From the Daily Telegraph
IN a stunning rebuke of a senior minister, the Prime Minister’s office yesterday warned Stephen Smith to tone down his comments after he said federal Labor had been a “drag on” the WA branch.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was reported to be furious about the Defence Minister’s comment in the wake of the WA wipeout, which follows worse Labor floggings in Queensland and NSW.
MPs believe the state disasters point to an expected massacre at a federal level in September, when a 7 per cent swing would potentially wipe 30 seats from Labor.
I thought Smith was just stating the obvious.
Is she really in denial, or just putting on a front to the bitter end?
Does it matter?
BTW look at all the Liberal mayors in western Sydney, reported on Bolt!
Rafe
10 Mar 13 at 11:34 pm
Classic Streisand effect, She would have been much better off letting it go through to the keeper.
Ripper
10 Mar 13 at 11:54 pm
Please stay TLS until the evening of 14 September 2013 – I want to see you blubber all over the ABC TV along with all your stinking supporters!!!!
mike
Mike of Marion
11 Mar 13 at 12:28 am
How can it do anyone any good to have a paranoid megalomaniac in the pm office? This farce has gone on long enough.
big dumb fu
11 Mar 13 at 12:29 am
Aw gees ain’t she clever?
Tomorrow they arrive in Canberra for two weeks of sittings, the “We is us” team all under one roof. She’s had ‘em divided and conquered for the past month or so, back in their electorates and, the day before they arrive, she gives ‘em good reason to gang up again, angry at her.
They’ve had six weeks at home polishing up their résumés, sussing out Quango directorships and any Red Cross executive vacancies. They now get to flit from office to office, to whisper and to duck down to the coffee shop and liaise – to gossip and scheme and gain the courage of numbers.
What will be first for discussion? The bumbling, bombastic CEO’s comical performance over the past seven weeks and the share price (polls) flopping about in the shallows like a beached flathead.
Comrade Smiff knew exactly what he was doing when he spoke the truth. Stage 2 of whatever his plan is will be implemented with his coterie. Comrade Short One’s Crips will be able to reaffirm their collective position face to face, after weeks of phone calls.
Comrade Dear Leader (in exile) will ensure his Bloods have a dab in one way or another – that’s the only reason he’ll bother turning up.
We may well be treated to a fortnight of LA street gang-like internecine warfare in Canberra.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
11 Mar 13 at 12:34 am
Has Smith decided to be the challenger so Rudd can stand in the subsequent spill?
Former WA Labor planning minister Alannah McTiernan called for Julia Gillard to resign as well.
A service at the request of an old friend perhaps?
JamesK
11 Mar 13 at 12:35 am
Stephen Smith needs to take a leaf from the Legover Man, forget any semblance of personal credibility, just go out there and recite McSporran’s talking points.
Obviously not a team player.
H B Bear
11 Mar 13 at 12:36 am
Good summary, Mick. Reads like the concept pitch for the next Underbelly: Gillard Years.
Gab
11 Mar 13 at 12:40 am
Next she will demand that Smith wear glasses, a red wig and start up his own mummy blog.
Ant
11 Mar 13 at 12:44 am
Not if he wants to stay married!
Fisky
11 Mar 13 at 12:44 am
Strategically these guys are a joke. They can’t get policy even basically right.
tactically though…Jesus. How friggin stupid can you be. What Smith said was benign, truthful and obvious.
We all nodded our head and said yup, that’s about right and promptly moved on. Now it is news and big time news at that. She is a moron of the highest order.
How absolutely idiotic can you be. She is asking to be belted this sitting period. I need to stock up on the popcorn.
I just hope Smith has the balls to tell her to go stuff herself. It would probably save his seat if he does. He may as well. It will be every man or handbagger for themselves soon enough anyway. He may as well jump in early and tell the Red Queen exactly what she is.
I can hardly wait until the revisionist history is written about this woman. They will be a joy to read. And that is just the words from the left as they rip into her for the destruction she wreaked.
Mark
11 Mar 13 at 1:03 am
The SMH’s Peter Hartcher calls quits: Gillard must be dumped.
C.L.
11 Mar 13 at 1:13 am
Thank you Gabrielle – I do believe I am going to thoroughly enjoy this week’s episode of Blood on The Mean Streets of Canberra.
Personally I’m on Comrade Dear Leader (in exile) Watch – I reckon he won’t be able to contain himself for more than a day or two. Whatever he comes up with it will be obtuse and fabulously destructive. This is a week in which he will perform alright!
Mick Gold Coast QLD
11 Mar 13 at 1:14 am
In the Telegraph:
What weasel words they are: “comments were not helpful” It was the truth – how and why could they find the truth unhelpful?
Of course Comrade Smiff has since displayed (again) what a meek and easily bullied, feeble little fellow he really is.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
11 Mar 13 at 2:02 am
Did you see the accompanying picture? A face you would never tire of slapping. What a poonce.
Popular Front
11 Mar 13 at 6:07 am
Alas, it now looks like the backbench lemmings are going to deny us our chance to take revenge at an election — everything she touches turns to shit:
So she’ll be sent to the dunce’s corner, the other little shit will return and the communist revisionists will go to work creating the myth of Gillard’s victimhood when she was just a second-rate whore who slept her way to the top.
Tom
11 Mar 13 at 6:08 am
I give her till the end of the week.. the ALP is bleeding like a stuck pig and will be eviscerated if they leave it longer.
With someone else at the helm, they can stay on life support till the election.
duncanm
11 Mar 13 at 7:50 am
Gillard is looking more like the Black Knight every day. With both legs gone (WA & Qld), both arms missing (NSW & Vic), only the head is left still squealing “It’s only a flesh wound”.
This really is a re run of Downfall with only mummybloggers, union hacks, and old journos like Cassidy and Grattan (volkstrum) left to defend the Fuhrer.
McGowan was Gillard’s Steiner, even he failed to stem the advance.
Splatacrobat
11 Mar 13 at 7:56 am
Sounds like Caucus will get another “you’re all against me” speech from the prime liar, just like at the beginning of the year. She might get a different response this time if Rabz’s mole is accurate.
Hartcher has always been Rudd’s lock stock and barrel.
Rudd’s or Hartcher’s? The look of barely contained glee in Rudd’s picture irrespective of where or when it was taken sends a message beyond the calm words, directed at Cabinet. “I’m baa-ack”
Assuming Rudd wins the election, how long would anyone expect him to last in the job?
Keith
11 Mar 13 at 8:26 am
Labor is about to knife Australia’s first female PM – bloody misogynists.
Keith
11 Mar 13 at 8:29 am
If she gets the flick by Tuesday, will she totally resign just to spite them?
Will the Police arrest her by week’s end re AWU matters?
Mike
Mike of Marion
11 Mar 13 at 8:34 am
Rudd’s Keith. I’d demote the sycophantic Hartcher to the Obituaries, or maybe the cookery page.
Popular Front
11 Mar 13 at 8:54 am
SA and Tas, Splat.
That would make two heads squealing..
.. something which we mainlanders have said about Tasmanians for many years.
Brian of Moorabbin
11 Mar 13 at 9:07 am
And what has happened to Bob Carr’s hair? Did he spend the evening with Tim?
Woolfe
11 Mar 13 at 9:17 am
Smithy!
Get a grip, man!
This is the A.L.P.
We can’t just have random outbreaks of truthfulness and honesty – it might just be contagious! Before you know it, we could have an epidemic on our hands.
For two solid years, the Prime Spin-ster and Goebbels McTurnip have been keeping the “mushrooms” in the dark and feeding them on bull***t, and along you come and turn a bloody light on!
It just won’t do.
Up The Workers!
11 Mar 13 at 11:30 am
Tas elections are after the federal, so all of the angst will come down on the feds first, unlike other areas which have had the opportunity to vent at their states.
Libs play their cards right down here and they could end up +2 in the senate.
DriftForge
11 Mar 13 at 11:44 am
“I thought Smith was just stating the obvious.”
Smith has proved many times that he is utterly incapable of recognising the obvious. If he did, in fact, do so on this occasion, it must have been purely accidental. Somebody must have hit him over the head with a brick. Indeed, Barnett did.
Mique
11 Mar 13 at 11:55 am
Smith has less and less to lose. Julie Bishop has pointed out that his own seat may be in trouble come September, and really, the WA option – where Smith bails and comes back here to lead WA Labor – must be looking better and better to him.
Philippa Martyr
11 Mar 13 at 1:03 pm
Simon Benson has an article in the Tele with some juicy stuff:
On the ABC lunchtime news an hour ago she was described as working from the Lodge today, which is really really the same as working from her office in Parliament House, and that she is “holding a series of meetings today with key Labor figures”.
I blame the mummy bloggers and the Alaskan king crab. BTW the ides of March arrive on Friday.
Bruce
11 Mar 13 at 1:18 pm
While reading Benson’s contribution, I noticed a link to this :
PM denies Smith rebuke after WA wipe-out
So, after clumsily rebuking Smith, she then doubles down on the ineptness and denies she did it. This is what a political suicide looks like. She’d rather be knifed by her own camp than face the electors assembled with assorted heavy blunt objects in hand. That way she can go preserving an illusion (in her own mind) of community affection. Truly unhinged. Caucus will be performing a mercy killing.
Keith
11 Mar 13 at 3:30 pm
Maybe a Playboy spread could get her back on track?
Infidel Tiger
11 Mar 13 at 3:34 pm
BRAIN BLEACH
BRAIN BLEACH
BRAIN BLEACH
Philippa Martyr
11 Mar 13 at 3:58 pm
IT..Post Traumatic Post Syndrome..I now have it
Steve of Glasshouse
11 Mar 13 at 4:31 pm
Me too. And I mean that in the worst possible way. Push the little buzzer thing, Steve – I’m sure I saw the nurse coming in from her ciggy break a moment ago.
Philippa Martyr
11 Mar 13 at 5:11 pm
The Rubenesque form, slight moue but with a come hither glint in her designer glasses.
Homeopathic cure Phillippa..the buzzer broke
Steve of Glasshouse
11 Mar 13 at 7:24 pm