The prime ministership is now within Kevin Rudd’s grasp if he is prepared to seize it. But it’s not available on the terms he has been demanding.
The central question in Australian politics today is this – is Rudd prepared to save Labor from itself? He has to decide today. It’s been entirely obvious to the whole country that he would dearly like to be restored to the prime ministership, and the Australian voting public is with him.
After the Kevin Rudd’s last leadership challenge I wrote that:
The media is a dunce. Today it’s chock-o-block with declarations and crowing that Labor’s leadership woes are settled. They’re not. And Rudd has done his chances of winning the election no harm either which is, after all, what it’s all about.
Today’s media coverage is much like that which transpired a few months ago after Julia Gillard tore Tony Abbott to pieces on the gender issue. The entire press gallery damned the performance as cynical and hypocritical, even as the polity loved it. It’s the same this time. In refusing to run in yesterday’s ballot, Rudd will grow more popular still with voters. He refused point blank to do to Julia what was done to him. Rudd just elevated himself above politics in moral terms, in integrity terms and in leadership terms.
Clearly that is what Kevin Rudd has had in mind all along, quite rightly. The Labor Party should have capitulated this week and given him back the Prime Ministership. It was taken from him under false pretenses in a union putsch that poisoned the new government from the get-go. Recall the polling at the time was swinging in Rudd’s favour:
He was winning the RSPT debate against the odds when Gillard struck.
But it’s now or never and, in my view, Rudd has held out long enough anyway. Gillard will be blamed for ignoring the obvious and hanging on too long if Rudd moves now. Not Rudd for bringing on the challenge to right the wrong.
Strengthening the case for a moral move, it is now very clear that it is in the national interest that Gillard go. Her recent speeches and PR efforts have been increasingly divisive and fantastical and her complete failure to put on the agenda the number one challenge facing the nation – the brewing great Australian economic adjustment – has let the LNP sail along under the radar.
As a result we have an election being fought on the grounds of total fantasy, not to mention one that has zero electoral tension, which is always bad for democracy.
It remains unlikely that Rudd will win the election, but he can prove to us all today that he is more than just another narcissist by taking the risk that he’ll lose a leadership ballot. And if he wins and adopts the “Australian adjustment” platform, he can apply a lot of heat to Abbott’s austerity party. Who knows, we may even find a meltdown is possible across the isle as well.
Time to step up, Kevin.
