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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…