The headline story today at the AFR is a neat investigative report into union power brokers shifting towards the return of Kevin Rudd:
The top leaders of the trade union movement discussed the prospect of Kevin Rudd returning to the leadership of the Labor Party as they prepared a battle plan against Coalition leader Tony Abbott.
A meeting on Tuesday of the inner circle of union secretaries decided to impose a $2 levy on all union members to raise almost $4 million for a campaign fighting fund.
Sources with a knowledge of the meeting said there was “an acceptance that time is running out” for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Union leaders who have so far strongly supported Ms Gillard – the secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Joe de Bruyn, and the national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Michael O’Connor – were at the meeting.
Sources said neither Mr de Bruyn nor Mr O’Connor walked away from their support for Ms Gillard. But the pair conceded there was a real prospect she would be replaced.
When Rudd lost his last leadership spill and disappeared quietly to the back bench in February this year I wondered if he wouldn’t spend his time actively undermining the Government as Paul Keating did in his assassination of Bob Hawke. That he hasn’t seemed a little bizarre to me at first.
But it looks like Rudd got this one right. Rather than cast himself as another wrecker, Rudd is just sitting there watching the Government kill itself. He can play the healer rather than the wrecker. Humbly asked to return to the repair the party by those that ousted him in the first place.
As we approach the election next year, he can wait the Gillard supporters out. Here was the last to party preferred Morgan poll:
That’s a very nasty trend for Gillard. Even rate cuts appear to have stopped working to boost popularity.
What of timing? The next election is not until December 2013. The number crunchers will definitely be thinking that Rudd’s best chance is to assume the leadership and then rush to an election while he enjoys the honeymoon period (assuming there is one).
That means a leadership change is still a year away. Needles to say, that is an eternity in politics.
Still, my mind is made up, whoever leads this Government into the next election they will not be getting my vote. It’s the selling out of the mining tax that’s done it for me.
