By ABC's Annabel Crabb
Updated December 02, 2011 08:17:40
Here's the story so far.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is from the Left. The former prime minister and current Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is from the Right.
Nearly 18 months ago, a group of factional leaders from the Right approached Julia Gillard (from the Left) and asked her to help them depose Kevin Rudd (from the Right).
Julia Gillard (from the Left) agreed, and within about two hours, almost all of the Right - and much of the Left - were on board. What was left of the Left stuck with Mr Rudd (from the Right), due in the most part to their fears - articulated by Mr Rudd in the fateful Caucus meeting that followed - that a move to Ms Gillard (from the Left) would entail a lurch to the Right on key policy issues such as the management of asylum seekers.
It does seem that - in this respect at least - those who were left of the Left (and Mr Rudd, from the Right) were right.
Under the rule of Julia Gillard (from the Left), the Left has felt left out, a feeling stemming chiefly from her enthusiasm for controversial export industries (live animals to Indonesia, live uranium to India and live Sri Lankan teenagers to Malaysia). The Left feels that Julia Gillard (from the Left) has no right to be on the Right of such matters.
Of gay marriage, barely anything polite can be said between the Prime Minister and her own faction. The Left favours - overwhelmingly - the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Ms Gillard (from the Left) does not believe gay men or lesbians should have the option of swearing themselves to each other. This rankles, rather understandably; she has borrowed their idea of living in companionable sin, but does not feel the flexibility should run both ways.
The Prime Minister has called for the matter to be subject to a conscience vote. This is an approach that would allow the Prime Minister to appear liberally inclined on the issue, while in effect (and here Ms Gillard relies shrewdly on her working knowledge of actual Labor consciences) ensuring that the whole thing dies with its leg in the air.
The Prime Minister promised before the last election that her government would not change the Marriage Act. If her word is to be made good, it will be thanks to the Right faction, who doggedly protect her against her own grouping.
The Left and Right also have differing views on the pressing question of how to adjust the Australian Labor Party structurally so that it doesn't seem like such an egregious waste of time to anyone not presently serving as a member of the Senate.
The Right, who have long enjoyed a majority at Labor national conferences under the current system of branch and union warfare, are broadly re-endorsing the status quo, with some fancy-sounding enhancements like trial primaries and online policy groups.
The Left, who tend to command a greater proportion of the Labor membership overall (though, to their eternal disadvantage, it is almost always the less-organised bit) are plumping for popular election wherever possible.
Another big fan of popular election is Kevin Rudd (from the Right).
Mr Rudd - whose approval rating among his immediate colleagues dramatically undershoots his broader popularity among party hoi polloi - last week issued a clarion call to the party to listen to its masses.
"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend," he beamed, borrowing the Chinese Communist slogan of the 1950s whose liberal-sounding rhetoric all too soon succumbed to an all-too-predictable round of Beijing brutality.
Those with a sense of history (or not even that; iView would do) immediately reflected that when Mr Rudd was Actual Prime Minister, not just Preferred, his approach on such matters was better summarised as "Let A Single Mute Cactus Die Unremarked In A Pot, For All I Care".
The calendar tells us it is only two years since Kevin Rudd presided over the most obsequious Labor National Conference in living memory. The rhetoric tells us it's been, in Labor years, much longer.
Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.
