female prime minister had already begun. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://youtu.be/ihd7ofrwQX0">video of her speech</a> to parliament against misogyny and sexism in politics will experience a renewed spike again on YouTube, while various feminist commentators will take to the airwaves and Twitter to laud or lament her contribution. </p>
<p>But although Gillard may have been the first woman to lead the nation and the federal parliament, there’s a strong argument to be made that Australia is still awaiting its first “female prime minister”. </p>
<p>Making a distinction between a leader who is female and a female leader might seem like splitting hairs, but for Gillard this distinction may well lie at the heart of her fall from the nation’s highest office.</p>
<h2>As good as any man, or better</h2>
<p>As various commentators have observed during her Canberra career, Julia Gillard fits the profile of an ambitious and highly competent politician to a tee. A tough and well-regarded lawyer who earned impeccable Labor credentials through sticking it the bosses while at Slater & Gordon, she entered federal parliament after an apprenticeship as then-Victorian opposition leader John Brumby’s chief of staff in the mid-1990s. </p>
<p>Her move to Canberra took place fairly early in the Howard decade, which allowed her to cut her teeth in the rough and tumble of opposition and experience the carnage of several Labor leadership coups.</p>
<p>Through the <a href="http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2011/august/1316394350/peter-mares/comment-ten-years-after-tampa">2001 Tampa affair</a> and later the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-07-21/govt-downplays-workchoices-revelations/2509538">2006 WorkChoices kerfuffle</a>, Gillard earned a reputation as one of federal Labor’s most effective parliamentary performers. This reputation undoubtedly helped her secure the deputy leadership in Kevin Rudd’s 2006 challenge to Kim Beazley. </p>
<p>Throughout her parliamentary rise Gillard retained a laser-like focus on developing and prosecuting ALP policy, so much so that she made a <a href="http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/celebrityheadlines/1075981/prime-minister-julia-gillard-my-aussie-dream">reportedly conscious decision</a> not to pursue distractions such as marriage and children. All of this experience made her the ideal person to lead her party and the nation when the moment came in June 2010 - except for one small thing.</p>
<h2>The ‘right’ kind of female PM?</h2>
<p>From the outset of Gillard’s term in office, it was clear that some sections of the Australian community were deeply uncomfortable with both the manner of her ascendency and her lack of appropriately feminine traits. </p>
<p>As Lauren Hall and Ngaire Donaghue document in a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2012.02114.x/pdf">recent research paper</a>, Gillard’s “knifing” of Kevin Rudd was framed as an expression of unseemly ambition, one which revealed an inability to “wait her turn” at the leadership and dashed voters’ hopes for a more “genteel transition” at the top of the government.</p>
<p>At the same time, Senator Bill Heffernan’s 2007 comments about Gillard being <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/barren-gillard-unfit-to-be-pm/story-e6frfkp9-1111113448384">“deliberately barren”</a> were given fresh oxygen by those who fretted that the new prime minister’s childlessness placed her out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Australians. The major newspaper in her hometown of Adelaide remarked that: “anyone expecting parliament to be a softer, gentler place because a woman is in charge is likely to be disappointed”.</p>
<p>For Gillard’s part, she seemed eager not to be venerated as a feminist pioneer, telling The Australian that she was more focused on delivering fairness for Australian workers than <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-24/labors-primary-vote-drops-below-30-per-cent-in-latest-newspoll/4774760:%22">“smashing the glass ceiling”</a>. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Gillard’s policy agenda also confounded stereotypes about warm and compassionate female leadership. She set about <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-white-australia-to-stopping-the-boats-attitudes-to-asylum-seekers-15244">strengthening Australia’s border controls</a>, attempted to take a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-the-possible-recognising-palestinian-statehood-11063">hard line on Palestine</a> at the UN, and more recently, moved tens of thousands of <a href="https://theconversation.com/prejudiced-policymaking-underlies-labors-cuts-to-single-parent-payments-10151">single mothers off</a> some welfare benefits. </p>
<p>At the same time however, she refused to apologise for her personal life, telling <a href="http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/news/inthemag/8679511/julia-gillard-why-shes-knitting-for-the-royal-baby">Women’s Day</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve made a set of choices and I’m not going to shy away from saying, ‘Well, that’s it, full stop.‘</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, Gillard showed an unwillingness to conform to gendered expectations in either public or private life. By doing so, she appears to have confounded Australia’s expectations about how a “real” female prime minister should behave. </p>
<p>Gillard tried to neutralise the issue of her gender and govern as her male predecessors did. However, she appears to have underestimated both the hopes of progressive people on the one hand, and the restraints of entrenched gender roles on the other.</p>
<p>For women in particular, and progressive people more generally, a “real” female prime minister would be one who takes power in her own right with the overwhelming support of the electorate, and openly celebrates this as a seismic shift in the status of Australian women. Gillard has failed to meet any of these criteria. She attained the prime ministership through the machinations of male factional leaders, maintained it with the support of male cross-bench MPs, and generally downplayed the historic nature of her achievement.</p>
<p>For people of a more conservative bent, a “real” female prime minister would be one who shares the everyday experiences of millions of Australian families - kids, grocery bills, the school run - and uses this understanding to make government more responsive and accommodating of their needs. Here again, Gillard has failed to meet the mark. Her policy choices have generally reflected a focus far beyond the domestic sphere.</p>
<p>This is not for a moment to suggest that either progressives or conservatives were right to expect these things from Gillard. By my observation, she possesses guts, intellect and experience in spades, and has made federal politics the sole focus of her life for more than 15 years. </p>
<p>The fact that the electorate demands more than this from Gillard simply because she is female - that she also be either an evangelist or an everywoman - shows just how skewed our perspectives on power and gender still are.</p>
<p>But skewed or not, the fact remains that Gillard has not been the first female prime minister that many hoped she would be. <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-history-remember-gillards-three-years-favourably-15422">Her three years in office</a> have instead been characterised by a post-gendered leadership style which sought to neutralise her “femaleness” by downplaying or ignoring it - except when there was political advantage to be had, as in recent days. </p>
<p>By pitching herself as a leader who is female rather than an explicitly female leader, Gillard tried to forge a different path for herself and the nation. But perhaps she was simply too far ahead of her time: maybe we need a female prime minister before we can have an un-gendered one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rayner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By the time the sun set over Parliament House, and took Julia Gillard’s prime ministership with it in a party room vote, the dissection of her legacy as Australia’s first female prime minister had already…Jennifer Rayner, Doctoral Candidate, Australian Politics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155562013-06-26T10:04:36Z2013-06-26T10:04:36ZRudd returns, but where did it go so wrong for Gillard?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26229/original/trhtrmyz-1372237144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd returns to be Prime Minister, but where did the Gillard government go wrong?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch / AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kevin Rudd has made a Lazarus-like return to the prime ministership after winning a party room ballot this evening by a vote of 57-45. Rudd, who led the party to success at the 2007 election, replaces his successor, Julia Gillard, after one of the most turbulent periods in Australian political history.</p>
<p>So where did it all go wrong for Gillard, who swept to power in 2010 off the back of replacing a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-good-government-was-losing-its-way-says-gillard-20100624-z10k.html">“good government that had lost its way”</a>?</p>
<p>These are grim days for Labor, probably the worst since the trauma of the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/howard-book-refloats-tampa/story-e6frf7l6-1111114015665">2001 Tampa election</a> where the dream of a Kim Beazley Labor government crumbled and John Howard was transformed from struggling incumbent to political giant almost overnight. At least in 2001 Labor was crushed by the resources of an incumbent government, but now its woes are self-inflicted.</p>
<p>Nothing in politics happens without many causes but sometimes we can simplify matters. There is one fundamental driver of Julia Gillard’s plight: the poor performance of the Labor government in opinion polls. However, “polls” mean nothing of themselves: they are always read in a context. Since 2010 the context has steadily worsened for Labor and now Gillard has run out of time. </p>
<p>After the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-07/labor-day-gillard-retains-grip-on-power/2252044">2010 election</a> many blamed Labor’s inept campaign for the close result, and anticipated an eventual recovery in Labor support. These hopes were soon dashed - it seemed at the time by the unpopularity of the carbon tax. Once the tax passed and its minimal effects were apparent, many hoped for a Labor recovery. They could point to the American example: US president Barack Obama <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/poll_health-care_reform_more_p.html">recovered from the initial unpopularity</a> of his healthcare reforms. </p>
<p>For a time after the implementation of the carbon tax Labor seemed to rally, one opinion poll in late 2012 put the party’s support 49% on a two party preferred basis. This was a false dawn: inexorably the government’s support has slumped this year. Gillard’s admirers have pointed to the government’s strong legislative record, but this posed the question of why this record did not translate into public support. The government’s drift to the right on asylum seeker policy dispirited many supporters, but yielded little opinion poll dividend.</p>
<p>The legacy of the 2010 election campaign has also cast a shadow over Gillard. Paul Keating and John Howard both struggled in the polls in their last terms but both could point to their record of victory against the odds in 1993 and 2001 respectively. This helped them sustain the loyalty of their backbench. Gillard has not been able to point to a previous example of success. </p>
<p>The Labor debacles at the <a href="http://www.pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SGE2011/la_landing-fc.htm">NSW</a>, <a href="http://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/state2012/results/summary.html">Queensland</a> and <a href="http://www.waec.wa.gov.au/elections/state_elections/election_results/2008_State_General_Election/legislative_assembly_party_results.php">WA state elections</a> have also generated alarm among federal Labor MPs. It now seems that even traditionally safe Labor seats in ethnic suburbs of the major cities are at risk. </p>
<p>Keating and Howard also faced a more divided opposition. John Hewson, Alexander Downer, Kim Beazley and Mark Latham struggled to unite their parties. Tony Abbott has led a remarkably united Liberal party; the apparent certainty of electoral success has also bolstered his support. Gillard has faced a vicious circle of decline, Abbott a spiral of growth.</p>
<p>In 2010 many Gillard supporters hoped that she, like former WA premier Carmen Lawrence or former Victorian premier Joan Kirner a generation earlier, would rally Labor voters, but she has failed to achieve this. Gillard has appealed to very strong Labor supporters, hence the dogged loyalty of most MPs to her cause. Her problem is that Labor’s true believers are now few and far between. </p>
<p>Gillard failed to appeal beyond this narrow core to floating voters. Today, swing voters are no longer just the middle-class suburbanites of the 1990s but include many recent migrant groups, such as Asian-Australians, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/rudd-unveils-his-lucky-charm-20120211-1sydq.html">whom Kevin Rudd charmed</a>. The Australia Labor Party of Hawke and Keating, whose cause Gillard has doggedly defended in many aspects, is now a thing of the past.</p>
<p>Gough Whitlam predicted after 1975 that the power of the Senate to block supply would generate constant political instability. Governments, he argued, would be forced to the polls whenever their popularity slumped. This pattern did not occur but now something similar has emerged. The axe that hangs over leaders is no longer that of an election but the prospect of poll-driven mutiny in their ranks. The media are no longer just the audience of the political drama but players in their own right. </p>
<p>In 2010 Labor MPs installed Julia Gillard in response to Rudd’s political missteps. It was a testimony to Gillard’s personal and political skills that she was until now able to survive political waves far greater than those that toppled Kevin Rudd in 2010, but her time has run out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kevin Rudd has made a Lazarus-like return to the prime ministership after winning a party room ballot this evening by a vote of 57-45. Rudd, who led the party to success at the 2007 election, replaces…Geoffrey Robinson, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155522013-06-26T03:15:13Z2013-06-26T03:15:13ZMichelle Grattan’s blog on ALP Leadership spill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26241/original/323y7mtb-1372244183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Rudd has won the leadership ballot by 57 votes to 45 against Julia Gillard. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>1:10pm:</strong></p>
<p>Labor’s leadership showdown is now rapidly approaching, with a petition circulating among caucus members asking for a special meeting. The Rudd supporters need one third of the caucus to get a meeting called.</p>
<p>News of the petition came after tumultuous morning which included <a href="https://theconversation.com/country-independents-bow-out-but-play-to-the-end-15542">the announcements</a> by the two key country independents who have propped up the government - Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - that they will not contest the election.</p>
<p>The pair also played into Labor’s leadership crisis with Windsor saying if Rudd was installed and there was a no confidence motion he would be inclined to support Tony Abbott and Oakeshott leaving his position open.</p>
<p>But another crossbencher Bob Katter, who is a close friend of Rudd, said the former Prime Minister would have his support on the floor of the house if he became leader.</p>
<p>Key members of the Rudd camp are confident that he will run. But one Rudd supporter said he was still insisting on some preconditions, including that Gillard supporters would not wreck the government if he took over.</p>
<p><strong>1:20pm:</strong></p>
<p>Rudd continued to confuse the situation earlier, by having his office issue a statement about his travel plans:</p>
<p>Comment from a spokesperson for the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP</p>
<p>Mr Rudd will travel to China to attend an international conference in Beijing on Friday morning. Mr Rudd has had his leave request approved from Thursday afternoon.</p>
<p>Mr Rudd accepted the invitation to speak at the conference a number of months ago.</p>
<p>Details of the conference are available at: <a href="http://www.cciee.org.cn/thinktank3en/">http://www.cciee.org.cn/thinktank3en/</a></p>
<p><strong>1:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>The crisis has come to a head on the second last day of the parliament sitting before the election and following a welter of bad public and private polling showing Labor faces a wipeout under Julia Gillard.</p>
<p>As recently as this week Rudd’s spokesman has reiterated his March pledge that he would not challenge, but his supporters have strongly argued that he has no choice for the sake of the party because only he can save a number of marginal seats.</p>
<p>The hung parliament makes a leadership change a more than usually complicated matter.</p>
<p>If Rudd took over, the Governor-General Quentin Bryce could require that he indicate he had the confidence of the House of Representatives. Which is why what the crossbenchers say is important.</p>
<p><strong>1:35pm:</strong></p>
<p>The Australian Financial Review is reporting that powerbroker Bill Shorten is deserting Gillard - we have asked Shorten’s office if this is true.</p>
<p>Earlier today Trade Minister Craig Emerson and Climate Minister Greg Combet were still sticking with Gillard. Combet said the leadership must be resolved, although he would not be signing a petition.</p>
<p>Shorten’s position has been considered crucial.</p>
<p><strong>1:40pm:</strong></p>
<p>NSW Senator Matt Thistlethwaite told Sky he had not seen the petition, would not be signing it and was a supporter of the “Prime Minister”.</p>
<p>He said he could not speculate on talks yesterday between leading Rudd numbers man, former-minister Chris Bowen and Secretary of the NSW Labor party Sam Dastyari.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the government is struggling on with its legislative work in the dying days of the parliament. The legislation for the Gonski school funding program has passed the Senate, although only two states have agreed to the system so far, Victoria is due to make an announcement shortly.</p>
<p><strong>1:45pm:</strong></p>
<p>Shorten’s office tells us “the Minister’s position has not changed and he will not be adding to the media speculation.</p>
<p><strong>1:47pm:</strong></p>
<p>Julia Gillard has received a shout out from Minister Gary Gray, who describes her as a "terrific woman” and the “right person” to be Prime Minister. “Everyone knows I support the PM in all circumstances”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26221/original/wb72kvy2-1372230413.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The focus has been on Bill Shorten’s loyalty to Julia Gillard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>1:50pm:</strong></p>
<p>One person smiling but trying not to appear too smug is Tony Abbott. He said it was “pretty clear that the turmoil inside the Government is only deepening”.</p>
<p>“It seems that the Labor Party caucus has not just lost faith in the Prime Minister but is losing faith in the Labor Party itself.”</p>
<p>Looking to the possibility that he might be facing Kevin Rudd, Abbott said “The Labor Party well may change its leader, but it doesn’t matter who leads the Labor Party - it will still be much the same government with much the same policies”.</p>
<p><strong>1:54pm:</strong></p>
<p>With Question Time only a few minutes away, the last thing on ministers’ minds will be their briefs.</p>
<p>This is an eerie repitition of what happened in March. Then Julia Gillard had to face parliament almost immediately after Simon Crean demanded a leadership spill. That time, Gillard announced in parliament that she was calling on an immediate ballot. Everyone is waiting for how she will handle this fresh crisis as she faces parliament.</p>
<p><strong>2:00pm:</strong></p>
<p>For the record Kevin Rudd is wearing a blue tie, which seems the uniform of those who oppose Julia Gillard outside and inside the Labor Party.</p>
<p>Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is preparing to deliver his valedictory speech from the Senate at 5:30.</p>
<p>Until today, Joyce didn’t know whether it would be goodbye to the parliament. Thanks to Tony Windsor’s announcement, Joyce can now relax. He’ll have an easy run in New England.</p>
<p>Senator Joyce promises today’s will be an “emotional speech”.</p>
<p><strong>2:01pm:</strong></p>
<p>Sources in the Rudd camp say they’re confident he will run and declare that there is much more energy in the push than in March.</p>
<p>The candidate’s body language is being noted; “he is walking very confidently across the Parliament in divisions,” one source said.</p>
<p>The Rudd camp also says that Bob Katter’s declaration that he would support Rudd in any motion on confidence was an important coup. Sources say this means he would be safe, regardless of the country independents.</p>
<p><strong>2:11pm:</strong></p>
<p>Question time opens with Tony Abbott asking the Prime Minister about the Carbon Tax - the issue that has caused so much trouble for her since the last election.</p>
<p>Abbott asks whether she will rule out expanding it to cover the farm sector and the family car. She says there is no prospect of it extending to the car. As to the farm sector, there is no way to reliably measure emissions, she tells the house, but never the less farmers can benefit from the scheme.</p>
<p>She segues into a tribute to the work of Windsor and Oakeshott in this regard.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd is sitting on the backbench, his thoughts no doubt elsewhere.</p>
<p><strong>2:15pm:</strong></p>
<p>In answer to a Dorothy dixer, Gillard talks up the passage of the school funding legislation declaring that 6 out of 10 children are now covered by the school funding plan.</p>
<p>“That’s great news for children around the country,” she says, adding that it was time for the remaining conservative leaders to “step forward and put the children in their schools first”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26219/original/trz8ry3d-1372230050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julia GIllard in Question Time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>2:21pm:</strong></p>
<p>But Gillard has received a blow in her quest to get the remaining four states signed up to Gonski. Victoria has announced that it won’t be coming on board for the June 30 deadline. With Premier Napthine saying “we will not support Canberra bureaucrats running schools in Victoria”.</p>
<p>This means Gillard will only have got one conservative state - New South Wales. The government is still trying to round up the Labor state of Tasmania.</p>
<p><strong>2:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard once again showing she is a cool customer. Delivering an answer on carbon pricing as though this is just any other old day in question time.</p>
<p><strong>2:32pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard puts a positive spin on Napthine’s letter about Gonski, saying it is a “step forward”. “I am willing to negotiate with the Victorian Premier in good faith to deliver an outcome for Victorian schools.”</p>
<p><strong>2:59pm:</strong></p>
<p>Tony Abbott asks Julia Gillard whether she will bring forward the election date to August 3. Gillard says, in a message directed as much to caucus as to the opposition; “I can assure him and I can assure the Australian people that as prime minister I am getting on with the job”.</p>
<p>She outlines a resume of what the government is doing on education, energy, the Asian century and the rest.</p>
<p>Abbott is moving to suspend standing orders to call on the government to end its internal arguments and get on with governing the country and “restoring the selection of the prime minister to the people”.</p>
<p><strong>3:04pm:</strong></p>
<p>Abbott tells parliament: “We all wished the Prime Minister well when she came into office.”</p>
<p>He said that he had been very conscious, as the father of three daughters, what a milestone in our public life had been reached.</p>
<p>But the Prime Minister’s leadership had been paralysed by acts of treachery and betrayal. These included the betrayal of Kevin Rudd, and of the Australian people over the carbon tax.</p>
<p>There was also the betrayal of independent Andrew Wilkie and of former speaker Harry Jenkins, who had been pushed out for Peter Slipper.</p>
<p><strong>3:07pm:</strong></p>
<p>“We have seen enough [of minority government]. We know it doesn’t work. Why should we limp on for another 80 days?” Abbott told parliament.</p>
<p>He said that the Australian people knew that their future was as much in the hands of unelected union leaders as much as elected MPs.</p>
<p>“It’s all about the unions - I say ‘forget the unions, let’s think about the people.’”</p>
<p><strong>3:10pm:</strong></p>
<p>Manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne asked who could serve on the frontbench of this “apparent white knight”. He said some seven ministers would be forced to resign if Rudd takes over.</p>
<p><strong>3:15pm:</strong></p>
<p>Leader of the House Anthony Albanese said that “angry Tony” had been put aside for “human Tony” who said he was moving the motion with regret.</p>
<p>He said on the second last sitting day, not a single policy idea had been put forward by Abbott.</p>
<p>The opposition believed it had a right to the government benches.</p>
<p><strong>3:30pm:</strong></p>
<p>Tony Abbott’s attempt to suspend standing orders is defeated by 73-74, with the crossbenchers split.</p>
<p>Sky news is reporting that many Labor MPs have not yet seen the petition for a special caucus meeting.</p>
<p><strong>3:41pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard backer Laurie Ferguson reaffirms that he was “very strongly” supporting the PM. “I’m impressed that, as ever, she is holding the line and not being pushed around,” he tells The Conversation.</p>
<p><strong>3:56pm:</strong></p>
<p>Foreign Minister Bob Carr has rearranged his domestic connection ahead of a proposed trip to Indonesia, in the expectation of a caucus meeting.</p>
<p>Carr will be a vote for Rudd, in the March leadership affair it was speculated that he backed Rudd but he said in a news conference at the time that the Prime Minister had his support.</p>
<p><strong>4:00pm:</strong></p>
<p>Victorian MP Steve Gibbons said as of 3:45pm: “I have not seen a petition calling for a spill, nor have I spoken to anybody else whose seen it”.</p>
<p>He said he had told Rudd sometime ago he would not vote for him. “Everybody is pretty much over it all, pissed off about how its all gone, and want to get out of here and go back and work in their electorates,” Gibbons told The Conversation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26220/original/vh87yf95-1372230235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bob Carr has changed his travel plans to make sure he is in caucus for the leadership vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>4:14pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard has approached Sky to go live on air and will appear shortly.</p>
<p><strong>4:17pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard has called a ballot for the leadership at 7pm tonight and affirmed she will fight for her position.</p>
<p><strong>4:19pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard declares that the loser of the ballot should leave politics, and says she will do so if defeated.</p>
<p><strong>4:21pm:</strong></p>
<p>She says that the leadership must be settled once and for all and anybody who believes they should be leader should stand. “This is it. There are no more opportunities,” she said.</p>
<p>The best way to get a final settlement is for the loser to depart politics, Gillard says.</p>
<p><strong>4:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard says that apparently a petition was circulating calling for a ballot, but she has not seen it. She describes it as the “political equivalent of the loch ness monster” - which everyone talks about but no one has actually seen.</p>
<p>In a gibe at the Rudd forces, Gillard says the normal practice in these situations is to directly approach the incumbent the two shake hands then have the contest, but this had not happened in this case.</p>
<p>Gillard’s decision to call on a very quick ballot, giving minimum time for lobbying, is a repeat of what she did in March.</p>
<p><strong>4:28pm:</strong></p>
<p>Someone’s pitying the the football fans, Triple J Hack’s Julia Holman tweeted:</p>
<blockquote><p>View from the ABC cameraman… Only a Victorian would choose State of Origin night to call a leadership spill. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23origin&src=hash">#origin</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23spill&src=hash">#spill</a></p>— Julia Holman (@JulesHolman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JulesHolman/statuses/349775676091547649">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>4:31pm:</strong></p>
<p>Kate Lundy has just tweeted:</p>
<blockquote><p>I will be supporting <a href="https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard">@JuliaGillard</a>. Proudly. Again.</p>— Kate Lundy (@KateLundy) <a href="https://twitter.com/KateLundy/statuses/349775223731654658">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>4:32pm:</strong></p>
<p>The Liberals are quickly on the job with a new video about Labor dysfunction, including clips negative character references about Rudd.</p>
<blockquote><p>Irrespective of who leads Labor, the chaos, division and dysfunction will continue. New video: <a href="http://t.co/j6HOxk6up7">http://t.co/j6HOxk6up7</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23auspol&src=hash">#auspol</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MyLiberal&src=hash">#MyLiberal</a></p>— Brian Loughnane (@LoughnaneB) <a href="https://twitter.com/LoughnaneB/statuses/349776634951376896">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>4:42pm:</strong></p>
<p>Kevin Rudd will make an announcement at 5pm.</p>
<p><strong>4:46pm:</strong></p>
<p>Victorian MP Michael Danby, a Gillard supporter, said he would expect Rudd to give the same undertaking as Gillard about quitting politics if he was defeated. “Enough is enough,” Danby said.</p>
<p>He believed Labor’s situation was a function of the hung parliament which had meant that indiscipline of people had been tolerated because every vote was needed. He pointed in particular to former whip Joel Fitzgibbon, who agitated for Rudd while in the whip’s position, Fitzgibbon had done things “beyond the pale”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26204/original/gb9qd9cr-1372215775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kevin Rudd will soon make a statement as to his intentions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>4:47pm:</strong></p>
<p>We will bring you a full transcript of the Prime Minister’s statement soon.</p>
<p><strong>5:02pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard has just pulled out of her engagement to address the Minerals Council of Australia in Canberra tonight. She will be replaced by Resources Minister Gary Gray.</p>
<p><strong>5:09pm:</strong></p>
<p>It is being reported that Rudd will match Gillard’s commitment to quit politics if he loses.</p>
<p>Here is the full transcript of Julia Gillard’s interview with David Speers on Sky News.</p>
<p>HOST: Prime Minister, thank you for your time. Will you call a leadership ballot?</p>
<p>PM: Thank you David for this opportunity.</p>
<p>As you’ve been reporting, and others are reporting, there is apparently a petition circulating within the Labor Party to call for a leadership ballot.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen this petition.</p>
<p>Call me old fashioned, but the way in which these things are normally done is a challenger approaches the leader of the Labor Party and asks them to call a ballot for the leadership, you shake hands and then a ballot is held.</p>
<p>That hasn’t happened. But in these circumstances I do think it’s in the best interests of the nation – and in the best interests of the Labor Party – for this matter to be resolved.</p>
<p>So, whilst I haven’t been approached by anyone saying that they wish to be Prime Minister, or Labor leader, it is my intention to call a ballot for the Labor leadership at 7PM tonight.</p>
<p>HOST: And you will stand?</p>
<p>PM: Yes I most certainly will stand. I actually believe that politics, government, is about purpose.</p>
<p>It’s not about personalities. It’s about values and getting the big things done that the nation needs.</p>
<p>And even today in the midst of what has been a fair bit of hurly burly I’ve been very focused on our education reforms and improving schools for every child. That’s my focus.</p>
<p>HOST: Will you win this ballot?</p>
<p>PM: Well David, I do want to say to you because I believe politics is about purpose – not about personality – that going into this ballot tonight I think that everyone involved should accept a few conditions on the ballot, should come to understand the true significance of the ballot.</p>
<p>First and foremost, anybody who believes that they should be Labor leader should put themselves forward for this ballot.</p>
<p>This is it.</p>
<p>There are no more opportunities.</p>
<p>Tonight is the night and this is it.</p>
<p>Number two, because politics is not about personality, all of these issues need to be resolved tonight.</p>
<p>We cannot have the Government or the Labor Party go to the next election with a person leading the Labor Party and a person floating around as the potential alternate leader.</p>
<p>In those circumstances I believe anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win, you’re Labor leader; that if you lose, you retire from politics.</p>
<p>HOST: You are agreeing to do that?</p>
<p>PM: Absolutely.</p>
<p>HOST: If you lose tonight you will leave Parliament at the election?</p>
<p>PM: Correct.</p>
<p>And I think that that is the right thing to do for the nation and for the political party I lead, and I hope to lead following the ballot.</p>
<p>We cannot be in a circumstance where the nightly news has been as the nightly news has been for much of my prime ministership if the truth be told, where I have been in a political contest with the Leader of the Opposition, but I’ve also been in a political contest with people from my own political party.</p>
<p>No leader should be in that position; certainly no leader should be in that position in the run up to an election.</p>
<p>And so tonight, this is it, finished. I am asking my political party to endorse me as a leader and Prime Minister of purpose.</p>
<p>People will make their decision but having made their decision it’s over and the best way of it being over is for the person not successful to retire from politics.</p>
<p>HOST: As you indicate, this issue has not left you throughout this parliamentary term.</p>
<p>This is the third time it’s coming to a head.</p>
<p>Who do you blame for that? Has Kevin Rudd really been an honest broker when he says he’s not interested in challenging?</p>
<p>PM: Well I’ll let my caucus colleagues decide all of that and judge the history.</p>
<p>What I would say for myself, and I know that these things are contested and spoken about in politics, what has always driven me in politics and will continue to drive me if I receive the trust of my colleagues tonight is getting things done in accordance with Labor values for a Labor purpose.</p>
<p>HOST: But Prime Minister, you said this earlier on in the year. Why does it keep coming back to this?</p>
<p>Do you accept any responsibility for the fact that so many of your colleagues want to bring this on again?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26224/original/psgxmypr-1372233401.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julia Gillard announcing the spill on Sky News.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Skynews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>PM: I accept responsibility for my own conduct. People need to accept responsibility for their conduct.</p>
<p>And so I think your questions are perhaps best put to others.</p>
<p>What I can certainly tell you as Prime Minister and as Labor leader is I have never been diverted from that task and achieving the big things the country needs by all of this nonsense.</p>
<p>But I am, as a rational politician, aware how debilitating this nonsense is for my political party, for my parliamentary colleagues, which is why I am making it a contest where I think the only decent thing for anybody to do is to say that is it, tonight is the moment for caucus to decide.</p>
<p>I accept that outcome so fundamentally that if I am not successful I will not run at the next election.</p>
<p>I ask others to accept the outcome on the same basis.</p>
<p>And whether it’s me or whether it’s someone else who emerges from tonight’s contest, they can go to the next election leading a united team because there is no one seeking to divert attention from Labor’s re-election campaign.</p>
<p>HOST: You said you have not seen this petition. Has anybody approached you to call on you to bring about a spill?</p>
<p>PM: No they have not and I have been wryly joking with some of my colleagues that this petition is the political equivalent of the Loch Ness monster. Everybody says that it exists but nobody has actually got the photograph of the Loch Ness monster.</p>
<p>HOST: And you haven’t spoken to anyone who has seen it?</p>
<p>PM: No I haven’t spoken to anyone who has seen it.</p>
<p>HOST: Do you doubt its existence?</p>
<p>PM: Look, David, I don’t know.</p>
<p>What I do know, and I don’t want to be critical of your honourable profession during the course of this interview.</p>
<p>What I do know is that when things get like this there are all sorts of claims and counter claims but I’ve got an obligation to the nation.</p>
<p>We are talking about who leads the nation.</p>
<p>I’m not going to let that speculation run endlessly.</p>
<p>I’m not going to have this Parliament, when we’ve still got business to do and big things to get done, end up being subject to media crews cannoning up and down parliamentary corridors in the hope of catching someone that they can then get half a sentence from.</p>
<p>That’s not the way I want to do things so let’s get it done.</p>
<p>HOST: Just getting back to the earlier question, how confident are you that you will still be Prime Minister this evening?</p>
<p>PM: Well I wouldn’t be putting myself forward unless I had a degree of confidence about the support of my parliamentary colleagues.</p>
<p>I certainly have very much received good support from my closest cabinet colleagues, people who are doing very good and important work for the country.</p>
<p>This is a pressurised time. People will make a decision. The important thing is that people keep in their mind as they walk into that room what is in the best interests of the nation, what is in the best interests of the Labor Party.</p>
<p>I answer those questions by saying what’s in the best interests of the nation and the Labor Party is to have a sense of values and purpose and discipline and that is why I am shaping up tonight’s ballot like that.</p>
<p>HOST: In a nutshell then, if this is your final pitch publicly before that caucus ballot tonight, why are you a better Prime Minister than Kevin Rudd?</p>
<p>PM: I will speak to caucus colleagues about the way in which caucus colleagues vote but I am happy to answer your question generally about why I have done this job and why I seek to continue to do this job.</p>
<p>I came into politics to make a difference.</p>
<p>I came into politics believing government could be about providing opportunity and it wouldn’t matter whether you came from a rich background or a poor background, you’re a migrant, you’re an indigenous Australian, you were entitled to lead a life of opportunity partnered with your own endeavour and hard work.</p>
<p>That’s how I’ve lived my life and that’s how I’ve brought the reforms that we’ve focussed on as a government, nothing more important than the school funding reform.</p>
<p>These are Labor values, Labor purpose. That’s what drives me.</p>
<p>I’m not interested in public accolades, I’m not interested in applause. I’m not interested in any of that personality politics. I’m interested in getting things done.</p>
<p>HOST: But do you think Kevin Rudd does not share those Labor values that you just articulated?</p>
<p>PM: Mr Rudd can speak for himself and I would not be presumptuous enough to speak for him.</p>
<p>HOST: But if he ends up leading Labor again tonight, do you fear for the future of the Government and the party?</p>
<p>PM: I’m not being drawn about hypotheticals beyond tonight’s ballot.</p>
<p>HOST: Well Prime Minister, we know you do have a busy few hours ahead, I appreciate your time. Thank you.</p>
<p>PM: Thanks David.</p>
<p><strong>5:13pm:</strong></p>
<p>Here is Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>“I will be a candidate,” Rudd says.</p>
<p>“Many, many MPs have requested me for a long, long time to contest the leadership.”</p>
<p><strong>5:18pm:</strong></p>
<p>Rudd says “it’s time for this matter to be resolved.” He says the voices of the Australian people have had a “huge affect on me” - more than the pressure from his colleagues. Thousands of Australians had said to him they were genuinely fearful of what Tony Abbott would do if he won government.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26222/original/6xdz5w6q-1372231417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kevin Rudd arriving at his conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>5:21pm:</strong></p>
<p>Rudd gave three reasons for abandoning his earlier pledge to not challenge for the leadership: requests from colleagues, a belief that people deserved a competitive choice at the election, and a fear that as things were Labor faced the greatest landslide since federation.</p>
<p>He said he didn’t “fudge” the fact he had changed his position and he accepted full responsibility for his statements.</p>
<p>In March he said he would never be leader of the party. Rudd has promised that if he is elected when caucus meets at 7:00pm there will be no “retribution” or “paybacks” against his critics in the party.</p>
<p>He has matched Gillard’s promise to quit politics at the election if he is defeated.</p>
<p>He refused to take any questions, declaring he had to zip to continue his work before the ballot.</p>
<p><strong>5:30pm:</strong></p>
<p>What was notable about Rudd’s appearance was that he played heavily to his strengths, stressing that he was acting in response to the feedback from the Australian public.</p>
<p>He said that “thousands” of Australians had conveyed their fears about an Abbott government and raised the prospect of the Coalition bringing back some version of WorkChoices under a different name.</p>
<p>Rudd didn’t try to walk away from his previous unequivocal proclamation that he would never again seek to be leader, but simply gave several reasons why he was breaking his word.</p>
<p>If Rudd is elected, there will be big changes in the government with Anthony Albanese expected to become deputy leader and Chris Bowen expected to become treasurer. Several ministers have said they will not serve under Rudd.</p>
<p><strong>5:36pm:</strong></p>
<p>Here is the full transcript of Kevin Rudd’s presser.</p>
<p>Thank you for gathering. My fellow Australians. My fellow members of the Australian Parliamentary Labor Party. Today I am announcing that I will be a candidate for the position of Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party. I am advised that the Chair of the Parliamentary Labor Party has been collecting a petition of members, about a third in number, which requested that a meeting of the Party be held to resolve the question of the Party’s leadership. Of course, Julia’s statement of half an hour or so ago removes the need for such a petition. The truth is, many, many MP’s have requested me for a long, long time to contest the leadership of the Party because of the parlour circumstances we now face. And perhaps less politely, various Ministers have been free and frank in their public advice to me as to the desirability to contest the leadership in recent days. For the nation’s sake, I believe it’s time for this matter to be resolved. The second and more important reason for contesting the leadership is the tens and thousands of ordinary Australians, members of the Australian public who have been asking me to do this for a very long time. And it’s your voices, the voices of the Australian people; it’s those voices that have had a huge effect on me. More so than the voices I happen to hear around the corridors of this building. What literally thousands of Australians have said to me over the last year or so is that they are genuinely fearful of what Mr Abbott could do to them if he’s elected, not only elected with a massive majority, including a majority in the Senate, which he is currently on track to do.</p>
<p>Last time Mr Abbott’s party had absolute power, they brought in work choices. People are afraid, they are very afraid, that they will try to do it again. Under a different name of course, but no one forgets work choices. Australian families are afraid of what Mr Abbott could do to penalty rates and overtime. What could happen to their jobs, what it could do to pensions.</p>
<p>And what i could do to the environment. And the truth is if we are all being perfectly honest about it right now is that we are on course for a catastrophic defeat, unless there is change. And so today i am saying to you the people of Australia, I’m seeking to respond to your call That I’ve heard from so many of you to do what i can to prevent Mr Abbott from becoming prime minister. There is a third reason for contesting the leadership as well. I believe that all Australians whatever their politics want a real choice at this election. A real choice. At present if you talk to them long and hard, they don’t feel as if they’ve got one. And they are frustrated that we are denying them one. They are angry that we are leaving them with little choice at all other than to vote for Mr Abbott. Australian want a real policy debate on our vision for the countries future and Mr Abbotts vision for the future of our economy and jobs, on national security, on education, on health, on climate change and how we would make these competing visions work. This has now become urgent for the future of the economy in particular. I believe that what the country needs now is strong, proven, national, economic leadership to deal with a formidable new challenge Australia now faces with the end of the decade long china resources boom and its impact on Australian jobs and living standards into the future.</p>
<p>Given that our economic relationship with China alone now accounts for nearly 10% of the total size of our economy. This is a massive new challenge.</p>
<p>Diversification and productivity are no longer important for Australia, they are essential for Australia, if we are to protect our jobs and maintain our living standards.</p>
<p>Mr Abbott’s alternative economic policy is to copy the British conservatives – launch a national slash and burn, austerity drive and drive the economy into recession as happened in Britain. A double dip and almost a triple dip recession in the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>I therefore believe, with all my heart that I owe it to my country to offer the Australian people a viable alternative, for them to choose the future they want for themselves. Their jobs and their families - because these big economic questions will affect us all and sooner than we think.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26223/original/hjp9c5bf-1372232294.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kevin Rudd announcing his intention to challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is time for proven national economic leadership.</p>
<p>These are the three core reasons why I have changed my position on the leadership. The request that I have received from my colleagues, my belief that the Australian people deserve a competitive choice at the next election and my fear that if we don’t offer it Mr Abbott will win by the biggest landslide since Federation. Unleash an assault on the people who rely upon us the Australian Labor Party and those of us in the Australian Labor government to protect them.</p>
<p>I do not seek to fudge the fact that I have changed my position, I’ve simply given you the reasons today that I have done so.</p>
<p>I accept full responsibility for my previous statements on the leadership and I’ll leave it to you , the good people of Australia to judge whether I have made the right call.</p>
<p>If I win this ballot, every effort I have in my being will be dedicated to uniting the Australian Labor Party. No retributions, no pay backs, none of that stuff. It’s pointless, it’s old politics.</p>
<p>The values which drive our movement are those things which should unite us. For those ministerial colleagues and friends who choose to serve and who want to serve, my general principle will be to embrace them in serving. For those who believe they cannot serve, I wish them well, thank them for their service and welcome the opportunity to renew the government. If I lose, of course, I would announce that I would not contest the next election, and I thank Julia for making the same commitment.</p>
<p>Friends, my fellow Australians, I love this country of ours and I’m doing what I honestly believe to be in the best interest of Australia. And to my friends in the media, you’ve heard me say this a million times, I have an hour and 40 minutes to speak to a number of friends in the Parliamentary Labor Party about what will happen here in this room at7pm, so I’ve gotta zip, thank you.</p>
<p><strong>5:45pm:</strong></p>
<p>Wayne Swan is sticking close and spruiking his leader:</p>
<blockquote><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard">@JuliaGillard</a> is the toughest person I know – she’s a remarkable PM who I know will beat Tony Abbott on Sept 14</p>— Wayne Swan (@SwannyDPM) <a href="https://twitter.com/SwannyDPM/statuses/349794052834721793">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>6:08pm:</strong></p>
<p>Wayne Swan has followed up his earlier endorsement of Julia Gillard:</p>
<blockquote><p>In all my yrs in politics, I’ve never met anyone with a Labor heart like <a href="https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard">@juliagillard</a>’s. Hers is a true Labor Govt driven by Labor values.</p>— Wayne Swan (@SwannyDPM) <a href="https://twitter.com/SwannyDPM/statuses/349800659379433472">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p>And Labor MP Andrew Leigh has added a bit of heavy humour to the proceedings:</p>
<blockquote><p>Do not feed the journalists. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23AusPol&src=hash">#AusPol</a> <a href="http://t.co/YyMPJ0ScyV">pic.twitter.com/YyMPJ0ScyV</a></p>— Andrew Leigh (@ALeighMP) <a href="https://twitter.com/ALeighMP/statuses/349801491474812928">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>6:14pm:</strong></p>
<p>Rudd camp sources say there is genuine confidence that he has the numbers and believe there could be a bandwagon effect.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Chief Government Whip Chris Hayes has organised a State of Origin function at the National Press Club tonight. “He won’t be seeing Labor members until the second half,” one of his colleagues quipped.</p>
<p>Hayes was previously a Gillard supporter but is now expected by the Rudd camp to be on their side.</p>
<p><strong>6:16pm:</strong></p>
<p>One of Gillard’s loyal supporters and personal friends, who stuck through thick and thin, even to the extent of taking the poisoned chalice of the immigration portfolio just tweeted:</p>
<blockquote><p>Confident that <a href="https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard">@JuliaGillard</a> has support of caucus</p>— Brendan O'Connor (@BOConnorMP) <a href="https://twitter.com/BOConnorMP/statuses/349802748033765377">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>6:22pm:</strong></p>
<p>Message for the future: the hazards of organising functions in the last week of the parliament.</p>
<p>The Guardian Australia is having its launch in parliament tonight, but its blogger, my former Age colleague Katharine Murphy has just tweeted that she won’t be there.</p>
<p>The Minerals Council dinner will have a few empty chairs as well, at least in its early stages.</p>
<p><strong>6:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>Bill Shorten is talking to the media in a few minutes.</p>
<p><strong>6:36pm:</strong></p>
<p>Bill Shorten about to start.</p>
<p><strong>6:40pm:</strong></p>
<p>Shorten has formally switched his support to Rudd, which should boost his vote.</p>
<p>“I have now come to the view that Labor stands the best chance to defend the legacies of this term of government … if Kevin Rudd is our leader,” Shorten said.</p>
<p>Shorten’s position has been long speculated on, but up till this afternoon he insisted he was still supporting Gillard. He told his news conference the issue had been weighing on his mind for weeks.</p>
<p>“This is not an easy decision for me personally,” he said.</p>
<p>Shorten was one of those who masterminded the 2010 coup which installed Gillard.</p>
<p><strong>6:42pm:</strong></p>
<p>Shorten has got a quick backlash from a dedicated Gillard supporter:</p>
<blockquote><p>So Shorten has joined the ranks of the treacherous, I won’t be joining him!</p>— Steve Gibbons (@SteveGibbonsMP) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGibbonsMP/statuses/349809433708199937">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>6:55pm:</strong></p>
<p>Labor MPs are making their way into the caucus room to vote, a contrast to the 2010 coup when Rudd, faced with overwhelming numbers against him, decided not to contest the ballot. Gillard is determined to fight to the end.</p>
<p><strong>6:58pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard arrives at the meeting surrounded by supporters. Kevin Rudd walks in by himself - an interesting decision.</p>
<p><strong>7:08pm:</strong></p>
<p>While we wait for the result of the ballot, here is Bill Shorten’s full statement:</p>
<p>What guides me each day is what is in the best interests of our nation, our democracy and the Australian people.</p>
<p>The Australian labour movement is a cause that I believe passionately in and it is a cause that I believe is greater than any individual. It is a cause – a movement – that I have lived and worked for my entire adult life.</p>
<p>I believe this government has delivered once in a generation, nation changing reforms that are true to Labor’s core values.</p>
<p>These are the things that we must unite behind and fight for</p>
<ul>
<li><p>A national disability insurance scheme</p></li>
<li><p>A better education for our kids</p></li>
<li><p>A secure retirement income</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I believe that Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party is a once in a generation risk to Australia’s future and would take the nation backwards.</p>
<p>It is the wish of the Caucus for a ballot to be held to determine the leadership of the Party.</p>
<p>There are 101 members of Caucus, each with a single vote to cast.</p>
<p>I have carefully considered my position, and have come to the view that Labor stands the best chance of continuing to deliver nation changing reforms under the leadership of Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>I understand that this position may come at great personal cost to me, and it has weighed heavily on my mind.</p>
<p>I am a great admirer of Julia Gillard.</p>
<p>What we have managed to achieve in Government under her leadership is remarkable. BUT the future of the nation and the Labor Party is at stake here, and therefore I am changing my vote tonight to Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>The Australian public want a choice at this coming election, and I believe that Kevin Rudd leading us to the election gives our people, my colleagues, the best chance of winning that election.</p>
<p>The achievements of the Rudd and Gillard Governments are many - and it is these achievements that I want to fight for - to make sure they endure, to make sure they are delivered, and to finish the job that Labor started.</p>
<p>If Julia Gillard wins the leadership ballot then I wish her well and offer my resignation from Cabinet. Regardless I pledge to campaign to the utmost of my abilities to ensure that Labor wins the election.</p>
<p>As I have said, this is not an easy decision for me personally. There will even be friends who don’t agree with my decision.</p>
<p>But my personal view is that this is the best decision and in the best interests of Australia and the Labor Party.</p>
<p>These causes are bigger than all of us individuals in this particular time of Government.</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>7:44pm:</strong></p>
<p>Stay with us, a result on the vote can’t be far away. We expect there is probably a vote on the deputy as well.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there is a meeting in the Coalition party room at 8pm.</p>
<p><strong>7:54pm:</strong></p>
<p>Kevin Rudd has defeated Julia Gillard for the leadership of the Labor Party by 57-45.</p>
<p><strong>7:45pm:</strong></p>
<p>So far there has been no spill for the deputy, but Wayne Swan is now making a statement to the caucus. Both Gillard and Rudd addressed the caucus before the vote.</p>
<p><strong>7:56pm:</strong></p>
<p>Government whip Chris Hayes described the caucus room mood as somber.</p>
<p>“Any of these challenges are particularly emotional,” he said.</p>
<p><strong>7:57pm:</strong></p>
<p>Swan has resigned as deputy prime minister and the government’s senate leader Stephen Conroy, who is Communications Minister, has also quit, meaning that three out of four of the leadership group has gone.</p>
<p><strong>8:05pm:</strong></p>
<p>Finance Minister Penny Wong is reported to have won the position of Senate leader - a woman PM gone, but a woman is elevated to a more junior position in the leadership team.</p>
<p><strong>8:06pm:</strong></p>
<p>Labor strategist Bruce Hawker, who is very close to Rudd says; “tomorrow it all starts in earnest”.</p>
<p><strong>8:10pm:</strong></p>
<p>Trish Crossin was dumped by Gillard from her Northern Territory Senate seat for Gillard’s “Captain’s pick” Nova Peris. Crossin leaves the Senate mid next year. She just tweeted:</p>
<blockquote><p>Labor is back on track. It’s a Ruddy Future with strong <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23leadership&src=hash">#leadership</a>. No more <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23spill&src=hash">#spill</a> issues and on track to serve… <a href="http://t.co/dupiGl5Ub8">http://t.co/dupiGl5Ub8</a></p>— Senator Crossin (@trishcrossin) <a href="https://twitter.com/trishcrossin/statuses/349827936943214592">June 26, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><strong>8:16pm:</strong></p>
<p>Crossbencher Andrew Wilkie has given Rudd some good news, here is his statement:</p>
<p>I have written to Kevin Rudd indicating that I will provide him confidence in the House of Representatives in the event that her Excellency the Governor-General commissions him as Prime Minister.</p>
<p>It’s not my business to takes sides in the Labor Party leadership.</p>
<p>But I’ve come to the conclusion that the public interest is best served by a smooth transition to the new Prime Minister.</p>
<p>So I will not support any no-confidence motion in the Government or in the Prime Minister simply on the basis of this leadership change.</p>
<p>A federal election is scheduled for 14 September. Certainty, and the public interest, is not served by a no-confidence vote undoubtedly leading to a snap House of Representatives election.</p>
<p>An election before 3 August would necessitate a subsequent half-Senate election within 12 months at an additional cost to the Australia taxpayer of $150m.</p>
<p>I hope my cross-bench colleagues move quickly to state their positions on tonight’s developments because it’s not in the national interest to now have a long period of uncertainty.</p>
<p><strong>8:18pm:</strong></p>
<p>It’ll be interesting to see if the Liberals once again shy away from the no confidence motion, given that Rudd has the numbers with the crossbenchers.</p>
<p><strong>8:19pm:</strong></p>
<p>Albanese and Simon Crean are tussling for the deputy prime ministership, with Albanese the clear favourite.</p>
<p>Crean was the one who tried to get the leadership settled in March, but Rudd wouldn’t come to the party. Crean said then, he would make himself available for deputy.</p>
<p><strong>8:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>Craig Emerson and Joe Ludwig are also reported to have resigned from the cabinet. Emerson, a former partner of Gillard’s has been one her loyal supporters vociferous advocates.</p>
<p>Joe Ludwig is the son of Bill Ludwig, of Australian Worker’s Union fame.</p>
<p><strong>8:30pm:</strong></p>
<p>While Rudd has the numbers among the crossbenchers on a no-confidence motion, Rob Oakeshott has said tonight he has still not determined his position.</p>
<p><strong>8:50pm:</strong></p>
<p>Anthony Albanese becomes the new deputy prime minister, defeating Simon Crean by 61-38 votes with three informal.</p>
<p>Victoria’s Jacinta Collins has become deputy leader of the Senate (with Penny Wong as leader), making it an all female Senate leadership team.</p>
<p><strong>9:01pm:</strong></p>
<p>Greg Combet has said in a statement that he has been a strong supporter of Julia Gillard and therefore “I believe it is appropriate that I resign from my position as Minister for Climate Change, Industry and Innovation.”</p>
<p>“This is the right thing to do,” Combet says in his statement.</p>
<p>The ministerial resignations have turned into a mass exoduses which will be a quick test of Rudd’s leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26243/original/qzgt5dgv-1372244862.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP&#x2F;Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>9:02pm:</strong></p>
<p>Combet says in the statement he welcomes the resolution of the leadership.</p>
<p>“It is now important that Mr Rudd has a clear opportunity to argue Labor’s case and to appoint his own team to take up the fight to Tony Abbott,” he said.</p>
<p>Ministers to resign so far Wayne Swan, Stephen Conroy, Craig Emerson and Greg Combet.</p>
<p><strong>9:05pm:</strong></p>
<p>Craig Emerson has just released a statement saying he would not contest the election.</p>
<p>He says Gillard has been “a great reforming prime minister, in the great Labor tradition.”</p>
<p>“I owe her a big debt of gratitude for putting her confidence in me and entrusting me with responsibilities that are so important to Australia’s future,” he said.</p>
<p>Emerson, who has been Tertiary Education Minister as well as Trades Minister, says he hopes that Gillard’s needs based policies for schools endures. Rudd has been reported in the media as having doubts about the Gonski plan.</p>
<p><strong>9:08pm:</strong></p>
<p>Gillard has a press conference coming up very soon.</p>
<p><strong>9:10pm:</strong></p>
<p>We still haven’t heard any word of schools minister Peter Garrett who recently said he wouldn’t serve with Rudd.</p>
<p><strong>9:12pm:</strong></p>
<p>Wayne Swan will also say something, shortly after Gillard’s comments.</p>
<p><strong>9:25pm:</strong></p>
<p>Julia Gillard’s speaks to the media - dignified and feisty. She says she will soon leave to see the Governor-General.</p>
<p>She recalls she had the “overwhelming support” of her colleagues when she took up the prime ministership, but for most of her time as leader she faced a minority government and “internal division. It has not been an easy environment.”</p>
<p><strong>9:30pm:</strong></p>
<p>She said she is proud of what her government has achieved, listing health reform, carbon pricing, disability insurance and work on Australian schools among other achievements.</p>
<p>Stressing the importance of schools reform Gillard says this is almost completed and “it needs to be part of the continuing Labor project to get it done.”</p>
<p>In a message to her colleagues Gillard says “don’t lack the guts, the fortitude, the resilience to go out there with our Labor agenda and win the election.” The party should put divisions behind it and unite.</p>
<p>Gillard said her experience as a female prime minister would make it easier for the next woman and women after that.</p>
<p><strong>9:31pm:</strong></p>
<p>Here is the full transcript of Gillard:</p>
<p>As you would probably be aware Kevin Rudd has been elected as leader of the Federal parliamentary Labor Party.</p>
<p>I congratulate Mr Rudd on his election. In view of his election I have written to the Governor-General asking her to commission Rudd as prime minister of Australia.</p>
<p>I will shortly leave from this Parliament to see the Governor-General on this matter.</p>
<p>In accordance with the pledge I gave earlier today I announce that I will not recontest the Federal electorate of Lawler at the forthcoming election.</p>
<p>I will have time in the coming weeks to be back home in my electorate and to say hello and goodbye to the community that I’ve had the absolute privilege of representing in this Parliament since 1998. So I will keep comments about my electorate until that time.</p>
<p>Three years ago I had the very great honour of being elected as Labor leader. It followed having the honour of being elected as deputy leader and Deputy Prime Minister following the 2007 election. This privilege was truly humbling.</p>
<p>I thank the Australian Labor Party for that privilege and I thank the Australian people for their support. When I first put myself forward for consideration as Labor leader in 2010 I had the overwhelming support of my colleagues to do. I thank them for that and I thank them for giving me the opportunity to not only to serve the nation, but to serve as the first female prime minister of this country. In the years in which I’ve served as prime minister, predominantly, I have faced a minority Parliament and faced internal division within my political party.</p>
<p>It has not been an easy environment to work in. But I am pleased that in this environment, which wasn’t easy, I have prevailed to ensure that this country is made stronger and smarter and fairer for the future.</p>
<p>It has been the defining passion of my life that every Australian child gets a great opportunity at a life of work and the dignity that comes with work.</p>
<p>I am very proud of what this government has achieved, which will endure for the long term. Very proud of the way in which we achieved health reform, against the odds, with newly elected conservative leaders. Very pleased that we pushed through and put a price on carbon - an historic reform that will serve this nation well and required us to have the guts and tenacity to stare down one of the most reckless fear campaigns in this nation’s history.</p>
<p>What we have achieved through Disability Care to launch on 1 July this year - apparently an obvious reform to everyone now but something that it took this Labor Government to get done and I am very proud of it.</p>
<p>I am very proud too of the work we have done in Australian schools. Today we passed the legislation which means 60 per cent of schoolchildren are covered by our new reforms. But this great Labor mission must be concluded, not only in the days that remain to the 30th of June, but in the days beyond by Labor winning the Federal election.</p>
<p>It has been the defining passion of my life that every Australian child gets a great opportunity at a life of work and the dignity that comes with work, gets a great opportunity for the education that they should have and that reform is almost completed and it needs to be part of the continuing Labor project to get it done.</p>
<p>I’m also very proud of having commenced the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in institutional settings. This Royal Commission is working its way around the country. I believe it will have many years of work in front of it but it will change the nation. It will change individual lives as people get to come forward and tell their story.</p>
<p>It will change the nation because we will learn how to better protect our children for the future.</p>
<p>I’m also very proud of the foreign policy achievements of this Government. Things people said couldn’t be done we have done, particularly we have strengthened both our alliance with the US while taking a major stride forward in our relationship with China. I’m very pleased too that we have taken big strides forward in other relationships including our relationship with India.</p>
<p>I am confident that I leave the prime ministership having strengthened the relationship with our major partners, every one of them. I also believe the work we have done in Afghanistan is something to be proud of as an Australian nation.</p>
<p>One of the things that has most delighted me as Prime Minister and before that as Deputy Prime Minister has been getting to know our Defence Force personnel. I can’t claim that I came out of opposition with any great experience in defence or any great exposure to Australian Defence Force personnel. Now I have had both experience in defence and that exposure and whilst there are issues to address in our Defence Force about the treatment of women overwhelmingly the men and women of our ADF are great Australians and getting to know them has been a real privilege.</p>
<p>I have, either as Prime Minister or as Acting Prime Minister, attended 24 funerals for soldiers lost in Afghanistan. I’m very aware of the courage and the sacrifice and part of being Prime Minister has been being there for those families in their darkest moments.</p>
<p>My colleagues through all of this journey have provided me with great support and I want to thank them for that great support.</p>
<p>I say to my caucus colleagues: don’t lack the guts, don’t lack the fortitude, don’t lack the resilience to go out there with our Labor agenda and to win this election. I know that it can be done.</p>
<p>They defied political gravity time after time to provide me with more support as the leader of the Labor Party when the going got incredibly tough. When all of those that read polls and do the commentary on them were saying that there was only one logical conclusion, and that was to change the leader, my colleagues showed courage, they showed determination, they showed spine in the face of that kind of pressure. They showed conviction in our Labor project and in our Labor cause. They showed belief in the agenda of this Labor Government.</p>
<p>I understand that at the caucus meeting today, the pressure finally got too great for many of my colleagues. I respect that. And I respect the decision that they have made. But I do say to my caucus colleagues: don’t lack the guts, don’t lack the fortitude, don’t lack the resilience to go out there with our Labor agenda and to win this election. I know that it can be done.</p>
<p>And I also say to my caucus colleagues that that will best be done by us putting the divisions of the past behind us, and uniting as a political party, making sure we put our best face forward at the forthcoming election campaign, and in the years beyond.</p>
<p>I want to just say a few remarks about being the first woman to serve in this position. There’s been a lot of analysis about the so-called gender wars. Me playing the so-called gender card because heavens knows no-one noticed I was a woman until I raised it, but against that background, I do want to say about all of these issues, the reaction to being the first female Prime Minister does not explain everything about my prime ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my prime ministership.</p>
<p>I’ve been a little bit bemused by those colleagues in the newspapers who have admitted that I have suffered more pressure as a result of my gender than other prime ministers in the past but then concluded that it had zero effect on my political position or the political position of the Labor Party. It doesn’t explain everything, it doesn’t explain nothing, it explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey.</p>
<p>What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that. And I’m proud of that.</p>
<p>Can I say now a few thank yous, particularly to my colleague Wayne Swan who I think will address you shortly. He has been fantastic. I have had loyal and capable colleagues. I want to thank them for their dedication and determination. Politicians aren’t fashionable in the Australian community but take it from me even as I go out the door, politicians work incredibly hard and overwhelmingly, people come into this Parliament with a sense of service and that certainly defines my colleagues - their sense of service to the nation.</p>
<p>I want to thank the people who have worked with me. I want to thank the staff at The Lodge and Kirribilli House. I want to thank the AFP, what’s a few sandwiches between friends? Don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>I want to thank my personal staff, led ably by Ben Hubbard. Unfortunately it is becoming part of our political debate to draw staff members into the political contest. I think that’s wrong. I’ve always believed it’s wrong and I hope it desists now.</p>
<p>I would like to thank my electorate office staff, particularly Michelle Fitzgerald, Anne Carlos who have been with me since I was elected in 1998.</p>
<p>I would like to thank Tim and my family, and I would like to say as I’ve already said by way of text to my niece who is due to have a baby in July, look forward to the most meddlesome great-aunt in Australia’s history. Thank you very much.</p>
<p><strong>9:32pm:</strong></p>
<p>Wayne Swan is talking now, recalling what he said in his maiden speech and saying how important it is that everyone in every postcode gets a “fair go”.</p>
<p><strong>9:33pm:</strong></p>
<p>Meanwhile Peter Garrett joins the mass exodus. His statement is below.</p>
<p>Now that Kevin Rudd has been elected Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, I am resigning my position as Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth and will not recontest the upcoming election as Member for Kingsford Smith.</p>
<p>I believe I have always acted in the best interests of the Party and the Government. I was a front-man who chose to be a team player and make a difference in politics. I do not, for one moment, regret that choice.</p>
<p>I want to place on record my thanks to colleagues, staff and the community for their enduring support. To my wife Doris and daughters Emily, May and Grace a huge thanks for their support too, and the love they have given me since I entered Parliament in 2004.</p>
<p>At all times I have endeavoured to represent the people of Kingsford Smith faithfully and in particular, to have secured the protection of Malabar Headland for the people of NSW.</p>
<p>It has been a privilege to serve as a loyal Cabinet Minister for nearly six years, having participated in a number of crucial reforms that only Labor Governments can achieve.</p>
<p>I am especially proud to have had stewardship of the most significant education reforms we have witnessed in Australia, like the national curriculum, first national teaching standards and much needed investment for literacy and numeracy and indigenous education.</p>
<p>This culminated in the passage into law today of the Australian Education Bill.</p>
<p>We now have a new, fairer funding system based on the Gonski review which will ensure the needs of young Australians are met regardless of where they live or how much money their parents earn.</p>
<p>I pay tribute to Julia Gillard for having the foresight, courage and tenacity to drive these reforms, that will give thousands of young Australians a better future.</p>
<p>I am also proud to have committed our government to a world class system of marine parks, placed the Kimberley region on our National Heritage list, introduced the first e-waste recycling scheme and ensured resale royalties for Australian artists, including Indigenous artists.</p>
<p>These along with a host of other significant actions across many portfolios, have been the mark of a truly reforming Labor Government.</p>
<p><strong>9:34pm:</strong></p>
<p>Swan pays tribute to Gillard’s toughness as a leader and for her policy achievements.</p>
<p><strong>9:36pm:</strong></p>
<p>He says that he will recontest his Queensland seat of Lilley.</p>
<p><strong>9:40pm:</strong></p>
<p>Swan says a lot is on the line in the coming election campaign and warns that Abbott will embrace European style austerity policies.</p>
<p><strong>9:42pm:</strong></p>
<p>Kevin Rudd is holding his fire until tomorrow. He will have quite a lot to talk about. We hope he has a good sleep.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, we are signing off now and will put up some analysis later in the night.</p>
<p><strong>9:50pm:</strong></p>
<p>Change of plan. Rudd is about to speak, so we will bring you that.</p>
<p><strong>10:42pm:</strong></p>
<p>Old habits never die it seems, Kevin Rudd has arrived late for his first news conference as Prime Minister, second time round. He is accompanied by new deputy Anthony Albanese.</p>
<p>Rudd says that in 2007 the Australian people elected him and he is now resuming the prime ministerial task with humilty, honour and a sense of energy and purpose.</p>
<p>He says there has been too much negativity all round in federal politics, and promises to change that.</p>
<p><strong>10:50pm:</strong></p>
<p>Paying tribute to Julia Gillard, he says she had extraordinary intelligence, great strength and energy.</p>
<p>He was taking up the challenge of the prime ministership because “I don’t have it in my nature to stand idly by and have an Abbott government come to power by default”. Describing Abbott as a man “steeped in the power of negative politics”. Rudd says he has seen no evidence of real positive plans for Australia from the opposition leader.</p>
<p>“I see my role as Prime Minister in forging consensus wherever I can,” he says, adding that personal vitriol diminishes and demeans us all. “We can all do better than that.”</p>
<p>Rudd appealed to business:</p>
<p>“Let me say this to Australian business. I want to work closely with you. I have worked with you closely in the past, particularly during the GFC and there are some white knuckle moments there as the heads of the major banks will remember. We came through because we worked together. I am saying it loud and clear to businesses large and small across the country. In partnership we can do great things for the country’s future.”</p>
<p>Rudd concludes with a direct appeal to young voters, saying he understands why they have switched off, “please come back and listen afresh,” he says. “It’s important we get you engaged and with your energy we can start cooking with gas.”</p>
<p><strong>10:50</strong></p>
<p>Here is the full Rudd transcript:</p>
<p>In 2007 the Australian people elected me to be their Prime Minister.</p>
<p>That is a task that I resume today with humility, with honour and with an important sense of energy and purpose.</p>
<p>In recent years, politics has failed the Australian people. There has just been too much negativity all round. There’s been an erosion of trust. Negative destructive personal politics has done much to bring dishonour to our parliament but done nothing to address the urgent challenges facing our country, our communities, our families. In fact it’s been holding our country back.</p>
<p>And all this must stop, and with all my heart that is the purpose that I intend to pursue as Prime Minister.</p>
<p>I want to pause to acknowledge the achievements of my predecessor, Julia Gillard. She is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, of great strength and great energy. All of you here in the National Press Gallery and across the nation would recognise those formidable attributes in her and I know them having worked with her closely for some years. Also Julia, as Prime Minister, and prior to that Deputy Prime Minister has achieved much under the difficult circumstances of minority government.</p>
<p>And in doing so she has been helped by a group of dedicated Ministers and Members of Parliament whose contribution I also wish to acknowledge.</p>
<p>In Julia’s case let me say this, if it were not for Julia we would not have the Fair Work Act. If it were not for Julia, we would not have a national scheme which ensures that the literacy and numeracy performance of Australian schools is tested regularly and that interventions occur to lift those students who are doing poorly. She has been a remarkable reformer and I acknowledge those contributions again formally this evening.</p>
<p>I also wish to acknowledge the contribution of the Deputy Prime Minister, as he has been, Wayne Swan, with whom I have also worked intimately, in fact over several years. Working in the trenches, day in, day out, night in, night out. Here in Canberra, working together to prevent this country from rolling into global economic recession and avoiding mass unemployment.</p>
<p>So, Wayne, whatever our differences have been, I acknowledge your contribution here as part of that team which kept us out of a global catastrophe.</p>
<p>The question many of you will be understandably asking is why I am taking on this challenge.</p>
<p>For me it’s pretty basic, it’s pretty clear. I simply do not have it in my nature to stand idly by and to allow an Abbot government to come to power in this country by default.</p>
<p>I have known Mr Abbott for 15 years, since I was elected to this place the first time. I recognise his strengths. I also recognise, however, that Mr Abbott is a man steeped in the power of negative politics, and he’s formidable at negative politics. But I see no evidence of a real positive plan for our country’s future. I also passionately believe that the Australian people want all of us engaged in the national political life to work together, to come together whenever that is possible, and I see my role as Prime Minister in forging consensus wherever I am. Identifying our differences where they do in fact exist and without reverting to personal vitriol. That just diminished and demeans us all. We can do better than that. We can all do better than that.</p>
<p>You know, Australia is a great country. Having seen a few others in the world in my time, this is a fantastic place. We owe much to those who have come before us and we owe much to those who will come after us to ensure that what we have inherited is improved upon and not degraded. But you know something, we have a great future but that future is not guaranteed. As I’ve said once before, here in Australia we’ve got to make our own luck and we can. We’re good at it and if we work at it we can actually bring our future home securely.</p>
<p>In recent times, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of the global economy. There are a lot of bad things happening out there. The global economy is still experiencing the slowest of recoveries. The China resources boom is over. China itself, domestically shows signs of recovery and when China represents such a large slice of our own economy, our jobs and our own opportunities for raising our living standards. The time has come for us to adjust to the new challenges. New challenges in productivity. New challenges also in the diversification of our economy.</p>
<p>New opportunities for what we do with processed foods and agriculture, in the services sector and also in manufacturing.</p>
<p>I’ve never changed my script or my belief. I never want to be Prime Minister of a country that doesn’t make things anymore. There’s a big future for Australian manufacturing under this Government.</p>
<p>Looking at our global economic circumstances, therefore, we have tough decisions ahead on the future of our economy. This means having a government that looks at growing the size of our economic pie as well as how it is distributed. And let me say this to Australian business: I want to work closely with you. I’ve worked with you closely in the past, particularly during the GFC and there were some white knuckle moments there as some of the heads of the major banks will remember. But we came through because we worked together and I’m saying it loud and clear to businesses large and small across the country, that in partnership we can do great things for the country’s future.</p>
<p>And for the Australians that depend on the success of your businesses to have a job, to have decent living standards and opportunities. Business is a group that this Government will work with very closely. What I want to see here in Canberra is for business and Labor to work together I don’t want to see things that drive business and Labor apart. We’ve been natural partners in the past and we can be again in the future. I intend to lead a Government that brings people together and gets the best out of them.</p>
<p>Before I conclude, let me say a word or two to young Australians. It’s clear that many of you, in fact far too many of you, have looked at our political system and the parliament in recent years and not liked or respected much of what you have seen. In fact as I rock around the place, talking to my own kids, they see it as a huge national turn off. Well I understand why you have switched off. It’s hardly a surprise but I want to ask you to please come back and listen afresh. It’s really important that we get you engaged, in any way we can. We need you. We need your energy. We need your ideas. We need your enthusiasm and we need you to support us in the great challenges that lie ahead for the country. With your energy, we can start cooking with gas.</p>
<p>The challenges are great but if we’re positive and if we come together as a nation we can overcome each and every one of them.</p>
<p><strong>10:55pm:</strong></p>
<p>We are finished for the night and resisting the temptation to say “gotta zip”.</p>
<p>An analysis piece will be up later tonight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>1:10pm: Labor’s leadership showdown is now rapidly approaching, with a petition circulating among caucus members asking for a special meeting. The Rudd supporters need one third of the caucus to get a…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.