Gay Alcorn Columnist March 29, 2013

'Some bloggers and twitter tragics interpret every event as a giant media conspiracy, but journalists do not make up leadership tensions.' Photo: Harrison Saragossi

The verdict from the parliamentary press gallery is in: the Prime Minister's government is dysfunctional, with lousy judgment and a fixation with polls. Herald Sun columnist Terry McCrann says Julia Gillard is ''the worst prime minister in our history leading our worst-ever government''. The public, we are informed, is so appalled that it has stopped listening.

Turn that around. What if this was the worst political reporting Australians have endured in history? Dysfunctional, with lousy judgment, fixated with polls, feigning concern about the toxicity of political discourse. And the public? They've stopped listening.

If politicians and the media let down the public they purport to serve, then the public will reject them. Simple as that.

Too harsh? I'm not so sure. In the past few days, we have witnessed rare reflection among a few journalists about the media's role in last week's Labor shemozzle. Not that it was a one-off, just the culmination of more than a year of ''sources say'' stories speculating or predicting (or even advocating) the imminent demise of Gillard. As it turned out, they were wrong.

It is not a simple story. Some bloggers and twitter tragics interpret every event as a giant media conspiracy, but journalists do not make up leadership tensions in my experience and they didn't last week. Unnamed sources are essential for journalists (and the public) to get a sense, as murky as it might be, about what is happening beyond the bland public statements of politicians. And Gillard has made big blunders all on her own that heightened caucus rumblings.

The more substantial criticism of the media is the same as the substantial criticism of Gillard's government - that it has lost the public's trust. It is a crisis just as existential as that facing the hapless government, if only we'd admit it. Lenore Taylor, one of the more insightful gallery journalists, didn't shirk it in a Fairfax column a few days ago: Parliament and the media, both reliant on public trust for their existence, ''should give long pause for thought about how that trust can be regained . . . for the media it now has to come down to meeting, and explaining how we are meeting, our responsibilities to be reliable and informative and interesting and fair''.

That is about as likely as Gillard falling on her sword. The PM wants to ''move on'', as though recent events were a ''disappointing'' blip on the road to victory. The media seem equally loath to face their own self-inflicted wounds - how willingly, eagerly even, they were used by unnamed Rudd supporters month after month, not to report significant leadership rumblings, but to inflame them, even to create them. Many reporters did exercise the caution and checking Taylor says is vital to cover messy leadership stories, but the truth is they were drowned out by the weight, placement and sheer volume of stories suggesting a leadership change was just around the corner. It left the public not just confused but cynical.

So let's pause for a moment before we move on. On February 27 last year, Julia Gillard defeated Kevin Rudd in a leadership ballot by a thumping 71 to 31 votes. This is how The Australian reported it that morning: ''Julia Gillard is poised to win today's Labor leadership ballot but faces ongoing political turbulence, with her critics predicting MPs will seek to draft Kevin Rudd to the leadership later this year.''

That was before the ballot was even held.

A couple of months of bad polls and blunders later, Gillard's time was up. News Limited's Niki Savva had already declared that ''sorry Julia, it's over'', and senior journalists, including then Age correspondent Michelle Grattan, were suggesting Gillard should resign (a dramatic step that makes it hard not to be perceived as having a stake in the outcome).

A Canberra Times columnist said of Gillard in May that ''anything she says or does can safely be ignored as irrelevant, because instead of months we can now number her time remaining in The Lodge as a matter of weeks''.

The Herald Sun reported that Gillard ''is facing renewed pressure on her leadership with some Labor MPs wanting her to consider standing down as Prime Minister before the carbon tax begins on July 1. Increased chatter in ALP ranks about their dire election prospects even has some raising the prospect of a leadership change as early as next week.''

Analysis was linked almost entirely to opinion polls. Things looked up for the government towards the end of last year - ''Julia Gillard's poll bounce spells doom for Rudd,'' declared The Australian. Then they went south.

Hundreds of stories were published and broadcast, often with prominence, rarely with scepticism, always quoting ''sources''. But sources lie, run agendas, ingratiate with ''scoops'' and always refuse to be named. At what point, as the ABC's Barrie Cassidy wrote last week, would journalists tell Rudd to ''stop pulling our chains?''

The problem goes deeper than that. News Limited mastheads such as The Australian and the Herald Sun - and some senior journalists in Fairfax - have all but campaigned against Gillard. (After she ''won'' last week, the Herald Sun screamed ''End This Mess'' on its front page, demanding an election now.) How can the public believe the media to be ''reliable and fair'', in Lenore Taylor's words, if large swaths of it are palpably hostile to the Prime Minister, then purport to report the ''news'' that her leadership is under threat?

If Gillard has a credibility problem, so, too, does the media. If Gillard can't ''move forward'' without recognising what's gone wrong with her own performance, neither can those charged with critiquing her government. If politicians and the media let down the public they purport to serve, then the public will reject them. Simple as that.

Gillard is not the only one with a credibility problem

 Michael Koziol March 29, 2013

Stressing its successes won't be enough for Labor to convince voters.

Illustration: Judy Green

Marketing and advertising types like to consider themselves clever enough to sell ice to Eskimos. But as marketing challenges go, the old idiom almost pales in comparison to the gargantuan task facing Labor's strategists and spin doctors ahead of the September election.

After the spectacle of last week, which the Prime Minister called ''appalling'', just how do you convince Australians to sign up for another three years?

It's a terrifying brief.

It should be a textbook government campaign, says Jane Caro, creative director of Jara Consulting, promoting Labor's achievements and vision while tactically attacking the opposition.

''There's an old advertising belief that governments have to sell on fear and oppositions have to sell on hope,'' she says.

''I'd be doing big ads which had pictures of Cyprus and rioters in Greece, saying, 'Australia - 21 years of growth brought to you by the ALP'. I'd certainly be touting those kinds of achievements.''

The basic premise for any government, she adds is: better the devil you know. As a loosely progressive party, Labor should emphasise its perceived strengths in education, health, social justice and climate change. The challenge for Labor lies in winning the kitchen table battle rather than the big picture, says Dan Gregory, chief executive of (the aptly-named) The Impossible Institute.

''Most people vote for selfish reasons, nobody votes for the good of Australia,'' Gregory says. ''We vote for what's going to put the most money in our pocket at the end of the year … no one actually gives a monkey's about the 'economy'.''

The government needed to communicate like former prime minister Bob Hawke. Today's Labor ministers were failing the likeability test, a much more important driver of voter behaviour than policy.

''I travel around the country on a plane every day, I talk to taxi drivers every day - no one talks policy,'' Gregory says. ''It's about the leadership challenge, have they screwed up, is Tony a dick, and is Julia arrogant? That's where the conversation is.''

For Gregory, the perception of arrogance is the attribute Labor most needs to address before the election.

''I would be engineering a campaign that made [Gillard] look like someone who is willing to listen, willing to hear voices from outside her own opinion. The way she has positioned herself is, it's my way or the highway, and I will bully you to get my way.

''I would get her into conversations to people within the media, and actually show her having conversations and listening to people, as opposed to the usual 30-second sound bite.''

This contradicts the strategy chosen by Wayne Swan and other senior ministers to portray Gillard as ''tough''. Caro says Labor's communication strategy has been problematic because it tries to use a resilient personality to mask policy timidity.

''This urge to placate, to not offend anybody, to not get any group up in arms, which has ended up with them looking like they don't stand for anything. ''You want to communicate something? You've got to be seen to stand for something. She's tough, but she's not courageous,'' she says.

Dan Gregory has a solution; he would have Gillard announce three strong principles that underline her beliefs. ''I'd have her come out and say, 'If you don't believe A, B and C, vote for the other guy'. I'd be that straight. Because it tells us what she values, and it would show that she's not just about winning.''

When it came to the question of dealing with last week's aborted leadership coup, the marketers were divided. Some felt it was better to ignore it and focus on issues of greater substance.

''You accept that it happened and you move on,'' says Robyn Martin, who has led many corporate branding campaigns. ''The more that you declare she's the leader, the more people think that it's not true.''

But others believe glossing over the ramifications of losing so much ministerial talent in one swoop is impossible.

''They have to deal with it head on,'' Gregory says. ''I think they've actually got to give people hope that she hasn't ditched all the senior players and got a bunch of juniors running the country.''

Industry veteran and head of Catalyst International John Skinner says there is no conventional brand campaign that matches the level of difficulty facing Labor. He believes only a dramatic repositioning - similar to British New Labour in 1997 - could hope to save the ALP at the next election. But that sort of seismic shift is easier said than done.

''It is very, very hard to change positioning very quickly,'' he advises. ''People become very entrenched, and more so in this case because many of them have actually stopped listening to any new input.''

It would also require a significant improvement in the government's communication and the removal of its poor performs, Skinner says.

''Wayne Swan is a terrible communicator. It doesn't matter how well the economy is going - the way he talks about it, people either don't understand or they don't believe him or they don't care.''

Skinner says the relentless focus on Tony Abbott is also a failure of strategy, because it doesn't allow the government to demonstrate vision. Still, every marketer interviewed expects the government to run an especially negative campaign against him.

One senior creative, who wished to remain anonymous, thought the situation demanded an all-or-nothing approach. ''The only option they've got is to attack Tony Abbott and remind everyone all the silly things he's said,'' he says. ''I would do an ad that said, basically, 'Labor: Can it get any worse?' It starts off looking like an anti-Labor ad. But then you cut to a picture of Tony Abbott and you say, 'Absolutely'.''

How to sell a sinking ship

 Anne Davies March 27, 2013

Evidence on cabinet protocols: former premier Nathan Rees. Photo: Ben Rushton

''Della's [John Della Bosca's] pet crocodile'' and ''Eddie Obeid's left testicle'' were two of the nicknames used by Labor colleagues to refer to the former primary industries minister Ian Macdonald's treachery towards the Left, a senior factional figure, Luke Foley, told the corruption watchdog yesterday.

Mr Foley, a former Left assistant secretary of the NSW Labor Party and now a member of the NSW Upper House, was giving evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about his attempts in 2006 to strip Mr Macdonald of his pre-selection for the NSW Upper House.

The commission is investigating Mr Macdonald's decision to grant a coal exploration licence to a group of investors, including former mining union boss John Maitland, at Doyles Creek in the Hunter, in 2008 without tender and against departmental advice.

"Agent and operative" of Eddie Obeid: Ian Macdonald. Photo: Rob Homer

Mr Foley said that in 2006 he had received a ''chorus of complaints'' about Mr Macdonald's conduct and there were growing doubts about his loyalty to the Left.

Mr Foley said Mr Macdonald was supposedly a member of the hard Left, a sub-faction of the Left. But he personally had no doubt where Mr Macdonald's loyalties lay: ''He was an agent and operative of [Right power broker] Eddie Obeid and the Terrigal group.

''Well, one of Ian Macdonald's nicknames was bestowed by [former premier] Bob Carr, that he was Della's pet crocodile; another nickname was that he was Obeid's left testicle. I had formed the view that Mr Macdonald had abandoned Labor principle, had lost his moral compass and was not deserving of continued Labour pre-selection for Parliament.''

Mr Foley delivered his scathing assessment to Mr Macdonald at a lunch in February 2006 at the Noble House Restaurant attended by senior Left figures, including federal MP Anthony Albanese, the then national secretary of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union, Doug Cameron, and then senator George Campbell. The AMWU was highly influential in the hard Left.

Mr Campbell backed Mr Foley, telling him Mr Macdonald's 20 years in Parliament was enough, and a further term taking him to 28 years was more than enough, but Mr Cameron backed Mr Macdonald.

According to Mr Foley, Mr Macdonald told the lunch that he had a great desire to go to the Beijing Olympics and had some personal financial issues in that he still had to support his stepdaughter.

He also claimed the unqualified support of the mining union which was headed by Mr Maitland.

Mr Foley said on that basis, the realpolitik was that Mr Macdonald had support to continue in Parliament, though an agreement was eventually struck that he would retire in 2009. This did not occur.

Earlier, former premier Nathan Rees told ICAC his ministers were expected to bring decisions that had a major impact on revenue, such as whether to forgo a multimillion-dollar upfront payment for a coal licence, to cabinet.

Mr Rees said the rule for cabinet ministers was that they should not allow themselves to be wined and dined by interests who had an issue before them.

Left viewed Macdonald as an 'operative' for Obeid

 Mark Kenny and Heath Aston

March 26, 2013

New faces & super ministries

Winners and losers emerge from last week's leadership stoush as Gillard's sixth cabinet is sworn in at Government house. Tim Lester & Mark Kenny discuss the picks.

• Analysis: Hard road ahead for heavily burdened ministers
• Gillard's new ministry: The winners
• Opinion: Labor so lost that even confused diehards stagger
• Opinion: The Gillard backlash says more about her detractors

Julia Gillard has promised a zero-tolerance approach to disloyalty, reshuffling her frontbench line-up, promoting three women among four first-time junior ministers while announcing a series of mega portfolios for proven performers.

There are also two new appointments in a 20-member cabinet pared back from the 21 previously.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg.

The team has been crafted to reward loyalists in the aborted Rudd coup and salvage Labor's battered image with voters with now less than six months to go to the September 14 poll.

Labor's prospects in September took another dive with the latest Newspoll, published in News Ltd papers, showing Labor's primary vote has falled five percentage points to 30 per cent, putting 30 Labor seats at risk.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott leads Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister 43 per cent (up five points) to 35 per cent (down seven) - the second time in three Newspoll surveys since February that he has been in front.

''I don't comment on opinion polls but I don't need a poll to tell me that last week the Labor Party had an appalling week,'' Ms Gillard said on Tuesday morning.

''When we present to the Australian people self indulgently talking about ourselves there are consequences.''

The newly promoted Resources Minister Gary Gray on Tuesday compared the party's current situation to the one faced by Paul Keating in late 1992.

''What the Labor Party did was retreat into its own core values . . . and win in 1993,'' he said.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr, speaking in the US on Tuesday said there was ''a deep reluctance in the Australian people to entrust their future to the Tony Abbott-led opposition''.

He said he still maintained what others might consider an ''excessive'' optimism that Labor could regroup to win the September election as the choice between Labor and the Coalition became more stark.

Addressing the cabinet reshuffle yesterday Senator Carr rejected the notion that he was returning to a party in disarray, saying the promotion of new talent could be a good thing for a government.

After weeks of internal haemorrhaging, a drawn but determined Prime Minister described the period as ''self-indulgent''. ''Like Australians around the nation, I was appalled by the events of last week,'' she said.

''Our eyes were on ourselves rather than on doing what we should have, being focused on the nation, it was an unseemly display.''

But while recriminations have been severe for most involved, the three-time Rudd backer, Anthony Albanese, has not only held his key post as manager of government business and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, but has picked up Simon Crean's former responsibilities for Regional Development.

Mr Crean was sacked last Thursday after demanding a spill, while resignations were effectively forced out of Martin Ferguson, Kim Carr and Chris Bowen.

''I have always been able to work with minister Albanese well,'' Ms Gillard said. ''He has been very central to the life of this government and I believe he will serve very well and with a very strong sense of loyalty into the future.''

Gillard supporters scored the bulk of the prizes.

Former Special Minister of State Mr Gray has taken a step up to cabinet, filling the crucial economic post as Minister for Resources and Energy.

A former ALP national secretary, the WA-based MP was once a climate change sceptic who claims to have revised his thinking while working for the oil and gas giant, Woodside, before entering Parliament. ''At Woodside I became acquainted with the business case for managing climate issues and I became more aware of the work that underpinned the science,'' he said.

In a further sign of the value Labor is placing on winning the battle for western Sydney, Jason Clare was the other elevation to cabinet, with no addition to his portfolio of Justice, Home Affairs and cabinet secretary.

The biggest expansion of title was in the new job of Minister for Trade and Competitiveness, Craig Emerson. To his duties, Dr Emerson has added Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research.

Tony Burke has had Arts added to Environment and Sustainability.

Ballarat MP Catherine King, South Australian senator Don Farrell, Queensland senator Jan McLucas, and NSW MP Sharon Bird join the outer ministry

Green groups criticised the Climate Change Department being absorbed into the Department of Industry and Innovation.

with Jonathan Swan

PM rewards loyalty and ability

Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun March 21, 2013 9:14PM

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and deputy Wayne Swan front the media after they were re-elected unopposed. Picture: John Feder Source: Herald Sun

JULIA Gillard won. But, as with so many of her farcical battles lately, Labor and the country lost.

The Prime Minister survived yet another leadership battle when Kevin Rudd did something shocking in today's Labor.

He actually kept his word.

Rudd promised a year ago not to challenge Gillard again, and not enough Labor MPs would draft him.

So he refused to stand against Gillard. Note well: he was not defeated, but deferred. Weakened, but not removed.

So Gillard, who has broken so many promises herself, gets to keep leading Labor, a party she's already driven into the ground and stripped of honour.

Gillard wins, but Labor loses. Its desperately compromised leader has been further discredited, but so now has the only alternative leader.

Rudd, Labor's only bringer of slim hope, has burnt his supporters by squibbing. He revealed a lack of nerve - and numbers.

What a farce.

Labor was already headed to catastrophic defeat under Gillard, who is incompetent and widely (and rightly) regarded as a liar.

This contest ripped off the last bandages over Labor's gaping wounds

Someone less "tough", as her supporters praise her - or less selfish - would have resigned long ago, realising she is simply not up to the job.

The leadership battle left her even more damaged, if that were possible.

Gillard has not just been rocked by more destabilisation and denied even the satisfaction of a vote that might at least have finished off Rudd.

"The whole business is completely at an end," declared Gillard afterwards of Rudd's leadership ambitions. But it isn't, of course. Not while the polls show Gillard is poison and Rudd is Labor's only antidote.

But worse, this contest ripped off the last bandages over Labor's gaping wounds.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, despite his denials, was revealed as having given up on Gillard.

Labor Whip Joel Fitzgibbon, whose job is actually to keep party discipline, publicly declared Labor had a better chance of winning under Rudd and offered his resignation.

Talented parliamentary secretary Richard Marles has also been forced to quit after backing Rudd. Another loss.

And Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean, who on Monday declared Gillard "has my full support", was giving Gillard devastating criticism and calling for Rudd to replace her.

Crean didn't say exactly what he felt about Gillard now trying to muzzle the media, play the gender card and woo xenophobes by demonising skilled foreign workers.

But his exasperation was clear as he called for a return to "the values that I, like so many others, joined Labor for".

"I think that the way in which the Labor Party has always operated most effectively is when it has been inclusive, when it's sought consensus, not when it's sought division, not when it's gone after class warfare".

It was Crean who urged Gillard to call a spill of leadership positions and demanded Rudd stand - a year after declaring Rudd "can't be prime minister again".

What an own goal.

By the end of the day, the only person out of a job was Crean, sacked for disloyalty. But Crean demonstrated Labor's terrible dilemma.

He conceded there was a "a mood for change" within the party, yet said he was sick of Rudd's destabilisation and wanted to "be there to ensure" his former leader's infamously dysfunctional leadership style had "changed".

Even Gillard's supporters don't think she's good. They simply fear Rudd would be worse.

True, Rudd is the author of some of Gillard's worst problems. It was Rudd who started Labor on the wild spending that has blown billions on trash and left us deep in debt.

It was Rudd who dismantled the border laws of the Howard government, luring in record numbers of boat people.

But how much worse could Rudd be than the woman who replaced him three years ago, claiming "a good government was losing its way".

After all, it didn't only produce a leadership wrangle

It also confirmed Gillard's incompetence when she was forced by the resistance of some independents to drop her plan to punish her media critics by putting the free press under government supervision.

That the Government even tried such an authoritarian stunt was shameful. That it failed to first lock in the numbers was ludicrous. It suffered a week of predictably furious media criticism without a skerrick of gain.

And still to come: a May Budget that will reveal the size of the deficit Gillard swore would actually be a surplus. One more broken promise. One more proof of incompetence.

Yet on Labor sails, sinking under a clueless captain who yesterday only shot more holes in its last lifeboat.

Only the Opposition could be pleased by the latest Labor utter, utter debacle.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard wins, but Labor loses and the farce goes on | Herald Sun

Tim Soutphommasane Political philosopher and regular columnist

March 25, 2013

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.

• Albanese promoted in Gillard reshuffle
• Analysis: Ministerial stamp of authority may be too late
• Full list of changes to the Gillard ministry

Call it a farce, call it whatever you will. The federal Labor Party's leadership turmoil amounts to only one thing: political self-destruction. And most of the immediate blame sheets home to one Kevin Rudd.

Last week's fiasco suggests the latter: ''Chicken Kev'' may yet last as a moniker.

There has been a relentless effort by Rudd and his supporters to destabilise Julia Gillard's leadership. Most still believe that it was Rudd who was responsible for leaking damaging information against Labor during the 2010 election. The erstwhile white-anting campaign against Gillard has unmistakably come from the Rudd camp. With Gillard and Labor struggling in the polls for such a prolonged period, a leadership spill was always inevitable.

And yet, when the time came, Rudd failed to contest the leadership - ostensibly because he had not secured enough support to win. This has not been the first time Rudd has ruled himself out from such a ballot. He did the same in 2010 when Gillard challenged him as a sitting prime minister and it was apparent he had overwhelmingly lost the support of his caucus.

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Politics, it must be made clear, isn't always fought according to Marquess of Queensberry Rules. But within one's own party, at least, a politician must abide by a certain code when they stake a claim to lead others. Without courage and honour one doesn't deserve to lead.

After such a prolonged, thinly disguised leadership campaign, it was inexcusable - ethically reprehensible - for Rudd to decline nominating after former Labor leader Simon Crean's dramatic instigation of a party-room spill.

Then again, what happened was entirely in character for Rudd. He cannot countenance the prospect of losing - even if there can never be guarantees of victory. He is a fair-weather politician who is incapable of dealing with headwinds. Consider his refusal as prime minister to call a double-dissolution election to ensure passage of an emissions trading scheme. Was this a mere failure of nerve, or did it in fact point to a more basic deficiency?

Last week's fiasco suggests the latter: ''Chicken Kev'' may yet last as a moniker. If nothing else, the non-challenge has destroyed Rudd's credibility as a leader. The best thing for Labor would be for Rudd to leave Parliament altogether.

It could all have been so different, of course. Indulge me for a moment as I venture into subjunctive history or what might've been.

A more courageous Rudd could have called that double-dissolution election in 2009-10, and gone on to win it convincingly (as most believe he would have). At the very least, doing this would have avoided the fecklessness of doing nothing on ''the greatest moral challenge of our time''. More likely, we would be talking today about a Labor Party ascendant over a Liberal/National Coalition in disarray.

As it is, the story is the other way round. A Coalition government led by Tony Abbott is now a near certainty; Abbott, who with each week is adopting an increasingly prime ministerial tone, has been the biggest beneficiary of the government's self-inflicted harm.

As for Labor, its shrinking electoral support seems to be mirrored by its blinkered vision. Last month Gillard declared that she didn't lead a party that was social democratic, progressive or moderate - it was simply a Labor party. This was a clear signal that Labor is preparing to retreat into a trade union rump of a party after the election. To its detriment, it is repudiating its progressive, middle-class supporters in favour of a traditional blue-collar working class that is fading into irrelevance. Labor should be appealing to a broad base, not a narrow one.

And so it has come to this. Granted, it's not all Kevin's fault. A lot of Labor's woes stem from the very fact that its powerbrokers moved so hastily to terminate his prime ministership in 2010 without first conducting a public conversation about why he had to go.

Gillard's eventual explanation, that the government had ''lost its way'', had the effect of depriving Labor of its own record in office. How could it claim credit for staving off the global financial crisis if it had lost its way?

The so-called NSW Disease, which has recently manifested not only in the Labor Party but also in the Coalition in Victoria and the Northern Territory, is symptomatic of a nihilistic ethos in our contemporary politics. It represents the ultimate separation of politics from program - and how politics is now treated as a game whose professional players play only to win, regardless of the consequences.

This is why so many of our politicians seem prepared to switch their leaders based on a few bad polls. Why they and their advisers see their parties as brands, and politics as an exercise in marketing and media management.

You could say this is all part of managerialism's encroachment into politics. Whatever the cause, this is the price we pay for having a political class that increasingly knows nothing except electoral politics: its members will do anything to retain the trappings of power and office because they simply have no prospects for anything outside it.

The destructive narcissism of Rudd and the acquiescence of a sizeable minority of the Labor caucus is, in one sense, an expression of this. Losing for them is intolerable; one must try to win at all costs.

However, as my colleague Nick Dyrenfurth has argued in these pages, Labor's best hope in this year's election may just be to lose with some dignity and honour. Like a footy team deep in the fourth quarter looking at a heavy loss, it may just have to continue doing its best to make the margin respectable. Good teams don't abandon discipline in some deluded belief they can still win when they can't. They know when they have to be content with winning back some respect.

So it is, now, with Labor. The grand old party of Australian politics is losing not just the respect of the electorate, it is quickly losing its self-respect. Coming back from here will not be easy.

Age columnist Tim Soutphommasane is a political philosopher at the University of Sydney and has worked as a Labor speechwriter.

How 'Chicken Kev' has left Labor on its knees

Paola Totaro guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 March 2013 18.00 GMT

A leadership threat to Julia Gillard seemed churlish, given the strong economy – but disgruntled Australians are a common breed

Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, holds conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Last June, Australia celebrated its 21st. No, not a birthday or coming of age, but the completion of its 21st consecutive year of economic growth. Yup, you heard right, 21 years. Of growth. 21.

While the rest of the world lurches from crisis to economic crisis, the land of Oz is powering ahead, enjoying an Aussie dollar at a record high, unemployment at near-record lows (5.4%) and basking in more sunshine than the rest of us can dream up. So what does its Labor government do? Attempt suicide.

Yesterday's move to oust Australia's Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard, represents the third attempt by Kevin Rudd (and/or his supporters) to return him to the leadership – a man Gillard beat for the prime ministership in 2010. In the past 10 years, the Australian Labor party has installed and dispatched five national leaders while its nemesis, the Liberal party, has tried four different leaders in just six years.

Viewed from Europe, where national governments are planning to bail out their banks by raiding the savings accounts not just of Russian oligarchs but pensioners too, news of yet another political attack against Australia's leader smacks of a particular strain of antipodean madness. For decades, it is the British who have worn the "whingeing Poms" label. Now, it's time for Australians to accept the malcontents' mantle, because it is they who appear incapable of seeing just how lucky they are.

Complaint has become the national default position, seen in a political class – and a mainstream media – who spend more time slinging mud or knifing each other than debating and analysing national policy. No other advanced economy can come close to Australia's 21 years of growth. That period, a full generation, saw governments of both political flavours at the helm in Canberra, and is even more impressive when you remember that it spanned the dotcom boom (and bust), the crisis of 1997-1998 (remember that one?) and the global catastrophe that was the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008. Every single time, opposition parties (again of both persuasions) channelled Chicken Little, warning the sky would fall down in Australia. It didn't. It still hasn't.

Things are so damned good that the Reserve Bank is worried the strength of the national currency is harming national export markets. Aussie voters happily travel with more money in their pockets than ever before, and still they grouch about wavering national confidence, or rail against the couple of hundred sad souls who land on their shores seeking asylum.

The world over, economists talk about "the Australian model". I've sat through enough press conferences in Europe to know that there are many learned bean counters who see this continent as a great example of just how to exploit and thrive in a tumultuous global environment where economic might is turning its eyes toward Asia.

There's a chorus of voices that argue that Australia's success is a role model not only for resource-rich emerging markets like Chile and Brazil but also for many other already developed nations navigating low growth and burgeoning unemployment.

Nobody would quibble with the reality that Australia has also been lucky, riding the back of a massive boom in global commodity markets – thank you China and your seemingly insatiable appetite for iron ore. Without doubt, Australia's bubble could burst if the Chinese market and global commodity prices were to crash.

But the fact is, Australia has shown resilience in the past – and this is largely due to good economic policy. Aussie banks have been managed conservatively; none have failed, no taxpayer bail-outs have been needed. There has been no Euro-style printing of money, no pushing of interest rates down to the historic lows we have seen in the UK. The Australian government, despite public brouhaha, has held its nerve, continuing to invest and stimulating the economy to keep it aloft. At 5.40%, the unemployment rate – one of the lowest in the industrialised world – is half that of Europe, never mind the horrendous 20% seen in Greece, Spain or Italy. And all the while, Australia's government debt has been chipped at: surpluses have been delivered and real money squirrelled away to tide the nation through bad times.

Surely, this should deliver government on its own. But not in Oz. Instead, Labor allowed itself to be spooked by another bad opinion poll for Gillard, the epidemic of political dread fanned by a plethora of male radio shock jocks, and a largely hostile parliamentary commentariat. And once again, it turned to sharpening the knives.

There is, of course, one thing that's going badly in Oz. But at least the Australian cricket team is standing by their captain.

 

This article was amended on 22 March 2013. It previously referred to asylum seekers arriving "illegally" – that word has been removed. It also moved an incorrect reference to a 2% budget surplus. A sentence which implied that yesterday's attempt to remove Gillard was instigated by Kevin Rudd has been amended to clarify that it is the third attempt by either himself or his supporters to do so.

Australians don't know how lucky they are | Paola Totaro | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

PM By James Glenday, staff

Supporters of Julia Gillard hope the Government will have clear air to sell its message. (AAP: Matt Roberts)

Related Story: Supporters urge Gillard to clean out frontbench

Related Story: Rudd gives up hope of return to Labor leadership

Related Story: Ferguson, Carr resign as Labor spill casualty list grows

Senior Labor ministers are hoping this week's leadership spill and subsequent resignations will give Julia Gillard clear air to sell the party's message.

But some supporters say uniting a divided party will be extremely difficult this close to an election, and analysts are predicting more leadership troubles if the party slips further in the polls.

The Prime Minister is facing a major a reshuffle of her frontbench after the resignations of some of Labor's most senior ministers in the wake of yesterday's spill.

Three ministers, including two from Cabinet, are heading to the backbench and Kevin Rudd has vowed there were no circumstances under which he would return as Labor leader.

Joel Fitzgibbon, who quit as chief government whip after the spill, says the majority of Caucus decided they would rather lose at the September poll than see the former prime minister return.

He says those agitating for leadership change could only count on 47 votes had Mr Rudd nominated.

"We created an environment in which the Caucus was forced to either take the offer or reject the offer and, unfortunately, they rejected the offer," he told triple J's Hack program.

"Many of these people are on margins of far less than 10 per cent and if we go to the polls on the current primary vote numbers, they will all lose their seats.

"So you've just go to ask yourself: what is going on?

"What makes it weird is they are not putting their personal position first, they are potentially sacrificing themselves by coming to the conclusion that somehow under the current leadership, things will improve."

Earlier senior ministers such as Greg Combet were out selling the "clear air" message.

"It's imperative that the Prime Minister has clear air to be able to articulate Labor's position to the community and take Labor to the election in September," he said.

"She deserves that."

Spill fiasco: The casualties so far

Simon Crean
Elder statesman who sparked the spill. Sacked for disloyalty before Question Time on Thursday.

Chris Bowen
Ex-immigration minister, resigned all portfolios at an emotional press conference the day after the spill.

Martin Ferguson
Former ACTU boss, resigned as resources, energy and tourism minister to go to the backbench.

Joel Fitzgibbon
Chief whip who set the hounds running on Wednesday, says he will keep quiet for the foreseeable future.

Kim Carr
Minister for human services and previously demoted Rudd backer, he has quit the ministry.

Richard Marles
Forced to resign parliamentary secretary role after coming out strongly for Rudd on Thursday.

Ed Husic
Western Sydney MP who quit as whip after expressing no confidence in Gillard.

Janelle Saffin
Long-time Rudd backer who resigned as whip after the challenge collapsed.

Many party figures agree with former New South Wales minister John Della Bosca who says the resignations, while difficult, are the best thing for Labor.

"They're doing the right thing by the party in some respects," he said.

"In fact in most respects, I think, and certainly by the Government.

"Removing the opportunity for the media to say, 'but you're here as the parliamentary secretary for XYZ, or the minister for ABC, or as the chief government whip, and you're not supporting the Prime Minister because only two days ago you were supporting Kevin Rudd in a ballot'.

"That's gone now. There's no possibility of that. So I think they're doing the right thing. The Government is settling down."

'Shambles and farcical'

Some analysts are sceptical that leadership spills and the purging of a party create a fresh start.

Senior politics lecturer at Monash University Nick Economou says the tensions between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, Peter Costello and John Howard, and John Gorton and Billy McMahon all hurt their parties badly in the long run.

He says history shows leadership speculation is highly unlikely to end.

"I think the conditions that have been causing all this leadership speculation are still in place," he said.

"Now that Mr Rudd has said that he is not going to contest at all, whilst at first blush this looks like an improvement in Ms Gillard's position, it does open up the possibility for a third candidate.

"That's something that the Caucus may have to embrace when the next set of opinion polls come out showing that the Labor primary vote's dipping into the 20s (per cent)."

Outspoken Labor historian and former New South Wales minister Rodney Cavalier says the party has no chance of winning the election in September.

He has renewed his call for widespread reform of the party and predicts Labor's primary vote will drop dramatically over the next few weeks.

"The two words that one heard all of yesterday from ordinary people as well as commentators were 'shambles' and 'farcical' and it's hard to counter with either description," he said.

"I think they'll go to 23 (per cent primary vote). In my view it doesn't much matter once you're below 35. You can't win from 32 and you can't win from 35."

If the election result in September was that bad, Labor would lose many of its seats in western Sydney.

The former Labor mayor of Liverpool, Wendy Waller, concedes the events of the past two days will cost the party votes in areas where it can least afford to lose them.

She says the spill has been frustrating and says it will be very hard, but not impossible, for Labor to turn things around before September.

"I think people will be very confused and not understand what really took place and that was, I think, someone trying to fix a problem and unfortunately it just got out of context," he said.

"They've genuinely got a lot of runs on the board and I think what they've got to do is focus on the message and focus on their deeds rather than focus on what's going on between each individual."

Labor woes may stifle Gillard's hopes for clear air - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Staff and agencies guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 March 2013 06.59 GMT

Reverberations continue from failed attempt to replace Australian prime minister with an unwilling Kevin Rudd

Julia Gillard and her supporters arrive for the meeting of the Labor caucus where no one rose to challenge the Australian prime minister for her job. Photograph: Penny Bradfield for the Guardian

Three ministers have quit Julia Gillard's Australian government and rival Kevin Rudd has declared he will never take up the leadership of the Labor party again after an abortive attempt to replace the prime minister a day earlier.

Senior party figures forced Gillard to throw her job open to contest on Thursday, inviting a challenge by Rudd, whom Gillard ousted in 2010 via a party room coup. But Rudd refused, saying he was sticking by a promise never again to mount a direct challenge to Gillard, and she was re-elected unopposed by the party caucus.

The drama immediately claimed the scalp of Simon Crean, the senior Labor government minister who on Thursday said Gillard should either call a "spill" of the leadership or be forced into it on the floor of the party room. Gillard promptly sacked him from the cabinet while calling a leadership election.

On Friday as the reverberations from Gillard's victory continued, the resources minister, Martin Ferguson, said he would step down, joining departing cabinet colleagues Crean and Chris Bowen, as well as junior minister Kim Carr.

All had considered Kevin Rudd the party's best hope to reverse polls pointing to a thrashing by conservative opponents at the 14 September elections. But none of them got the chance to vote for him, leading to a situation where ministers were resigning over how they might have voted, rather than what they had actually done.

The resignations come ahead of a cabinet reshuffle by Gillard that has been made inevitable given the challenge to her authority.

"I have a view it's the only honourable thing to do. I would have voted for Kevin Rudd yesterday and Simon Crean [who wanted to stand as Rudd's deputy] to try and give this party a fresh start," an emotional Martin Ferguson told reporters at parliament in Canberra.

Gillard stamped her authority on Labor by being re-elected unopposed after Rudd conceded he did not have the numbers to topple her after a tumultuous day of backroom plotting.
The treasurer, Wayne Swan – widely derided by voters despite having steered the G20 member through the last financial downturn with 5.4% unemployment and a 21st year of unbroken economic growth – was re-elected as Gillard's deputy.

Rudd said on Friday he would never again run for the leadership. "I don't think it's worth raking over the coals. What's done is done and let's get on with the future," Rudd said. "It's really important that we bind together and that's what the Australian people expect of us."

Bowen, one of Rudd's key backers and a former immigration minister, said he would also quit, stripping Gillard's cabinet of another of its most effective political talents.

Ferguson in particular had been an influential advocate for the country's mining industry and helped broker a 2010 deal with major resource companies including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto to abandon a damaging campaign against a mining profits tax introduced by Labor and later watered down.

Gillard, the plain-speaking lawyer daughter of Welsh migrants, has consistently failed to arrest a slump in opinion polls, which predict a major defeat in September with Labor losing about 20 seats in the 150-seat parliament.

But she attempted to draw a line under the divisions and concerns about her leadership, extending a press conference at a road construction site north of Sydney on Friday to face down questions from journalists about the government's stability.

"This issue is over and done with. This issue has been resolved for all time and I think Kevin's statement reflects that," she said.

Gillard said she would make changes to her ministry in coming days but faced a headache over who to appoint after the departure of some her most effective talents.

"I'm someone who is made of I think pretty strong stuff and I think that's been on display. Politics is not an easy business," she said.

Three ministers quit Julia Gillard's cabinet after leadership drama | World news | guardian.co.uk

Michael Gordon Political editor, The Age

March 21, 2013

As coups d'état go, they don't come much more problematic, risky or challenging than this one. Aside from the absence of a declared candidate, or a vacancy, is the question of whether the numbers are there for a switch back to Kevin Rudd.

For all the feverish speculation, they don't appear to be. Not yet, at least. To win a ballot, Rudd needs a majority of votes in the 102-member caucus. Last February, he could only muster just 31 votes to Julia Gillard's 71.

Then there is the mechanism. Who will be prepared to bring it on? Who, assuming Gillard does not call a special caucus meeting to decide her future, will gather the requisite 35 signatures to call such a meeting?

Julia Gillard in Parliament yesterday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

If these bases are covered, the real layers of difficulty come into play: avoiding wholesale resignations by cabinet ministers who say they can't (or won't) work with Rudd and retribution against those who trashed his reputation during last year's botched challenge.

Then there is the question of ensuring that the crossbenchers, those who entered agreements that enabled Gillard to form minority government after the dead-heat 2010 election, continue to support the government.

Finally, assuming all these hurdles are cleared, comes the really hard bit: explaining what will actually change - and what a revived Rudd prime ministership will mean. Saying the show lost its way under Gillard won't wash.

And there's another dimension - the new incumbent won't only have to explain why Gillard had to go. If she goes, the next two most senior figures in the government - Treasurer Wayne Swan and Senate leader Stephen Conroy - will surely go, too.

Dumping the man who can claim most credit for Australia escaping the global economic crisis won't exactly boost Labor's pitch around superior economic management during the election campaign.

To conceive a strategy that deals with all of the above is one thing; executing it will require more skill, dexterity and deftness than Labor has shown in recent times.

The key ingredient, if it is to happen, would be the willingness of someone who has been loyal to Gillard to make the case for change.

Simon Crean articulated some of Gillard's biggest problems this week - citing the need for ''proper process'' and the imperative to ''stay true'' to Labor values. He is also an elder statesman with a track record of putting the party's interests first. But he is also the man who reaffirmed his ''full support'' for Gillard this week, and he would have a clear understanding of what Rudd was planning to do - and the things he definitely would not do. Could he be the deputy to keep Rudd honest?

Whether the public declarations of Rudd supporter Joel Fitzgibbon - like "how do you reckon the Labor Party would go if it went to the election and received 31 per cent of the primary vote"? - will be the catalyst for change is far, far more doubtful.

So why, then, is there still a distinct prospect that Gillard will be toppled by week's end? The answer is straightforward enough: the deeply entrenched pessimism within the parliamentary party - and the conclusion of many that she is incapable of engineering a recovery in the polls.

Politics, in the end, is a numbers game and - as the Prime Minister told this correspondent this week - a brutal one. Gillard's critics argue that she will not be able to lift the primary vote from the 31 per cent in this week's Age/Nielsen Poll.

But politics isn't just about numbers. Ultimately, it's about choices. The choice facing Labor MPs is whether they terminate another leader and deal with all of the issues raised above, or stick with what they have - and take their collective medicine on September 14.

Leader's execution is all in the execution

 Kate McClymont, Sean Nicholls

March 21, 2013

Dumped Nationals' candidate Richard Torbay has family and political links to the former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid and an extensive property portfolio, some of which does not appear on his pecuniary interest declarations to the NSW Parliament.

Mr Torbay resigned from the NSW Parliament on Wednesday in dramatic circumstances after being forced to quit as the Nationals' candidate for New England to take on independent MP Tony Windsor.

While the precise reason for Mr Torbay's resignation from Parliament remains unclear, it is serious enough to have been referred by the Nationals to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Sudden resignation: Richard Torbay. Photo: Denis Gregory

It is understood the decision of the Nationals to remove Mr Torbay as their candidate is related to Labor funding of Mr Torbay's campaigns against their candidates.

Fairfax Media can reveal that one of the largest property developers in the Northern Tablelands, Phil Hanna, is a first cousin of Mr Obeid's wife, Judy.

Mr Hanna was previously Mr Torbay's campaign manager and, leading up to the 2007 state election, Mr Hanna and his wife were the largest donors to Mr Torbay's campaign, giving more than $6200.

When Mr Hanna was charged with the attempted murder of his business partner in 2007, he was represented - successfully - by Sydney barrister Steven Stanton.

Mr Stanton has previously appeared for associates of the Obeid family, the most recent being for Strathfield real estate agent Joey Georges at the recent ICAC inquiry, which is investigating the $30 million windfall the Obeid family made from an allegedly corrupt government coal tender.

In 2010 Mr Torbay received a $100,000 donation from a Sydney family only two months after then planning minister Tony Kelly dropped a heritage listing on this family's north shore home.

Greens MP John Kaye said: ''In the corruption hothouse of the dying days of the NSW Labor government, a $100,000 donation from a surprising source raises serious concerns.''

Apart from his links to Mr Obeid, Mr Torbay has interests in a raft of property development companies. He also has an extensive property portfolio, including commercial buildings in Armidale, which he has failed to disclose in his pecuniary interest declarations.

Last week Fairfax Media revealed that Mr Torbay featured extensively in the 2007-09 parliamentary diaries of Mr Obeid. In one 2009 entry Mr Obeid made reference to Mr Torbay and a new mobile phone.

Mr Torbay held the seat of Northern Tablelands with a margin of more than 39 per cent. It was this popularity which led the state director of the NSW Nationals, Ben Franklin, to orchestrate Mr Torbay's candidacy for the Nationals, largely in a bid to block the ambitions of Barnaby Joyce.

Senator Joyce is viewed as a threat to the Nationals leader Warren Truss if he moves to the House of Representatives.

But some Nationals questioned Mr Franklin's judgment in drafting Mr Torbay, arguing his links to Mr Obeid were well known.

The MP for Coffs Harbour, Andrew Fraser, a senior party figure, said his warnings were ignored.

''I advised them about how close he was to Eddie and [Labor powerbroker] Joe Tripodi and was ignored,'' he said. ''I was the lone voice. I think the judgment of a number of people was poor. Their 'clever' tactics have now failed.''

Mr Torbay is known for assisting independents to run against Liberal and Nationals candidates.

The Lake Macquarie MP, Greg Piper, is close to Mr Torbay, but he is also understood to have assisted the former Dubbo MP, Dawn Fardell and Peter Draper, the former member for Tamworth.

Before the 2011 election Mr Torbay is believed to have aided the former Liberal mayor of Hornsby, Nick Berman, in his unsuccessful bid against Liberal Matt Kean.

Mr Tripodi was spotted having coffee with Mr Berman during the campaign.

Revealed: Torbay's close links to Obeid

 By Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney

Julia Gillard and her predecessors: Kevin Rudd (main picture), Kim Beazley (top right) and Paul Keating (bottom right)

Australia has one of the most brutal political cultures in the democratic world, in which party leaders are dispatched with abandon. As yet another prime minster faces a threat from her own side, has the country become the "coup capital" of the world?

Not yet three months old, 2013 is already shaping up as one of Australian politics' more casualty-strewn years.

The wounded and slain include the chief minister of the Northern Territory, who suffered the humiliation of learning that he had been deposed as leader by telephone while on a trade mission to Japan.

Elected last year, in a victory that brought 11 years of Australian Labor Party (ALP) rule to an end, Terry Mills had spent just over six months in the job.

The Premier of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, survived longer - just over two years - but decided earlier this month to resign as leader before being pushed as scandal engulfed his office.

Weeks earlier, the Liberal leader in South Australia, Isobel Redmond, who once famously volunteered to be tasered by police, also became the victim of a party room mutiny. At the state and territory level, three party leaders have gone in as many months.

Canberra, the nation's capital, offers no refuge from the bloodletting. If anything, it is even more vicious.

Four Liberal Party leaders (clockwise from top left): Malcolm Turnbull, John Howard, Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who only last year survived a leadership challenge, has been battling for weeks to fend off another "spill," as these party room votes are popularly known.

In 2010, she herself was the beneficiary of a coup, knifing her one-time boss, Kevin Rudd, less than 1000 days into his first term in office.

Four years earlier, Ms Gillard had also played the decisive role in helping Rudd oust his predecessor, the gaffe-prone Kim Beazley. In the past decade alone, the ALP has had five different national leaders.

On the conservative side of politics, the Liberal Party has seen an even higher attrition rate.

It has had four different leaders in the past six years - its once-dominant prime minister, John Howard, the short-lived Brendan Nelson, the hugely ambitious Malcolm Turnbull and the present incumbent, Tony Abbott.

Whether in government or opposition, party leaders have about as much job security as managers of Chelsea.

Canberra, then, is in danger of becoming the coup capital of the democratic world. Arguably, it is already.

Party leaders face off - but the real danger often comes from their own benches

Perhaps its stiffest challenge comes from Sydney, the state capital of New South Wales. Here, the Labor Party has seen five different leaders over the past eight years. Between 2008-09, it had three different premiers.

Small wonder commentators refer to the "New South Wales" disease, even though it now seems like a nationwide contagion.

“Whether in government or opposition, party leaders have about as much job security as managers of Chelsea”

For the watching world, this high political casualty rate must be somewhat perplexing. Australia, having weathered the last three global downturns, has enjoyed 22 consecutive years without recession. So why are its politicians, who have contributed to this national success story, nowhere near as resilient?

First of all, there is a ruthlessness that astounds even hardened political operatives from Westminster and Washington.

In its 113-year history, the British Labour party has never knifed a leader. The ALP is nowhere near as squeamish or sentimental.

At its most pitiless, it dumped the leader Bill Hayden on the eve of the 1983 election and installed in his place Bob Hawke, a freshman parliamentarian.

After eight years as prime minister, Hawke himself was "rolled," to use another Australianism (that politics here has its own vocabulary of leadership challenges is in itself instructive).

Bob Hawke (left): sacked after four consecutive election victories

A ministerial delegation tapped him on the shoulder and urged him to resign, with Gareth Evans, the then foreign affairs minister, delivering the now immortal line: "Pull out digger."

In came Paul Keating, who had mounted a leadership challenge six months earlier, and then gone to the backbenches to plot another takeover bid.

“Australian MPs have as much to fear from their fellow party members as they do from the electorate”

Charismatic and folksy, Hawke was Labor's best-loved prime minister, but the romance ended heartlessly.

Hawke had led Labor to a record four consecutive victories, but Keating was seen as the best bet for keeping the party in power. The fact that he went on to do so in the 1993 election validated the idea that you had to be cruel to be re-elected.

The influence of factional powerbrokers, the so-called "faceless men," also sets Australian politics apart. Whether from the "New South Wales right" or the "South Australian left," the leaders of these factional groupings wield enormous power, not least because if MPs defy them they risk de-selection as parliamentary candidates.

In Australian constituencies, MPs often have as much to fear from their fellow party members as they do from the electorate.

On the eve of the 2010 leadership contest, for example, it became obvious that Kevin Rudd was about to be felled when Paul Howes, the leader of the Australian Workers' Union, appeared in a late night interview on national television to announce his withdrawal of support.

A small handful of key powerbrokers have the ability to overthrow a prime minister, which is why leadership challenges can be mounted so speedily and, in Rudd's case, so stealthily. All it takes is for a few factional players to start pressing their speed dials.

A fixation with public opinion polling exacerbates the problem. Because of the attention lavished on them, Canberra makes a mockery of the political cliché that "there's only one poll that counts".

Indeed, weekly polls published by Fairfax newspapers (the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age) and The Australian have become major news events in their own right.

And in a country not exactly awash with breaking news, they regularly dominate not just the front pages but also the radio and television bulletins.

When Rudd suffered from a string of mediocre polls early in 2010 (although his numbers, compared to Julia Gillard's, were actually not that bad) it led quickly to his downfall.

Rudd, who had once been considered a very promising leader, did not even get to contest another election.

The hothouse effect of Canberra, combined with the effect of Twitter's 140-character news cycles, means politics is almost always close to the boil.

With relatively few other distractions, palace gossip and backroom intrigue are the highest form of entertainment. Spills, coups and leadership speculation have become so embedded in the political culture as to become the rule as much as the exception.

As I write, numbers are being counted, factional players are being sounded out, and a leadership challenge is in the offing. Another Australian politician might soon be left to lick his or her wounds. And then to plot their revenge.

BBC News - Australia's coup culture

Peter Hartcher

Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

March 20, 2013

Under pressure: Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Under intensifying pressure, Julia Gillard has not stepped back but has stepped up her combativeness.

With the government's proposed media regulations at risk of failing to pass the House, the Prime Minister has raised the stakes by making them a leadership issue.

Gillard might have chosen to let her Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, take responsibility for the media bills but instead she has taken personal ownership.

In an effort to take the stakes even higher, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott asked Gillard in question time whether the reforms were of such importance they represented a confidence matter. In other words, would she stake her government on getting them passed?

Gillard deflected the question by referring Abbott to the handbook of parliamentary practice.

But Abbott and Gillard know full well a bill does not need to be labelled a matter of ''confidence'' for it to become one. Eight governments have fallen after losing votes in the House on apparently innocuous matters, as in 1941 when the opposition successfully amended the size of the budget by £1.

Gillard taunted Abbott that she would win the election between a ''strong, feisty woman'' and a ''policy-weak man.'' The primary audience for her show of defiance, however, was the people sitting behind her, the Labor caucus.

Caucus confidence in Gillard's leadership is low and falling. Members were sobered by the Fairfax Media report on Tuesday that a senior minister, Mark Butler, was reconsidering his support for her.

Under pressure to declare loyalty, he tweeted that he was ''still a proud member of the Gillard team.'' This was not any contradiction.

The Fairfax report that Foreign Minister Bob Carr had also lost confidence in Gillard was met by a denial so enthusiastic Carr claimed he had never held any discussion with his colleagues about how the government was going.

This failed the laugh test, and the laugh is on Carr. His caucus colleagues know the report was correct and that he has complained long and loud to them about Gillard's misjudgements.

Gillard's combativeness is designed to discourage caucus from trying to remove her. It's a confidence game.

Confidence is name of game for survival

Tony Wright National affairs editor of The Age

March 19, 2013

Prime Minister Julia Gillard reacts to a question on her judgment from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Photo: Andrew Meares

• Gerard Henderson: 'National interest is in Labor's interest
• Jacqueline Maley: PM open to barter and happy to banter
• Media bills struggling to get through

Prime Minister Julia Gillard sounded suspiciously like a Politician Without Refuge when she sought comfort on Monday in the finding of Reporters Without Borders that her nation was ranked 26th in its world index on media freedoms.

It seemed startling candour, for it meant Australia lagged behind much of Europe, all of Scandinavia, plus Jamaica, Cyprus and Cape Verde, a mid-Atlantic island nation that has two television stations and three newspapers.

Ms Gillard, curiously, was attempting to reassure Parliament that her government had no unkind intent towards the media under its proposed new regulations.

No one, she said, would deny that the Paris-based international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders was well-regarded. It currently ranked Australia No. 26 on press freedoms, she added, as if this were a boast.

Ms Gillard might have boosted her case if she had relied on the trusty antipodean brag that regularly has some Australian achievement as ''the best in the southern hemisphere''. Unfortunately, New Zealand is regarded by Reporters Without Borders as rather freer, ranking 8th in the world.

This, however, wasn't Ms Gillard's argument. She wanted to point out that Finland was No 1. And Finland's press council, which could force news organisations to retract errors and publish apologies, was government-funded. Her government wasn't requiring any such thing under its proposed regulations, whatever critics might say.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his defender of freedoms, Malcolm Turnbull, weren't having it. They wanted to condemn Ms Gillard for attempting to ram through legislation ''without due regard to freedom of speech and freedom of the press''.

And they shared a trump card.

''The job of the media is to speak truth to power,'' thundered Mr Abbott. ''I know that because I have worked as a journalist. The shadow minister [Mr Turnbull] knows that because he has worked as a journalist, perhaps a more distinguished journalist than I was.''

Ms Gillard's government was not concerned about high-minded matters like diversity, Mr Turnbull accused. ''Their concern is for opinion - they don't like getting a shellacking.''

Labor's Anthony Albanese considered this altogether too rich from a fellow like Turnbull, who had once sued Fairfax over a story concerning the fate of an old girlfriend's deceased cat.

The Opposition's attempted condemnation of Ms Gillard and her media legislation failed on the numbers, leaving the intrigued to study the reasons for Australia's poor international standing on press freedom.

Turns out that apart from concerns about restrictions on media access to detention centres, police investigations into journalists and the like, Reporters Without Borders was unimpressed with the outbreak of, ahem, Labor government inquiries into the media.

Come in No. 26, your media freedom is ready for pick-up

Peter Hartcher Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

March 19, 2013

The Gillard government is suffering a gathering crisis of confidence in its leader.

Not because of any assault by Kevin Rudd. Indeed, whenever he has tried to foment unrest, the Labor caucus has hardened against him.

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

Labor's fast-draining confidence stems from the performance of Julia Gillard herself and her inner circle. After deposing Rudd, Gillard argued privately that she had moved against him not because he was behind in the polls but because he had no plan to put Labor in front.

Today, the Labor caucus is asking the same question about Gillard. Labor didn't win the 2010 election. Since then it has only lost support in the opinion polls.

''There have been 27 Nielsen polls since the 2010 election, and this is the 27th showing the Coalition in front,'' wrote the Fairfax pollster, Nielsen's John Stirton, on Monday. There are 178 days left until the election Gillard has called. The question Labor MPs are asking now, in the words of Dirty Harry, is ''am I feeling lucky?''

Not only is Labor consistently behind in the polls, its leader has not articulated a credible plan for any recovery. And it's hard for her caucus to feel lucky with regular displays of political misjudgment by Gillard and her closest allies.

At the end of last year, it was Wayne Swan's admission that the government's iron-clad promise of a budget surplus was no longer achievable.

Joe Hockey, who has no record of achievement as an economic manager, is now preferred treasurer although Swan has presided over one of the world's most successful economies.

And last week it was Stephen Conroy's media regulation proposals. Gillard rammed the plan through cabinet and caucus, angering many in the process, and started a fight with the big media companies. Yet all for nought. The plan is now set to fail in the House for lack of support.

These are the reasons a key Left faction cabinet minister, Mark Butler, and a key Right faction cabinet minister, Bob Carr, are openly telling colleagues they have lost confidence in Gillard. The dam of Gillard support has now been breached.

Trouble brewing, but don't blame it on the usual bloke

 Anne Davies March 18, 2013 - 2:44PM

Former minerals minister Ian Macdonald ignored repeated advice from his department that he could not simply grant an exploration licence for a training mine in the Hunter to his close friend, mining union boss John Maitland, the corruption watchdog has been told.

But instead of heeding his department, the minister became a proponent for the mine, and granted the licence without tender, turning Mr Maitland's original $166,000 investment into a $15 million profit.

Opening the third leg of the Independent Commission Against Corruption's inquiry into corruption within the former NSW Labor government, counsel assisting, Peter Braham SC, said the Doyles Creek training mine “was essentially gifted” to a group of investors from Newcastle, including Mr Maitland, who had been a leading figure in the mining division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.

Ian Macdonald Photo: Edwina Pickles

The result was a “financial disaster for the taxpayers of NSW and a gold mine for the investors”, he told the commission.

“An examination of the circumstances leads to the conclusion that on any view this decision involved real delinquency on the part of the minister in the discharge of his public office,” he said.

The question to be answered by the inquiry was whether there was corruption involved in allocating the exploration licence over the Doyles Creek area.

Mr Braham said Mr Macdonald had himself identified mining exploration licences as “hot property”, yet the process he chose to adopt was “astounding”.

Mr Braham described the concept of a training mine as “puffery and spin”. It had no support from either the industry or the union, which had moved to simulated training, using virtual training facilities.

“As one local resident was quoted saying: this wasn't a training mine; it was a mining mine,” Mr Braham said.

He said the proponents of the mine – entrepreneur Craig Ransley, company director Andrew Poole, Mr Maitland and others – deliberately set about convincing the minister to grant them the licence without going to tender.

The commission heard about a series of lunches and dinners in upmarket restaurants and meetings in Mr Macdonald's office, from which his department was excluded.

“The department's advice that it was a bad idea had been clear and repeated on numerous occasions, both in writing and orally,” Mr Braham said.

When Mr Macdonald decided to issue the invitation for Doyles Creek Mining to apply without tender, his office obtained a template from the department and prepared the letter in his office, keeping the department in the dark.

“This was unprecedented,” Mr Braham said. The department only found out when there were questions from the local media.

When the licence was granted on December 24, 2008, Mr Ransley sent an email to his fellow investors, saying "when you read you will understand why I can't wipe the smile off my face, merry bloody Christmas”.

Mr Braham said it was for the commission to inquire into whether Mr Macdonald was influenced to a significant extent by his personal and political relationship with Mr Maitland, and whether Mr Maitland, Mr Ransley and Mr Poole knew and intended for Mr Macdonald to be so influenced.

The inquiry begins hearing evidence from the first of 60 witnesses on Wednesday. It is expected to run until the end of April.

Macdonald 'ignored department over licence'

Michael Gordon Political editor, The Age

March 18, 2013

Resolve: Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

The TV cameras on both sides of the corridor that leads from the Prime Minister's suite to the House of Representatives were the dead give-away. They told Julia Gillard something was up as she made her way to the chamber, and were still there when she returned for a series of back-to-back meetings more than an hour later.

By mid-afternoon on Thursday, the Twitterverse and talkback radio were abuzz with rumours that Simon Crean had led a delegation of ministers to tell Gillard her time was up, and that Bill Shorten was poised to replace Wayne Swan as Treasurer. In fact, Crean was not even in Canberra.

Rather than being symptomatic of a Prime Minister under siege, Gillard saw the ''madcap rumours'' as the cunning work of a Liberal Party that wanted to distract attention from a healthy set of employment figures. Rather than be alarmed or spooked by the episode, she says she was amused.

''It was one of those times when the press gallery, full of intelligent people, from time to time has these herd-like characteristics and all the herd starts running,'' she says. ''And if you ask any member of the herd why they are running, their answer would be: 'Because the rest of the herd is running, so I better start running, too'.''

The Prime Minister is sitting in a hotel suite in Melbourne, on the eve of what looms as another tumultuous week in Parliament - the last chance for her to be rolled before the budget in May - and reflecting on something Tony Blair told her a couple of years ago - that politics was afflicted by a ''new brutality''.

Conventional wisdom has it Gillard's problems are of her own making, and began with the decision to challenge Kevin Rudd in 2010. She begs to differ, arguing the contest has become even more brutal since her conversation with Blair - and that the brutality is reflected in the rapid demise of leaders across the political spectrum here and overseas. Leaders such as Ted Baillieu and Terry Mills.

''It's harder than it used to be,'' she says, adding that this is the case for the journalists who cover the contest, as it is for those who take part. ''You've just got to be a pretty hard bastard to get it done,'' is how she expresses it.

One of the things that makes it harder is the way changing technology has transformed the media and, in Gillard's view, encouraged ''more drama, more shlock, more horror'', and less depth, because everyone has less time to think.

''I think, ultimately, where it will get to is quite the reverse of that. In an environment where you can get all sorts of commentary for free on the internet, what will end up being the future of paid media will be strong, authoritative, trusted voices,'' she says. ''But we're not there yet.''

Another factor is the influence of polls, like Monday's Herald/Nielsen Poll, which shows Labor still trailing the Coalition 44-56 in two-party preferred terms - and will harden the resolve of those who see a change back to Rudd as Labor's only hope. Gillard accepts the polls as a fact of political life, but describes them as ''froth and bubble stuff'' that fails to discern the underlying trends in the community. ''Societies are shaped not by what is happening on the surface, but the great tidal movements underneath,'' she says.

''I get it [with polls], and I get why it happens and why it eats so much media attention, but when the history of this time is written, just like when we write the history of times before, it's only the political aficionados who remember what the opinion polls were doing at that time.

''People don't write the story of Hawke opening up the modern economy against the backdrop of the opinion polls. They write about policy measures.''

A third factor making the task of politicians more difficult is that voters identify with parties far less today than they did 30 years ago. A fourth is peculiar to Julia Gillard's predicament - a hung parliament and an opposition that has been very effective in projecting a picture of chaos and carnage.

What is beyond question, however, is that Gillard's - and Labor's - problems transcend any discussion about the state of politics in democracies more generally.

Rather, they go to the Prime Minister's apparent strategy of picking fights with everyone from big business, miners, state governments, media barons and even those who support temporary visas for foreign workers. It's a strategy seemingly at odds with the Hawke-Keating consensus model of governing.

Here, Gillard is unabashed. ''One, I think there has been a lot of re-interpreting of history,'' she says. ''I don't recall Paul Keating in the 1993 campaign, in the fight of his life against the GST, looking for the consensus moment. Two, government in my view isn't about looking at the powerful stake-holders and saying, how many can I get in my corner? Government is about serving the national interest and doing what the nation requires.''

While the government's handling of media reforms is cited by critics as evidence of the kind of dysfunction that helped destroy Kevin Rudd's prime ministership, Gillard defends the reforms as in the public interest and the process as utterly unremarkable, given that the likely direction had been clear for two years.

''Ultimately, you've got to make a judgment call about what serves the national interest, and I never expected people in the media to applaud any reform agenda because their agenda is looking at it through their eyes and what meets their needs rather than doing what I've got to do - stand back and say what meets the national interest.''

Then there is the case of 457 visas and the Prime Minister's stated view that the system for dealing with temporary skills shortages is being abused to put ''foreign workers'' at the front of the jobs queue. It is not so much the need for a tightening of the scheme that is controversial - this is widely supported - but the Prime Minister's use of emotive language that has caused alarm.

Here, again, Gillard is unbowed. ''I'm a Labor prime minister talking about jobs, and the truth is, as everybody knows, we have always calibrated our immigration settings against our best understanding of the economy and our needs - and I won't be deterred by third party critiques about this.''

Asked whether she has made foreign workers feel less welcome and Australian workers more hostile to those from overseas, her response is emphatic. ''Not at all. Australians are more sophisticated than that and, frankly, I think foreign workers are more sophisticated than that, too.

''I actually think it is the over-reading of it [her position] that's odd and distorting to the debate - and of the things that are harsh and undermine community acceptance of migrants, that harshness has not occurred around this debate, but around the asylum and refugee debate.

''I mean, when you have the Leader of the Opposition talking about a peaceful invasion, what are those words meant to imply to people? It's not meant to imply it's a good thing. Being invaded by definition is the most dreadful thing that can happen to a country.''

Aside from these and other controversies is the biggest policy challenge facing Gillard: will she be able to fund her signature policies - school funding reform as recommended by the Gonski review and disability insurance - without jeopardising other priorities?

Here, the Prime Minister exudes confidence that the budget will deliver. ''We will make the savings as appropriate to get this done,'' she says. ''I've always said there will be some hard choices in doing that but, at the end of the day, the government's budget is a reflection of our nation's priorities and our nation's choices.

''I think these things - better schools, better support for people with disabilities, better insurance for everyone against the prospect that they or a family member could have a disability - need to be high priorities and other things need to give way for them.''

For Gillard to lead Labor into the campaign, she will need to retain the support of a party room that projects fatalism, division and gloom. Asked how she intends to inject resolve and confidence into the ranks, she talks of the shared ''historic Labor task'' of governing well and retaining the electorate's confidence.

''It's for each individual to make their decision about how they get on and do it. My words to the colleagues are that I bounce out and do it every day - and that's my expectation of everybody else.''

Pressed on whether the task is beyond her with a primary vote in the low 30s, according the the current crop of polls, she insists she doesn't spend her time ''unpacking the entrails'' of every opinion poll.

''You'll say it's trite to say the poll that matters is election day, but the choice at the end of the day isn't what you tell the nice person from Nielsen when they ring you up. It's what you do when you mark that ballot paper when all the noise has died down and there is effectively a binary choice for who leads the nation.

''And you ask yourself: who has got the personal capabilities to do it? Who's got the vision of the future and who's got the plan to take us there? And it's not a choice about whether you're going to invite them around for dinner on Saturday night and I actually think intuitively people get, particularly in the modern age, that this is a profession for pretty hardened people.

''You've got to have a strong sense of yourself and a strong sense of personal resilience to deal with it. I think people will look for those capabilities, they'll look for those plans, they'll look for that vision of the future and I am very confident that I'm the only person presenting for election to the prime ministership who has got those things.''

The confidence is evident when she is asked about the prospect of someone ''tapping her on the shoulder'', either this week or in the months ahead. ''It just won't happen. [It's] much speculated upon and just won't happen. I'll just keep getting on with it and dealing with the issues that actually matter and all of this kind of side commentary can do whatever it does. It's not going to deter me - or distract me.''

It's there, too, when she is asked if she will take the initiative and stand down if the situation demands. The leadership decisions were made when she made the ''very tough'' call to challenge Rudd in 2010, she says, and when Rudd's subsequent challenge was emphatically rejected last year. ''I haven't revisited it since and I won't be revisiting it.''

Of Tony Abbott, she says: ''He knows how to frame a campaign around complaint. What he's got no vision for, and no self-belief in, is a campaign around what you can construct - and I don't think a campaign around complaint gets you there.''

Of herself, and her own self-belief, she is unequivocal. ''If I haven't flinched yet, why would I flinch now?''

Between a rock and the 'new brutality'