Let’s assume the Gillard government gets back. I don’t want to argue here how likely that is – we’ll just assume it.
What would the government look like and how would she behave?
Gillard would have had a near political death experience. That would, I reckon, make here very cautious. Certainly no major reforms. Whatever she has had to promise the independents, she will pander to them. She can’t afford to upset them. Within the party, she won’t take on the factions. They got here there.
Parliament will be a disaster, what with all the courtesies promised to the independents – time for private members’ bills and such.
Also, she will be guessing that there will be an election before three years . She will have promised not to go early but there will be a getout clause for extraordinary circumstances. (What did Fraser use in 1975 to deny supply after promising not to?) So she will give bribes to the seats she needs to win back. Not difficult but not good government either.
Or could we all be surprised?
No surprise at all.
However her problem will be that the more she panders to the crazier sides of the alliance with the greens and the indeps the likely more unpopular her government becomes. He can try to buy as much support as she likes from those electorates but they won’t be voting for out of gratitude as that stuff doesn’t work.
Her problem is that she would have less popular momentum than the libs do as it was her party that lost those seats.
This thing could be political poison for labor as they have understood nothing.
JC
1 Sep 10 at 3:00 pm
I would think that this could be a long term problem for the ALP. If they shift policies to the left then they risk losing both sides of their support, the supporters on the right to the libs, and on the left to the greens as if it looks like the greens are successful in shifting ALP policy to the left then you may as well vote for them if that is what you want.
Steve Edney
1 Sep 10 at 3:05 pm
Look, everyone knows how desperate Gillard is to hold on to power. And why. To lose would be majorly embarrassing. Imagine entering the annals as the worst prime minister since Kevin Rudd. That said, one thing has become powerfully obvious since the elction. Julia is WEAK. She folded to her new, then prospective, overlords on election night and has been kowtowing like Barack Obama with a bad back ever since.
Glenn Milne nails this very fact over at Unleashed.
Concluding excerpt in Milne’s piece – he’s talking about the Press Club appearance:
This is an arena for grown-ups (or is supposed to be) but Julia – Real Julia – is just pretending.
Abbott has won the post-election test – easily.
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 3:05 pm
I think you are right Ken. She will keep as low a profile as possible, whilst moving as far to the right as she can despite her alliance with the greens. She must know that if she gives too much more to the Greens, then swathes of right winf small c conservative ALP voters will desert back to the Coalition.
I suspect that a good third of the Green vote in this election came from leftish ex-ALP voters. But I also believe that if she panders too much to the Greens she will lose a lot more votes to the Liberals next time. Victorian and South Australian lower middle class swingers were kind to her this time because she was a gal, she was Victorian/south Australian and because iot was the ALP’s first term. Next time she won’t be so lucky. In NSW she was lucky this time because of a gerrymander. I suspect that next time even that won’t save her from the wrath of the lower middle class voters.
BTW I use the term lower middle class rather than bogan, because I believe that bogans are usually the rusted on ALP voters of the very worst areas (eg Prospect and Werriwa).
Rococo Liberal
1 Sep 10 at 3:05 pm
Look, everyone knows how desperate Gillard is to hold on to power. And why. To lose would be majorly embarrassing.
Yes, tal put it quite succinctly on the open forum:
“Poor Jools. Imagine having this mess on your CV.”
daddy dave
1 Sep 10 at 3:34 pm
Ken, your question answers itself. A good Gillard government under these circumstances would be a surprise.
She is selling the furniture to keep the house.
Gillard’s thinking “first, get back into power. We’ll deal with the consequences of my horse trading later.”
daddy dave
1 Sep 10 at 3:37 pm
Why was Gillard again using a stunt baby at the Press Club yesterday? She really has no shame. And if I see her waddling hand in hand with ‘Steadman’ on a pier again I will scream.
dover_beach
1 Sep 10 at 3:38 pm
STOP PRESS!
Julia Gillard keeps citizens’ assembly on climate alive.
Gillard in full reverse spin. Read this twaddle and be amazed:
Utterly shameless.
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 3:43 pm
It’s called politics, CL.
steve from brisbane
1 Sep 10 at 3:46 pm
In that article, she also criticises Tony Abbott for saying Labor and the Greens were now a formal coalition.
Like, where could Abbott possibly have got that idea?
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 3:46 pm
Thanks, Steve.
Doesn’t matter.
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 3:47 pm
What’s with the wattle they are all wearing? This here’s the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can stick it on your suit, you can hold it in your hand?
Andrew Reynolds
1 Sep 10 at 3:56 pm
It’s called politics, CL
Good line. Rinse and repeat whenever Gillard does something stupid and/or shameless.
daddy dave
1 Sep 10 at 3:56 pm
Did anyone see Insight on SBS last night? David Bartlett who is in coalition with the Greens in Tasmania, said it’s really not too bad once you get used to it.
Ken Nielsen
1 Sep 10 at 3:58 pm
Wattle Day – used to be anyway, when I was a kid.
Ken Nielsen
1 Sep 10 at 3:59 pm
Andrew, it’s National Wattle Day.
http://wattleday.com/
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 4:00 pm
As in, wattle Julia think of next?
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 4:01 pm
Abbott comes out on top again:
Telcos lob broadband grenade: Abbott may be right.
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 4:10 pm
Hmmm – must be an Eastern States thing. I don’t ever remember it happening here.
Andrew Reynolds
1 Sep 10 at 4:26 pm
ISn’t wattle day one of those faux Aussie memorial days that never really caught on because it doesn’t actually relate to anything?
Rococo Liberal
1 Sep 10 at 4:35 pm
I thought that when I was a kid Wattle day was 1 August.
“1916: The date of Wattle Day in New South Wales changed from 1 September to 1 August. The reason for this change was that it allowed the Red Cross to use the earlier flowering and more familiar Cootamundra Wattle (Acacia baileyana) rather than Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha) in their efforts to raise money to support the War effort”
http://www.worldwidewattle.com/infogallery/symbolic/wattleday.php
Sorry, but I do like to check that the old memory still works.
(Even if I did put it in the wrong thread.)
Ken Nielsen
1 Sep 10 at 4:40 pm
It’s actually a very old idea – formalised in the early 90s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattle_Day
“…doesn’t actually relate to anything.”
NOT TRUE!
C.L.
1 Sep 10 at 4:46 pm
Positing the maybes of a Gillard-Brown coalition hybrid.
I will theorise that They would Eff-up our foreign relations position even worse than diplomatic genius KRudd did.
They will find a way to:
utterly p-off the Japanese;
sell Taiwan down the toilet AND mishandle the China relationship at the same time;
continue to alienate India;
moralise their way into the utter contempt of our smaller Pacfic neighbours AND offend our East Timorese friends like Julia so magnificently lead with at the start of the election campaign;
kowtow and seek to curry favour with vile, despotic regimes all over creation;
and at the end of it leave Australia wondering why we are viewed as some sort of regional Fawlty Towers.
Myrddin Seren
1 Sep 10 at 9:04 pm
A good piece by Gary Johns in the Oz today.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/pitchforks-and-pork-are-no-way-to-run-a-country/story-e6frg6zo-1225913005911
It’s good to be reminded of Bert Kelly but I don’t think there is a great risk of a rollback of free trade. (I hope).
What we do need is another deregulation leap- firstly to clean up the issues left over from last time (taxis, urban transport, coastal shipping etc), secondly to push back against the things that have crept in over the past 10-15 years and thirdly to charge the next set of frontiers.
If people were sensible, Australia’s good post-GFC performance should have given confidence to do even more to make the economy more productive, competitive and resilient.
Any chance? Not with Abbott I fear. He is less of a believer in economic reform than Howard was.
So, here’s a fantasy: Gillard becomes PM, realizes her only chance of getting another go – and of building some sort of a reputation as being a good leader – so she does a Hawke and encourages reform. Bit like Nixon and China. Maybe even labour market reform…
Yeah, well, I said it was a fantasy but a man has to dream doesn’t he?
Ken Nielsen
2 Sep 10 at 4:25 pm
Carbon Tax, Mining Tax, raised income taxes, congestion tax, death taxes, estate taxes, subsidies, tarrifs, quotas… I believe Gillard’s got it in her to be considered one of the left’s greatest reformers.
Infidel Tiger
2 Sep 10 at 7:18 pm
The Liar’s party is going to be seriously squeezed here.
1. What happens with the ETS? It won’t go though the present senate.
2. The Greens previously nixed the ETS as they didn’t think it was harsh enough to wreck the economy. So what happens? If it’s not the Greens ETS that they won’t pass it. If they pass the Gangreens policy they fucked from the right.
3. The mining tax is also sailing in the same boat as the Greens have said they won’t pass the newer model. Same set of cirnculatacnes with the present and future make-up of the senate.
4. What happens to the Budget deficit as the Liars party is reliant on the tax in the latter years.
The ALP looks really fucked to me. If it breaks left it’s rooted. If it breaks right it’s also fucked up.
I can’t see a way for them unless they go into opposition and figure it out where they are and what they stand for, as they lose votes on either side.
The last election’s primary vote result was no accident and they can’t blame it on a bad campaign either as they were sitting on this level when the little Turd was knifed.
This is a party that is in serious trouble. The only thing is they don’t see it yet. IT will be made worse if they gain government in it terms of meeting the indeps demands and that of the gangrenes.
They could very end up with a primary vote in the high(ish) 20′s next election.
JC
2 Sep 10 at 7:30 pm
Embassy in Ethiopia a UN gambit
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/embassy-in-ethiopia-a-un-gambit-20100902-14rnv.html
Uh huh. The Grand Rudd Folly for global leadership rolls on – at the taxpayer’s expense.
Re: Foreign Affairs under a Gillard leadership ? Rudd Effup Redux of course.
Myrddin Seren
3 Sep 10 at 12:46 pm