Kevin Rudd

ᔥ Brisbane Times

Labor’s judgement day is looming. Their union rorting, cheating chickens are coming home to roost:

A constant stream of Labor heavies came through Dobell and Robertson, led by the opposition leader Kevin Rudd, to support the Labor candidates: Craig Thomson in Dobell and Belinda Neal in Robertson. Former prime minister Bob Hawke visited Dobell four times.

”I had never seen so many shadow ministers coming through. We had one every day,” said another Liberal campaign worker, who preferred not to be named. She saw plenty of the Labor field general in Dobell, Michael Williamson.

Williamson was operating from deep within the Labor machine. He was, and is, the national president of the Health Services Union, where Craig Thomson had been national secretary for five years. He was on the executive of the ACTU. He was a vice-president of Unions NSW. And a director of the SGE Credit Union. He would be elected national president of the ALP in 2009.

After Julia Gillard became prime minister, she employed his daughter, Alexandra, as a media adviser. Senator Mark Arbib, believed to have been a key figure in organising political and legal protection for Thomson, rented a Canberra apartment with Alexandra Williamson for two years.

In the 2007 election campaign, Williamson concentrated all the resources he could marshal on Dobell. He spent much of his time operating out of the Thomson campaign office at Long Jetty. He deployed resources from the HSU, Unions NSW, the ACTU and the ALP. He organised scores of union members into the electorate and booked dozens of motel rooms for campaigners.

Many of the details of the 2007 campaign can be found in the report by Fair Work Australia into the activities of Thomson. The Dobell campaign office was largely financed by the HSU with help from the Transport Workers Union. Staff from the HSU national office were seconded to the campaign. The ACTU set up a Work Choices campaign office across the road from Thomson’s headquarters.

So blurred were the lines between Thomson, Williamson, the unions, the ACTU and the Labor Party that when Thomson gave his first speech in federal Parliament on February 19, 2008, he said: ”The support I received from the entire union movement but in particular from Unions NSW, the TWU , the CFMEU [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union] mining division, the PSA [Public Service Association of NSW] and, of course, my own union, the Health Services Union, was phenomenal. Michael Williamson, the HSU national president, was a marvel in relation to the long-term support he provided to me.”

The Thomson scandal has now busted all that wide open, but Labor feels it owns Thomson after helping him so much. But Thomson is set to name names at 2pm our time:

Labor would do it all again in Dobell in 2010, more than a year after the Thomson scandal was exposed by this newspaper. Thomson re-contested and won Dobell in 2010, a victory that saved the Gillard government.

Labor owns Craig Thomson. In every way.

Strange, then, that Thomson is now accusing Williamson of being one of those who engaged in an improbable conspiracy to ruin his reputation through associations with prostitutes and misappropriation of union funds.

Last week, when the Victorian police fraud squad invited Thomson to name those he believes are involved in the conspiracy, he declined to do so. Responding via the Labor Party’s law firm, Holding Redlich, he said he would name people in Parliament.

That day has come. Thomson is scheduled to address Parliament at midday. He will seek to place reasonable doubt into the narrative that has thus far condemned him. The level of scrutiny and scepticism will be intense.

The whole soap opera around Thomson has succeeded in postponing any legal day of judgment until after a full three-year term has run its course. Thanks to these tactics, used by the Prime Minister on down, and thanks to the support of Thomson by the Greens and independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, the Labor-Greens-Windsor-Oakeshott coalition appears unlikely to ever breach solidarity over Thomson.

Bucket loads of popcorn are required this arvo, to watch this unfold.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

This was one of the greatest political videos of all time…utterly devastating and the result of a judiciously timed leak designed to do the most damage.

It is still being played out as Police investigate:

THE Australian Federal Police have moved to a full-scale investigation of the leak of damaging video footage of Kevin Rudd repeatedly swearing and banging a desk, which helped trigger February’s leadership spill.

The federal police at first said it was not investigating the leaked video, which showed out-takes from a recording made within the prime minister’s office during Mr Rudd’s leadership, which were anonymously uploaded on YouTube.

Later, the federal police said it had received a referral and was ”evaluating the information provided”.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Honestly, it is refreshing to read political commentators who don’t mince words…we have to put up repeaters on a personal political mission.

“She has been swimming upstream in a river of shit for 18 months with her mouth open, and she’s still smiling,” the supporter said. “Rudd would have drowned long ago.”

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

A decent anti-government campaign like the miners ran in Australia would cause huge problems for whoever was in power.

The miners are angry and alarmed again. On Friday, before anyone knew Brown had quit, they published full-page ads warning the government not to accede to the demands of some ”groups still demanding Australian mining should pay even more”.

Ominously, they reignited the ”keep mining strong” tagline – the same as in the $22 million anti-mining tax ad blitz that crippled Kevin Rudd’s leadership and almost killed Labor.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Is the C-Bomb going mainstream? Inga Muscio thinks it is time to mainstream the word:

Muscio believes the word, a mere four letters but so powerful (as she says, “There is something about it … it’s just so base; it’s like, it means business, you know?”) is a metaphor for the status of women. While they are oppressed, the word will be oppressed, too.

But as much as Muscio wants to reclaim, reshape and empower women to use “c…”, much in the way the gay community has adopted “queer” and African-Americans have taken back “nigger”, even she says that she sometimes uses the word for ill.

“Once in a while, when someone makes me really, really angry, I will call them that,” she admits. “I am not immune. It feels good sometimes.”

It is as though the word – coyly known as the C-word, the C-bomb, the Anglo-Saxon swear word, tnuc or C U Next Tuesday – has a life of its own. Unlike other words in our lexicon, which we marshal and deploy to suit us, ”c…” seems to exist outside and beyond us, with a mysterious and plosive power belonging only to it.

It is a word even the most liberal of swearers hesitate to use and is arguably the most notorious in the English language, so taboo it’s heard less often than the N-word.

Feminists hate it, most comedians avoid it, grown men are punished for saying it. It has caused sackings and scandals, bannings and banishment. When pronounced, it sounds hard and violent.

Even Germaine Greer admits it is shocking.

How can one syllable cause so much offence? And why, in a world where even the most offensive terms such as “nigger” are being reclaimed, does the C-word remain singularly ostracised?

Why can’t we tame ”c…”?

I am a liberal swearer…I find profanity fascinating and incredibly useful, plus some people just are c…s, as Alexander Downer once noted about Kevin Rudd:

“I don’t use the c-word, but I do use the f-word pretty freely, and I can tell you that Kevin Rudd is a f…ing awful person,” he said.

“He was so incredibly unprincipled.”

With the removal of Kevin Rudd and the appointment of Bob Carr as Foreign Minister a remarkable thaw has happened with regard to Fiji.

BOB Carr will begin to reverse six years of hard-line Labor policy against the government of Fijian dictator Frank Bainimarama.

Mr Carr will offer an olive branch to the military strongman, who seized power in the small Pacific island nation after a military coup in 2006.

The new Foreign Affairs Minister will travel to New Zealand tomorrow to meet NZ Prime Minister John Key to discuss Fiji’s banning from the Pacific Islands Forum in 2009.

Incentives for Fiji are likely to include lifting some of the “sticks” against the regime, including the forum’s ban on the junta – and some reversal of Australian sanctions set up in the wake of the coup.

These include a blanket ban on the supply, sale or transfer to Fiji of arms and related material, the provision of technical advice, assistance or training, a financial service or financial or other assistance to Fiji related to military activities or  any activity that involves the sale or supply of any export-sanctioned goods to Fiji.

I sense a change from New Zealand as well. This is great news for Fiji.

Aussie politics is robust, and splendid at the same time. Check out this about GUBU:

As a follower of Irish politics, the Liberal Party’s federal director, Brian Loughnane, is a fan of the acronym GUBU.

Wheeled out in Ireland on occasions of scandal and disrepute, GUBU stands for ”grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented”.

Last Monday night, after Julia Gillard saw off Kevin Rudd in the leadership ballot and then Mark Arbib quit the Senate, Loughnane thought GUBU an apt term to apply to the state of the Labor government. And that was before events turned really strange on Tuesday, when the Herald online exposed the attempt to lure Bob Carr to Canberra as foreign affairs minister and silliness ensued before Gillard salvaged the situation on Thursday.

It will be days, if not weeks, before the impact of the events of the past fortnight filters through in the opinion polls. Despite a few brainless attempts to impute otherwise, Rudd had nothing to do with the on-again,off-again, on-again Carr saga. Consequently, his followers felt smug vindication as it dogged the government. More SNAFU than GUBU, they reasoned. And while, superficially, the Carr coup looks a winner, it and the whole cabinet reshuffle have caused internal consternation.

An interview by Graham Davis screened on Prime and Sky News last night.

Graham Davis is a top class interviewer. Frank Bainimarama stresses the point that NZ is more understanding than Oz.

Grubsheet’s interview with the Fijian leader, Frank Bainimarama, is being shown this weekend in Australia and New Zealand on Sky News and in Fiji in a news special on FBCTV at 7.30pm on Sunday night. In it, Bainimarama says Australia is now alone among its ANZUS partners in refusing to engage with Fiji. And he reveals fresh details of his plans to return the country to democracy in 2014.

In an exclusive interview with Graham Davis for Sky News, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has lashed out at the governments of Australia and New Zealand, accusing them of neglecting the Pacific Islands.

Commodore Bainimarama accused former Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd of neglecting the Pacific, adding Canberra’s lack of attention to the region – and especially its policy of shunning Fiji – had weakened Australian influence in the region and had created a vacuum that bigger powers were moving to fill.

He added improved relations between Australia and Fiji would only come if Tony Abbott won the next election.

The NZ Government and Murray McCully need to drop the stupid sanctions so that business people in Fiji can openly engage and help Fijian Government.

Julia Gillard is looking sharp, and there is no doubting her nimble political footwork in dispatching Kevin Rudd and then appointing Bob Carr as his replacement in the Foreign Minister role:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has turned disaster into a stunning victory and, in doing so, has reasserted the authority the Labor Party renewed in her only on Monday.

Because, until Gillard salvaged the situation, the prospect of Bob Carr becoming foreign affairs minister was dead and Gillard’s leadership was again being spoken about.

Carr himself admitted it at today’s press conference when asked whether, in his mind, the offer that was first put to him on Monday, was dead.

“I might have moved on from it,” he said, with understatement.

…

Her negotiations with Carr showed she wanted him to come to Canberra. The whole world now knew she had been rolled by Smith, her Defence Minister.

The headlines were unkind and so were the comments of Gillard’s colleagues.

Just hours before this morning’s announcement, one minister, who like everybody else, was in the dark that Carr was back in the game, said: “She looks like she’s lied and has no authority.

“This is not good for her; it’s not good for us.

“I despair, I really do.”

The truth is that, by Tuesday, the prospect of Carr coming to Canberra was over.

Gillard, stung by the criticism, rang Carr yesterday and put the offer to him again.

Carr accepted and, once more, Smith took one for the team.

Gillard ends the week as she began it – her leadership ascendant.

The middle was messy but she’s laughing now.

In New Zealand our political parties are very squeamish about negative campaigning. They shouldn’t be.

We have just seen how a relentless negative campaign can work. Julia Gillard and her supporters crushed Kevin Rudd and the nastier it got the more he squealed. But he is the one on the back bench and Julia Gillard is the one enjoying Kirribilli House. Negative campaigning can and does work:

In any event, negativity does not amount to poor politics. Today Malcolm Fraser is a hero of the leftist-luvvies set and receives standing ovations at taxpayer-funded literary festivals. It was not always so. Fraser took over the Liberal Party leadership in March 1975. He proceeded to become one of the most negative opposition leaders in Australian history. Under Fraser’s leadership, the Coalition defeated numerous Whitlam government bills in the Senate and eventually blocked supply.

In the 1970s, the most authoritative gauge of public opinion was the Morgan Gallup Poll, published in The Bulletin. The last poll taken when Fraser was opposition leader had his approval rating at a mere 29 per cent with a disapproval rating of 53 per cent. The Bulletin headed its report “Fraser’s appeal at record low”. Fraser went on to record the biggest victory in post-World War II Australia – despite campaigning on an ill-thought-through and, at times, contradictory policy agenda.

On ABC News Breakfast yesterday, 7.30 presenter Chris Uhlmann gave vent to the familiar Canberra press gallery refrain that Abbott’s relatively low approval rating might mean he is replaced as Liberal leader. Experienced observers should know that what matters in polling is the party vote – not the leader’s approval rating.