I wrote earlier this month about the Labor Party I’d like to see.
The party and the beliefs I grew up with and fervently adhere to. The ideals of egalitarianism, the fair go, justice, democracy and freedom to express my opinion regardless of what anyone else might or might not think. The Labor Party I feel closest to was most recently espoused during the two-and-a-half years where Kevin Rudd sat in the big chair. The apology to the Stolen Generations, the instigation of Building the Education Revolution, a drive to establish a carbon pollution pricing mechanism, seeking to obtain a fairer share of Australia’s limited resource profits, rationalisation of Australia’s health & hospital care regimes and of course, the one mountainous achievement which is continually fluffed by Labor politicians…the handling of the GFC and adherence to the advice of Treasury. These are all achievements of the first post-Howard era Labor government. Kevin Rudd, as Parliamentary Party leader laid the ground work and created the way forward. Yes, he was driven to achieve and his management style may not have been to everyone’s liking, BUT….when you’re in government you’re there to do a job of work for the people who put you there. I for one don’t care a fig if the leader of the party in government is a rude, obnoxious prig, if he’s whipping along the government I elected to provide for me the advances and reforms I expect to see happening. If a few tender feelings in the public service are wounded, then that’s too fucking bad. Heat, kitchen, remove oneself from, possum.
This week, I’ve seen the fickle attitudes, and frankly, the blindsided ignorance of the politically innocent. Obtuse nincompoops who seem to believe that sticking with what we have as a party, as a leader in Gillard, and as a divisive ALP factional system of decision making, is better than recognising the certain electoral defeat awaiting Labor in 2013, if the government lasts that long. As the Party now stands, with a PM spattered in her predecessors political blood and a clumsy, clown-like method of policy delivery, which I originally elected and grudgingly re-elected in 2010, stands to be destined to wander the political wilderness for another decade. The agenda Julia Gillard claims as her own is anything but. That agenda belongs to Kevin Rudd, wholly and solely. Julia Gillard is a yoke around the neck of a factionally hobbled Party which has moved so far from the one I want to see in government that I actively agitate for this change.
My support for the man is not based on his personality, or his management style, or the fact that he has the capacity to conduct government in a far better manner than the factionally appointed woman currently in the role of PM. My support for the man in this instance rests entirely on my belief that he can halt the electoral slide into oblivion in the face of relentless negativity from an Abbott-led opposition. It is painfully clear that Gillard can not counter Abbott. Her ‘game-on’ is now ‘game-over’ as far as I’m concerned. She has to go, the factions must be broken, the Caucus as an entity MUST take precedence in a collegiate manner with ALL personalities set aside for the good of the Party’s survival. Rudd is not a ‘Messiah’. Rudd will not lead Labor into a broad, sunlit upland, but he can and will lead the Party out of the stinking mire it is currently sinking out of sight into.