Kevvie's Plan to Being a Very Popular PM (Mark 2)

In his published diaries, former Opposition leader Mark Latham tells this hilarious story about Kevin Rudd. He, Latham, had just been elevated to the ALP leadership in late 2003 and was settling his shadow ministry. Rudd was going to get foreign affairs:

Kevvie wanted his title expanded to the more grandiose Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Security. No worries, but then he rang me last Sunday to say he objected to McLelland (Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) also having the word 'Security' in his title. At first I thought it was some kind of joke, but the crazy bastard was serious: he had a long and absurd argument ready about the overlap of the two jobs. By the end of the day, Rudd was threatening to go to the backbench, over a question of semantics. I told him I was willing to accept his resignation and he went away to think about it.

It goes without saying that Rudd didn't resign and somehow managed to get on with his job in the shadow ministry, despite this 'security' problem. Nevertheless, there was something about the chaos that overwhelmed the ALP in the last couple of days that brought this story to mind.

A brief recap then, of events as they transpired. On Tuesday, both Channel 9 and The Sydney Morning Herald came out with stories detailing comments that our freshly minted PM had supposedly made during internal deliberations over big ticket policies of the, now dispatched, Rudd Government. Among the colourful allegations:

- That Gillard had been opposed to both the paid parental leave and age pension increase schemes the Rudd Government had implemented.

- That she had argued against the paid parental leave scheme as it did nothing to help stay home mothers and

- That she had argued that it was pointless doing anything to help retirees as they never voted Labor anyway.

And this after she had gone on the debate on Sunday of the previous weekend and highlighted both of these policies as something that she had been intimately involved with formulating and proud of.

These leaked allegations have proved enormously damaging for Gillard for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they make her look disingenuous and amplify the growing perception that she doesn't really stand for anything; that she'll say and do anything to get elected, even praising popular policies she privately doesn't support. Secondly her blithe dismissal of parents and age pensioners as important groups worthy of government attention accentuate Labors problems with these demographic groups; parents are attracted to Tony Abbott's more generous paid parental leave scheme and old people really don't vote for Labor and really won't now. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Gillard had to spend a valuable day of campaigning time defending herself rather than rushing around the country to 14 different marginal seats to promise people living there that she'd build them a new railway line (and anything else they fancied).

But at least she defended herself rather well. An early morning press conference in Adelaide was the forum for the PM to shake off some of the dull, weirdly Rudd-like, non persona of the first week and a half of campaigning and show a bit of spunk. She bristled, she counter attacked, she started one answer, 'Oh come off it.' She said in plain language that she was skeptical of any policy that crossed her path and this was a sensible way to be and that anyone who wasn't like that was a dill. It was more like the Julia Gillard we'd seen prior to her sudden elevation to leadership, which could only be a good thing for her. But it was still defense and the leaks still hurt.

Which brings us back to the leaks themselves.

Which brings itself back to why anyone from the Labor side of politics would want to do such a thing.

Which brings us back to Rudd.



Popular opinion among the nation's press seems to rule him out as the direct leaker, but I'm not so sure about that. The other possiblility appears to be an un-named person or persons within Labor, deeply offended by Rudd's treatment, trying to get back at Julia for her treachery. But it's hard to imagine anyone doing this for someone like Rudd, who had so little support in caucus he couldn't even muster enough votes to have a credible (i.e. non humiliating) vote on his leadership.

It seems far more likely to me that Rudd would have done this himself. He has a reputation for leaking and a nasty streak so prominent that journalist David Marr wrote a recent profile of him that made him sound like Francis Begbie when he was losing at pool. And Marr was meant to be one of Rudd's 'mates' for fucks sake!

No, Rudd destabilising his own side makes perfect sense if you consider these things, the fact that he's a terrible sook and also:

Kevvie's Plan to Being a Very Popular PM (Mark 2)

Step 1: Leak all sorts of nasty shit about your replacement and ruin her election chances.

Step 2: Watch the Labor Party tear itself to pieces as they become the first one term Government in Australia since the Great Depression.

Step 3: Try not to laugh hysterically as Tony Abbott outlaws abortion and restores the White Australia policy and orders every kid under 16 into fat camp and all the other crazy shit that he'd really like to do once he doesn't have to suck up to us anymore.

Step 4: Quietly assume the ALP leadership again after Swan, Smith, Macklin, Roxon, Combet and Shorton have had a go.

Step 5: Win the following election, or even the one after that, and quietly put Australia back to sleep after years of chaos with a blizzard of the dull, technocratic gibberish that you specialise in.

Somewhere in the back of Kevvie's fevered mind, I've no doubt that this plan is formulating.

schoolhospitalraillink

After the success of Channel 10's 'Hawke' telemovie from last week, it was probably no surprise to see the Silver Bodgie back on the campaign trail. Although keeping the former PM out of the action may well have proved impossible, given the blokes enthusiasm for the limelight: 'Elections really get the juices flowing,' Hawke was quoted as saying with relish, while campaigning in Melbourne last week (and also quoted as saying 'I like your English' when some punter called him a fucking legend).

What was surprising (and a little disappointing) was that Hawke didn't get out the powder blue lounge suit and white shoes, as he did during Campaign 2007:



Putting that disappointment aside though, this underlines something quite unique about the man himself; With the exception of Hawke, the Australian public never has much love for ex Prime Ministers. I mean, can you imagine any of John Howard, Paul Keating or Malcolm Fraser (our other surviving ex PMs) hitting the campaign trail for their respective parties this time around? Anywhere? For any reason? The current batch of candidates all avoid these ex leaders like the plague. And hell, Malcolm Fraser has disowned the Liberals and cancelled his party membership anyway and is probably more likely to doorknock for the Greens than any of Tony Abbott's bunch.

On the other hand, Hawke is probably more popular than he was when Keating ousted him. I mean, now that he doesn't have to worry about upsetting the squares out in the marginal seats he can have a drink and a punt and pinch the odd girl on the bum ('Look at all these beautiful women,' was another choice quote from his day campaigning) and that stuff always goes over well with the mob.

The other thing that was significant about Hawke's campaign appearance was where the Labor Party strategists had him appear; the marginal inner Melbourne seat of Deakin, held by backbeancher Mike Symon on a slim margin of 1.4% What this tells us about the election is:

a) Where the campaign will be won and lost and;

b) What your vote is worth.

And the answers to these questions are, in order:

a) In the marginal seats and;

b) Nothing.

To summarise the above then, starting with the marginals.

There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives, where Government is formed, and the Australian Electoral Commission defines any of them held by a margin of less than 6% a marginal seat. There are 57 of these at this election, or about 38% of total seats. The Liberal Party needs a net gain of 17 seats from the ALP in order to win Government, so guess which ones they're going to concentrate on? That's right! The ones with the smallest margins! It's no wonder they call it political science, because rocket science it ain't.

In any case, this is where you come in. Unless you live in one of these marginal seats, the 62% of people that don't in other words, you're in a safe seat and that means that whichever major party you belong too can afford to take you for granted. Or, on the flipside, can't afford to spend their scarce electoral resources trying to gain a seat they'll almost certainly lose. And so the whole thing can become a bit like a perpetual motion machine in theses safe seats. Neither party really bothers contesting them very vigorously and so the people that live there have little reason to change their voting intentions. The simple truth is that most of the seats in most of the country don't come within cooee of changing hands election after election, year after year, generation after generation.

So to summarise the summary of the summary then, a handful of marginal seats decide each election and the majority of people who live elsewhere can suck up to their local member or just fuck off.

And what this means is that the marginal seats become like black holes, exhorting enormous gravitational influence over major party leadership, time and money. To return to Deakin for a moment, as well as RJ Hawke's visit, already in this week old campaign they've had visits from Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop and Peter Garrett. Julia Gillard will be there sometime this week and will undoubtedly promise to build a new school, or hospital or rail link or whatever the focus groups are telling her the Deakinites want... Then Tony Abott will come back the week after and promise a larger, spiffier and yet cheaper schoolhospitalraillink... Then Julia will come back the week after that and promise everyone a free hot water system and a new car and maybe their OWN PRIVATE SCHOOLHOSPITALRAILINK!!! And then Tony will come back and tell people that they'd already have all of those things if the Labor Party hadn't let so many filthy boat people in to steal all of our schoolhospitalraillinks... and so on, until voting day.

And so it'll go across all of the marginal seats in the country, as the leaders sweep through every couple of days and the actual candidates themselves stalk each other like rabid dogs who have learned how to drive. I've lived in a marginal seat before and if you think the bombardment of campaign ads and propaganda is bad elsewhere, you have no idea what the marginalites are in for. They get the same number of TV and radio ads, but they'll also get personalised auto dialled campaign telephone messages and so much mail box dropped leafleture that they're in danger of disappearing under it all, like De Niro at the end of 'Brazil.'

And this while the safe-seatites wnder why the local members office is shut 328 days of the year.

And so, to summarise the summary of the summary of the summary, the Australian electoral process is a bit skew-iff.