November 4, 2011
Opinion
UNDER THE FLAG
Former ALP leader Kevin Rudd states that he is happy in his role as Foreign Minister and is focused on defeating Tony Abbott at the next election.
BREAKFASTERS at the Parliament cafe yesterday morning would have been forgiven for thinking a wayward celebrity was in the House. Was it possible one of the foreign luminaries who graced this year's Melbourne Cup had boarded the wrong flight home? Had one of the Kardashians fallen down a rabbit hole and woken up on Capital Hill? Perhaps someone was promoting a handbag line in the Senate theatrette?
No, the phalanx of cameras and the throng of schoolkid-trampling reporters were following the Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd, sauntering through Parliament House on his way back from a morning speech.
Rudd, who seems to have shaken off the terrible cold which in no way stopped him from hogging the limelight at CHOGM (including a rather startling appearance at a rock concert) didn't look like he was trying too hard to avoid the cameras, or the reporters with them.
They asked questions about his leadership ambitions, reports of which had been (re)published in a newspaper yesterday morning.
''As I've said a thousand times before, I'm very, very happy being the Foreign Minister of Australia,'' he said, before taking his leave in the idiosyncratic fashion that has come to define his departure from these things.
''Guess what, guys, I'm about to zip!'' he said and zip he did.
Earlier, the manager of opposition business, Christopher Pyne, had shoe-horned the leadership issue into a bipartisan motion on the impending visit of President Barack Obama.
''I remind members of the visit of George Bush snr in Christmas 1991,'' Pyne told the House.
''He left the United States when Bob Hawke was the prime minister and arrived when Paul Keating was the prime minister. I wonder whether there will be similar parallels at this time.''
In a display of amazing dexterity, Pyne also managed to wangle the asylum seeker issue into this speech, which led to accusations from the Leader of the House, Anthony Albanese, that Pyne's point-scoring knew no depths.
Since the tragic sinking of an asylum seeker boat off Java's coast earlier this week, both sides have accused each other of making shameless political points.
Neither side seems aware of the irony of making shameless political points out of the other side's capacity for shameless political points.
The leadership speculation, which may well be baseless, at the very least served as something distractingly shiny for the opposition to focus on, after the tide of the Qantas debate started to swing against them this week.
The more industrial relations was discussed, the more it highlighted the fact the Coalition has no industrial relations policy. They'll need one at the election, whoever the PM turns out to be.
