I have a piece up at The Conversation talking about the fall-out of the day’s events. Note it was written and posted before the anti-climax. I don’t think that changes the analysis.
All this isn’t Julia Gillard’s fault. In 2007 Labor were under-prepared for government. This can be seen by the rapidly convened 2020 Summit – the government had run out of ideas within six months of winning office.
Against that background it is very hard to see what an alternate Labor prime minister can really do in the few months that remain before the election.
Please click through to read the whole thing.
That last sentence is the money quote. Doing exactly nothing would be an improvement. And a relief.
Gillard is a classic von Moltke #3 leader, of which Erich Von Manstein said:
Oh yessss, I think I agree with him.
Bruce
21 Mar 13 at 7:08 pm
From Sinc’s link,
Bronwyn Hinz, public policy researcher University of Melbourne
FMD
Caddyshack
Judge Smails: Ty, what did you shoot today?
Ty Webb: Oh, Judge, I don’t keep score.
Judge Smails: Then how do you measure yourself with other golfers?
Ty Webb: By height.
H B Bear
21 Mar 13 at 7:10 pm
Kevin Rudd ran around the ’07 election saying “Me too”, “Me too” to anything The libs offered up.
Well when the Libs lose, there’s nothing to say “me too” to anymore.
Leadership is not saying “Me too”. Once the Libs are defeated, they have no leadership to follow.
What we have now is the result of “Me too”. Hence the 2020 summit. They’re bored kids!
Nick
21 Mar 13 at 7:19 pm
Memo to Joel Fitzgibbon and Simon Crean
You both know, as do we all, the Lying Slapper and the Dopey Prick will NEVER win the next election.
So, do us all a favour ( and yourselves) and move to the “naughty corner” whence you can form two valuable services to your Country.
You should form the Democratic Labour Party. And join with the Coalition ( just once) to defeat this God awful rabble.
Think, no Gillard, no Thompson, none of the other cross bench turncoats, no Rudd, and not even the rotten parts of the Union Movement.
You will pick up much of the right/centre of the Australian Labor Party, and be re-elected in your own right in your own Seats.
Do it and do us all a favour that we will never forget.
PS. Hey, you even secure your own Super and post parliament perks!
Michel Lasouris
21 Mar 13 at 7:47 pm
ALP has lacked competence since Chifley.
stackja
21 Mar 13 at 8:22 pm
God they hire some brain dead morons at Melbourne Uni.
Pages of legislation passed = impressive record?
I just can’t find adequate words!
Alx
21 Mar 13 at 8:39 pm
Prior to that they’d been practically unelectable, as they are now. But by some strange alchemy they were sold to the voters. And again (almost) in 2010, even with experience of the snafus to that point in time. And people say that the media don’t have an effect? Do you recall how Tony’s ardent campaigning was presented? As some demented person who tried to do too much. Julia on the other hand was able to be real, or not real, no matter. And Climategate had burst then too, but nobody in the complicit media wanted to shine a light there.
It’s only in the longer term, when the facts and consequences are thick on the ground, that polls do what they have done for the past year despite all the media spin: show them as unelectable – again.
blogstrop
21 Mar 13 at 8:42 pm
You take a buch of selfish ,grasping ,self opinionated ,arrogant ,first year uni students ,who just barely pass exams,give them a tiny uni degree.give them a well paid job in a union with perks ,then preselect them to stand for the Pardee,and set them up or life financially ,as long as they follow the orders of the owners of the Pardee!
Sounds familiar ! Where have I heard that before?
Borisgodunov
21 Mar 13 at 8:52 pm
I only follow your ‘Conversation’ links to see how many comments appear before the IPA is mentioned.
GP
21 Mar 13 at 8:56 pm
Urg. The Conversation. Off the cuff dinner table academic musings labelled as ‘expert opinion’ interspersed with research blurbs to give an air of gravitas and seasoned with semi-retired ABC and Fairfax journos, all propped up by generous dollops of taxpayer money.
Whiggish
21 Mar 13 at 8:56 pm
Bear: “you gunna eat your fat?”
Pickles
21 Mar 13 at 9:10 pm
Oi! Why am I still being “moderated?”
‘Ere; Wot did I do wrong?
Michel Lasouris
21 Mar 13 at 9:36 pm
She has a website: http://www.bronwynhinz.com/
Econocrat
21 Mar 13 at 9:53 pm
Did you read the piece before Sinc’s by Bronwyn Hinz? Says a lot about the University of Melbourne – what was she smoking when she wrote this crap:
Samuel J
21 Mar 13 at 9:54 pm
I suspect one of the Cat trolls may have revealed their real identity, unless this is someone parodying Hammy ?:
Chris Aulich
Professor at University of Canberra
Gotcha !
Myrddin Seren
21 Mar 13 at 9:54 pm
MS
He didn’t use the word fascist. Keroboy sounds like one of those loser leftwing academics alright. Where is the swine? I wonder if he’s finally lit the sorry match.
Kero, hey if you’re still alive, let us know, okay.
JC
21 Mar 13 at 9:59 pm
Be nice – the lovely Bronwyn is Mrs Chris Berg. Or is he Mr Bronwyn Hinz? Can never remember
Sinclair Davidson
21 Mar 13 at 10:02 pm
Really Sinc?
Love to be a fly on the wall at dinners and breakfasts.
You wrote this, ‘The Rudd government and Gillard governments have extremely impressive records”. What the hell were you thinking?
JC
21 Mar 13 at 10:05 pm
I have posted this quote before with apologies to Cormac McCarthy.
I feel like a clairvoyant.
Crean: I know where the prime ministership is.
Rudd: If you knew, you would have it with you.
Crean: I can find it from the riverbank. I know where it is.
Rudd: I know something better. I know where it’s going to be.
Crean: Where’s that?
Rudd: It will be brought to me, and placed at my feet.
Anonandon
21 Mar 13 at 10:07 pm
Don’t care whose wife she is, Sinclair she shouldn’t write crap.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 10:07 pm
Yes really. So Bronwyn quotes her hubbies stat and reverses his conclusion.
love it. Trials of a married man. Just say, ‘yes dear’.
Sinclair Davidson
21 Mar 13 at 10:09 pm
More power to Chris Berg then. He can put up with the unadulterated leftist crap and still maintain a sensible political outlook.
Samuel J
21 Mar 13 at 10:23 pm
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4963
Ivan Denisovich
21 Mar 13 at 10:24 pm
What a curious day. Can I step back through the looking glass now?
lem
21 Mar 13 at 10:24 pm
Ms Hinz has apparently written “the first book written on Australia’s united ethnic movement”; this book has also been described as “essential reading for those wishing to understand Australia’s rapid and harmonious transformation to become a multicultural nation.”
I don’t know what a “united ethnic movement” is. The left have a propensity to declaring reality as their ego would wish it to be; in a way the Gillard government is an attempt to give physicality to this declaration of reality by ego.
It reminds me of the the Case of M. Valdemar where someone is mesmerised beyond death; they’re dead and just don’t know it.
cohenite
21 Mar 13 at 10:37 pm
Sinc the labor govt never had any ideas from day one. Hands held all their lives, no making a buck, not making a mistake that they wre responsible for. I DID NUFFING WRONG. A pox on their house.
johninoxley
21 Mar 13 at 10:54 pm
the government had run out of ideas within six months of winning office.
The government essentially campaigned on three basic ideas – an apology, an emissions trading scheme, and the removal of the Howard workplace reforms. The two latter were always going to be a work in progress, not achievable overnight for instant fanfare effect, and they knew it.
The apology was the only policy promise they had that could be done immediately and without the necessity for the Opposition’s co-operation. Once that was done, therefore, they had pretty much nothing to run with. Hence the summit, and everything that followed.
Also hence why the wheels started to come off Rudd’s train once the ETS had been defeated and he was suddenly faced with a vertebrate Opposition leader.
Meanwhile the Gillard Government has made the transition from executing good ideas awfully to being unable to execute even a bad idea properly.
ALP has lacked competence since Chifley.
I beg to differ. I think Hawke knew what he was doing. Whether Keating did is debatable, but I don’t think I ever felt the sense of “What the fuck, dude!” with him that I have with Rudd (esp. once his brain had been scrambled by the ETS debacle and Abbott taking over as Opposition Leader) and Gillard. Keating may have made a lot of bad decisions, but Gillard especially plumbs the depths of incompetence.
perturbed
21 Mar 13 at 11:01 pm
Labor had 11+ years in the political wilderness to formulate policy before their victory in 2007. What the frack were they doing during that time? And they have the nerve to demand fully costed policy from the Opposition now. Rank hypocrisy, thy name is Labor.
Lloyd
21 Mar 13 at 11:26 pm
Oh God, she’s the lowest dreg of the lowest layer of the most vile of sludge-dwellers down at the bottom of the Canberra muck.
She’s a
parasitepolicy consultant.In Canberra.
Have you ever dealt with that type of bacterial life-form?
(Apologies to all bacteria for the insulting comparison)
They talk up a storm, sound great, know all the bafflegab, cost a bloody fortune, drive BMW M3′s your budget bought for the buggers, and when you boil down the glossy reports and graphs, you find that aside from what they’ve quoted from IbisWorld, there is absolutely nothing substantive left.
And you just wasted $1,500,000 on the scamming scumbag.
THESE are the types who, like vampire squid-leeches of the wallet, latched on to the AGW scam and started sucking out the money.
Once had the pleasure of doing an analysis of a multiple-consultancy by these parasites. Found they were getting their base data from IbisWorld. Nothing wrong with that, but they were $300,000 into a $1,500,000 consultancy.
Went ‘hmm’. Went and had a long, long meeting with IbisWorld.
Looked at their milestones, and they were late (this is normal).
There was an evil grin.
There was a talk with the boss.
There was a meeting.
There was a determination that they had not met the contract obligations. (Common in canberra and always ignored)
There was a contract cancellation.
There was (literal) wailing as they saw the dollars slipping away, away… gone.
There was a phone call to Ibisworld.
There was a subscription to IbisWorld.
There was a report commissioned to Ibisworld.
There was $1,100,000 of public money saved, and IbisWorld did a crackerjack job in 10% of the time the parasites had said they needed.
Mk50 of Brisbane
21 Mar 13 at 11:27 pm
An interesting take on Australian politics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21863630
Jarrah
21 Mar 13 at 11:36 pm
“Oh God, she’s the lowest dreg of the lowest layer of the most vile of sludge-dwellers down at the bottom of the Canberra muck. She’s a
parasitepolicy consultant.”What is it you do for a living again?
Jarrah
21 Mar 13 at 11:38 pm
says Bronwyn not Hinged.
Gillard was better within the parliament? Does she mean with “I hate you, I hate you, I just hate you! Look! Just look at you, wearing a penis into this honorable place. You’re a missrogermist, I hate you.”
Gillard was better (in) caucus? Does she mean with “I do not trust any one of you. Stop leaking to the meeja – just stop it! You’re all deliberately making me look bad – I hate you!”
Mick Gold Coast QLD
21 Mar 13 at 11:45 pm
There. Fixed.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 11:47 pm
You can’t fix what’s not wrong, Gab. You can move the goalposts though. Then again, this isn’t a contest… wait, I forgot who I was talking to.
Jarrah
21 Mar 13 at 11:49 pm
LOL. Who ya gonna believe, me or your lying maths.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 11:50 pm
Nice gravatar, BTW. Yearning to be in your 20s again?
Jarrah
21 Mar 13 at 11:52 pm
Over the past decade, Labor has had:
Latham Beazley Rudd gillard.
Over the past decade Liberal has had:
Howard Nelson Turnbull Abbott.
I’m not surprised the BBC had different time frames for each party, it’s a non-story otherwise.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 11:54 pm
You can always tell when a loser lefty is on the scene. They just snipe and sneer.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 11:55 pm
Look, she’s cute and possibly speaks French; well done, Chris!
dover_beach
21 Mar 13 at 11:58 pm
“You can always tell when a loser lefty is on the scene. They just snipe and sneer.”
You mean like, “your lying maths”? Since it wasn’t my maths, and it wasn’t lying.
“I’m not surprised the BBC had different time frames for each party, it’s a non-story otherwise.”
Their story is how often leaders get rolled in Australia, compared to other countries. They’re not taking sides, but of course you took it as a slight. Apparently everything is an ideological attack, in your world. How sad.
And I was wrong about the 20s remark. Obviously you’re pining for your 30s.
Jarrah
22 Mar 13 at 12:01 am
LOL. The BBC? Sure, that’s why they used different time frames to compare the number of leaders. And you defend them. Natch.
Gab
22 Mar 13 at 12:04 am
On the BBC matter, it is really a little disingenuous. While the conservative side was in power there was only one leader over a period of 11 years, and never a single leadership spill. It is obvious that following such a long stretch were the leader departs the scene – and the air-apparent does as well – that there might be a bit of to and fro in opposition. But to compare this to the turmoil of Labor in opposition and then in government with that is plain stupid, not interesting.
dover_beach
22 Mar 13 at 12:06 am
Sinc, nothing about the 2020 Summit suggests it was a quest for ideas.
It was more about Mr Wonderful sucking up to self-appointed movers and shakers in academia, the media and business.
He even had the Clipboard Kids from McKinsey running it!
Tony Healy
22 Mar 13 at 12:16 am
Got it in one Dover beach. ‘While the conservative side was in power there was on one leader …..’. I get so frustrated when people point the finger in argument, and say your side changed leaders. Yes, but they weren’t elected by the majority of the electorate to be Prime Minister. The best place to sort each other out is in Opposition. Night.
delfino
22 Mar 13 at 12:51 am
McKimsey? The ones asking how often you get frisky and so on?
WhaleHunt Fun
22 Mar 13 at 12:52 am
? It was called the McKinsey report yes?
WhaleHunt Fun
22 Mar 13 at 12:53 am
How many ALP governments have NOT had the leader backstabbed and replaced while in power, between elections?
wreckage
22 Mar 13 at 1:00 am
Kinsey? The guy who got “data” from sex offenders and even left known offenders of the sort that preys on children unreported and at large in order to collect more “data”?
wreckage
22 Mar 13 at 1:01 am
Gough ?
All 72 to 75 Perhaps?
WhaleHunt Fun
22 Mar 13 at 1:02 am
Ah so Kinsey, not McKinsey.
WhaleHunt Fun
22 Mar 13 at 1:03 am
The Australian editorialises today that only Gillard Labor could send a hundred of its members to into a caucus meeting and come out with a victory for Tony Abbott.
LOL.
C.L.
22 Mar 13 at 1:12 am
See? This is why the government needs to be able to decide who publishes, and who gets their throat cut!
So insensitive!
wreckage
22 Mar 13 at 1:14 am
@Gab 21 Mar 13 at 11:54 pm
The same BBC that support the distorted time frames of the
AGWClimate Change ‘scientists’.NoFixedAddress
22 Mar 13 at 9:45 am
Great quote from H B Bear above, most relevant.
Harold
22 Mar 13 at 12:00 pm
From Bronwyn Hinz’s contribution to the post-mortem:
Translation: Rudd is good at conning the public but his colleagues hate his guts; Gillard is good at issuing abuse in the House of Commons but the public hates her guts. This is what ‘good communication’ means.
Adrien
22 Mar 13 at 1:26 pm
You can say many things about Hawke, but you have to agree he was really lucky, he inherited a set of good ideas which Frazer, despite his massive mandate, was too gutless to apply.
Unfortunately for Rudd, the Howard government was a little policy exhausted, so the ALP was left floundering and resorted to what the ALP does best, playing Uni student politics. and making shit up.
Pete
22 Mar 13 at 8:17 pm