Judgment Day for Labor

We've been to Australia several times this year. And wherever we've been, when we've talked to people about politics, they have been hanging out for today; the day of the Federal Election. And they've been hanging out for today because they want to bring an end to six years of appalling government.

The polls open in about three-and-a-half hours time as we type this. And it seems that the only question remaining now is over the margin of victory for the Coalition, and whether Labor will just get defeated, or whether Kevin Rudd's party will get annihilated.

The Sydney Morning Herald has details of the final round of polls:

Australians are preparing to sweep aside six years of Labor rule, installing Tony Abbott as the country's 28th prime minister in an electoral verdict leaving no room for doubt.
A swing of 4 per cent against Kevin Rudd's government threatens to strip the ALP of future stars as voters cast a harsh judgment on the party's internal divisions.
A poll shows electors will turn their backs on big-picture policies to price carbon, tax big miners, and build a first-class national broadband network, in favour of the smaller horizons of reduced debt, smaller government, and a new domestic-first focus.

The latest Age/Nielsen survey suggests 54 per cent of the nation's 14.7 million electors are embracing the Coalition.

Labor's primary vote has slumped to 33 per cent, with the Coalition on 46 per cent.
Primary support for Labor, and Mr Rudd's own popularity, are now as low or lower than they were in June 2010, suggesting the party that has twice changed prime ministers and torn itself apart in the search for votes is back where it started.
Mr Abbott has maintained his 7-point lead as the more trusted of the two leaders.

Other polls also point to a Coalition victory, but a slightly closer result. The final Morgan poll found the Coalition ahead after preferences by 53.5 per cent to 46.5 per cent, the Galaxy poll put it at 53-47, and the Essential poll found the Coalition leading 52-48.

 

Whilst the polls themselves make grim reading for Labor, that's not the worst of it; the carnage could be even worse; read on:

 

If applied uniformly across the nation, the 4 per cent swing would cost Labor 14 seats.
But strategists on both sides expect Labor's losses to be even higher, with as many as 25 seats falling into conservative hands.
That is because the national average is skewed by higher-than-average pro-Coalition swings in the big population states of Victoria (4 per cent) and NSW (5 per cent).
The poll of 1431 respondents was taken on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

We will be staying up tonight to watch TV coverage of events as they unfold. But barring some sort of miracle, Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister of Australia, and the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years will be consigned to the history books. And somehow, we doubt that history will be kind to the about-to-be-former Labor government and its leaders.

With a Wainuiomata-born wife, Tony Abbott is likely to be a far better friend to New Zealand than Kevin Rudd has been. Here's hoping that a new era of trans-Tasman co-operation is about to be born.

 

The Herald-Sun on Rudd, Gillard and Labor

The Sunday edition of the Herald-Sun in Melbourne. In an editorial entitled Time voters took a new direction the leader writer notes:

AFTER six years of failed government, Australia finally has the chance to take a new direction. Labor has failed itself and our great nation.
Under both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, the party has been riven by incompetence, abysmal policy and bitter internal wars.
Australia cannot afford to keep the most dysfunctional and inept government in its history.
The Sunday Herald Sun supported Mr Rudd when he was elected in 2007. But his performance was so erratic on so many fronts that even his own party couldn't tolerate the damage anymore.
His successor was just as bad, but sadly Labor resorted to recycling Mr Rudd only to find him the same flawed character they dumped in the first place.
On the other hand, Tony Abbott and his team have shown they are ready to fix the mess and restore strong government. Mr Abbott has displayed courage, decency and a great capacity to listen to the people. His party is united and has presented a powerful case for change.
Mr Abbott kept calm as Labor ripped itself apart and lurched from one crisis to another, focusing his team on addressing the issues that matter most to Australians - a strong economy, job creation and a prosperous future.
This Government has fumbled and stumbled its way to a deserved defeat on Saturday, through disunity, the failure of its policies and its inability to deliver them. Its leaders have been so preoccupied with surviving attacks from enemies within that they have been distracted from governing.
Australia bears the scars of Labor's bungling: ballooning debt, asylum-seeker fiasco, carbon tax backflip, Building the Education Revolution blowout, delayed and overpriced national broadband project, deadly home insulation botch-up, mining tax debacle. The list goes on.
Labor has wasted billions of your taxes on schemes ranging from the feckless to the reckless. Near the top of a long list is the Home Insulation Scheme that cost several lives, as well as $1 billion to clean up. Then there was the $16 billion lavished on schools for works which, too often, were overdone, bungled or not needed.
The rate of illegal migration by boat - cut to a trickle under John Howard's Pacific Solution - exploded exponentially under a rudderless Labor leadership that attempted to disguise porous borders as a humanitarian principle. This Government has let in 50,000 boat people at massive cost to the taxpayer - and the loss of hundreds of lives of gullible-paying passengers lured by people smugglers swift to exploit Labor's dithering border protection policies.
Mr Rudd started out calling climate change the moral challenge of our time but he soon reneged, deferring an emissions trading scheme. This led Ms Gillard to try the on-again, off-again carbon tax that was so obviously a sop to the green vote of the inner-city elite.
Mr Rudd campaigned "to end the blame game" with states over hospital funding, but his scheme to claw back GST revenue to pay for it was dumped, as were all but nine of the hundreds of ideas aired at his 2020 Summit.
Mr Rudd inherited a $20 billion surplus from the Liberals but it evaporated in the global financial crisis, to be replaced by deficits. One reason of many for deficits is that the National Broadband Network has been bogged down in delays, its cost ballooning to $37 billion instead of $4.7 billion for the more modest plan mooted in the 2007 campaign.
Just last week, Treasury officials contradicted Mr Rudd's claims of a $10 billion black hole in Mr Abbott's election promises. If not a lie, this is at best the latest embarrassment a rejected and recycled leader has inflicted on a party unsure what it stands for and out of touch with those it calls "working families".
Individuals are often wrong, crowds rarely are. It seems Mr Rudd has been around long enough for Australians to sense the character flaws his own colleagues rebelled against three years ago.
He doesn't stand for anything except his own overweening ambition. That worked when he was riding the incoming tide of generational change in 2007 but now he is beating against the current. After six years in which the Government has declined from the inept to the disastrous, voters can now test the Coalition's alternative.
The Sunday Herald Sun believes Australia needs less waste, smaller government, reined-in deficits and stable and decisive leadership to secure the country's future.
There are no surprises in that list but it is easier to promise these sensible aims than it is to deliver them.
Mr Abbott has led his party into this election with distinction. He has known defeat before, and has emerged stronger and more determined from the experience.
This time, Mr Abbott deserves his chance, and we believe he will be an outstanding prime minister.

Labor, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have done everything in their power to demonise Tony Abbott, just as Labour and Helen Clark did here in 2008 to John Key. It didn't work for Miss Clark in 2008, and it is not going to work for Mr Rudd and Labor in 2013.

Australia is on the brink of electing a coalition government to be led by the Liberals and Tony Abbott. The Lucky Country may just be about to become just that once again as Labor is sent to Coventry to lick its wounds, prune the deadwood and disease and rebuild. 

The ALP should note however that the New Zealand Labour Party has had that same opportunity since its defeat in 2008 (and again in 2011), but it is yet to take the opportunity.

Why Labor is losing; and what it means for the NZLP.

We were out and about yesterday, after our business meetings ended.We even met a Liberal Party candidate for one of the local electorates doing some good, old-fashioned street corner campaigning; good luck Kevin!

But we haven't seen hide nor hair of anyone from the Labor Party; they seem to be keeping a low profile. And this opinion-piece from Paul Strangio in the Sydney Morning Herald may help to explain why:

In the near half-century since the dawn of the ''modern'' epoch of Australian politics - a milestone conventionally associated with Gough Whitlam's ascension to the Labor leadership in the late 1960s - Australia has witnessed five changes of federal government (1972, 1975, 1983, 1996 and 2007).
Two of those transitions involved the ALP losing office: Whitlam was defeated in 1975 and Paul Keating's government was beaten in 1996. When compared with those occasions, a notable difference about the mood in 2013 is the seeming lack of passion among Labor partisans as they contemplate the likely demise of the Rudd government.
Labor has traditionally been the party capable of stirring followers to emotional pitch, and those passions have commonly been intense when the ALP is bracing itself against defeat. It has been a catalyst for party faithful to metaphorically mount the barricades.

1975, of course, had its own exceptional circumstances, with Labor partisans animated by a potent mixture of rage at Whitlam's dismissal by governor-general Sir John Kerr, and adoration of their cruelly felled prime minister. Whitlam's rallies during the campaign were even more charged and messianic than the exultant ''It's Time'' campaign meetings of 1972. Such was the fervency of the Labor crowds that the Whitlam entourage was seduced into believing that the party might defy expectations and prevail at the ballot box.
Passions were more subdued in 1996. Labor had expended much of its emotional energy three years earlier rallying behind Keating as he fended off the challenge of John Hewson and his fundamentalist free-market manifesto, ''Fightback''. There was little hope of another salvation in 1996 and the dominant mood among Labor followers was one of sombre foreboding that matched the demeanour of the elegiac Keating. Yet the ''true believers'' still drew inspiration from Keating's ''big picture'' and felt sick at heart that the public was poised to spurn his vision in favour of the provincialism of John Howard's promise of a ''comfortable and relaxed'' Australia.
By contrast, in 2013 Labor faithful appear devoid of emotion - dare I suggest there is even a smidge of indifference about what is coming. Yes, there is apprehension at the spectre of a Tony Abbott-led Coalition government and spasms of anger at the anti-Labor assault of the News Ltd press, but the fate of the Rudd government is failing to generate much anguish.
Why the dearth of passion? Part of the answer is that the leadership civil war of the past three years has left the ALP emotionally wrung out. I suspect some Labor loyalists remain numb at the pitiless internal destabilisation and ultimate cutting down of Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard.
Furthermore, as the campaign has progressed, it has become evident that by not daring to speak Gillard's name, Labor's re-election pitch has been left with a significant hole. Notwithstanding the flaws of her incumbency, Gillard established a reform record that felt like it was worth fighting for - most notably, the disability insurance scheme and education funding reform. Yet, intent on erasing Gillard's prime ministership from public consciousness, Rudd has appeared reluctant to fully own those measures for Labor. In turn, the campaign has spotlighted how comparatively thin and uninspiring are his reform credentials.

We are relatively recent converts to the niceties of Australian Federal politics. It's only really been since the John Howard years that we have taken more than a passing interest.

But the machinations within the ALP since 2007 have been fascinating to watch, and even moreso at the moment because they are mirrored in the bitterly divided New Zealand Labour Party. 

Labor and Kevin Rudd are headed for a crushing defeat next Saturday if the pundits here and the bookies are to be believed. You can still get a bet on the Coalition; at $1.02 back for your dollar. Labour is paying $11 to be reelected.

Surely, this is going to lead to wholesale change at the top of the ALP. But the question we have is this; what is needed for there to be wholesale change at the top of the New Zealand Labour Party? Will any of Messrs Cunliffe, Robertson or Jones be the catalyst for significant change, or will it just be more of the same?

Kev's large and menacing shadow

Kevin Rudd got a bounce in the polls for Labor after his knifing of former Australian PM Julia Gillard. But as the SMH reports, the lustre is wearing off:

It was brief, dignified and to the point, but Julia Gillard's statement that she would not attend Sunday's Labor campaign launch was startling, too. How quickly we move on; how quickly Labor wants us to move on.
Gillard has disappeared. She has posted just one thank-you tweet to well-wishers since being ousted as prime minister on June 26, barely two months ago. She reportedly has bought a house in Adelaide to be close to her family. She won't be sitting with other Labor luminaries on Sunday because she doesn't want to ''distract in any way from Kevin Rudd's powerful message''. She has ''fervent hope'' for a Labor victory.
There was so much left unsaid in Gillard's two-sentence statement. Was there irony lurking there, not wanting to ''distract'' Rudd, the man whose distractions all but derailed the 2010 campaign and played a sizeable role in destroying Gillard's prime ministership?

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What is Gillard thinking as she watches Labor's campaign, the dashing of the fantasy that ''the people'' just love Kevin Rudd, that Kevin Rudd alone can win this election because Kevin Rudd is a brilliant campaigner who can make us believe that Kevin Rudd offers a ''new way''?
Whatever Gillard is thinking, she'll hold her tongue for now. She may not be physically present in Brisbane, but her political ghost will be. Labor may have little choice but to pray that voters' memories are short, but it cannot erase its past, cannot pretend this election is all about scary Tony Abbott and his ''cuts, cuts, cuts''.
The central question is whether this election will turn out to be a judgment on Labor's six years of division that has overshadowed its policy achievements, or whether through gritted teeth we'll risk another three messy years because we're scared of what Tony Abbott might do.
I have been around too long to predict election outcomes, but it is looking as though September 7 will be a day of reckoning for a party that has come close to destroying itself. Labor seems so hollowed out that perhaps it had no choice but to grasp onto an American-style campaign centred around one man, Kevin Rudd, the man who more than any other contributed to the party's predicament.
Perhaps Rudd's elevation will mean that Labor will avoid the ''catastrophic defeat'' it faced under Gillard, and it will console itself with that. But there is so much heaviness in Labor's campaign, weighed down as it is by bad memories and bad blood.

 

Labour is in deep strife. A new poll out this morning shows Labor getting a bath in key marginals in New South Wales and Victoria. The bookies have already paid out on a coalition victory.

So will this image be Rudd's unfortunate epitaph?

The Dave 'n' Julia Caption Contest

As we've said before, some photographs just cry out for a Caption Contest; and this is one of those:

You know the rules; keep 'em short, humourous and pithy, and don't get unnecessarily personal. Beyond that, you're limited only by your own imagination.

We'll get things started:

Well Julia; now I know what it's like to be Rudded. But it's been a Helen of an experience...

Another Labo(u)r leader in strife

David Shearer has gone the same way as Australian Labor Party leader Julia Gillard; knifed in the back from within their own caucus.

Kevin Rudd got something of a dead-cat bounce in the polls after he broke his promise not to challenge Ms Gillard. But Rudd's honeymoon is over, as people begin to remember just what he was like the first time he was Prime Minister.

And in fact it's so bad that Kevin Rudd may not even hold his own seat in Queensland; theguardian.com reports:

Kevin Rudd is trailing Liberal rival Bill Glasson in his apparently safe Brisbane seat of Griffith, in alarming news for Labor from the latest Guardian Lonergan poll.
Glasson, who is running an intensive local grassroots campaign, leads Rudd on a two-party preferred basis by 52% to 48%. The poll's margin of error is 4%, but its findings raise the possibility that without a big effort on his home turf, Rudd could become the third prime minister in Australian history to lose his seat, behind John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Bruce in 1929.
It raises a dilemma for Labor strategists who need to salvage Labor's national campaign but also give Rudd time to campaign in his seat. Rudd was criticised for pulling out of a local candidates' debate in Brisbane on Thursday night because he was campaigning interstate.
"This shows Mr Rudd needs to be very conscious of what is happening in his own electorate. He needs to focus on the battle as well as the war," Lonergan research managing director Chris Lonergan said.
The poll of 958 Griffith voters, taken on Wednesday night as Rudd and Coalition leader Tony Abbott debated at the Broncos leagues club in Brisbane, found Rudd had 38% of the primary vote, down from the 44% he achieved in 2010, with Glasson on 47%. The Greens candidate was on 11%.

Losing his Griffith seat would be a mortal blow for Kevin Rudd and Labor, but it might also be just what the ALP needs; to be rid of Rudd for good.

And stories like this won't do Rudd's chances any good at all; news.com.au reports:

A MAKE-up artist who says she smoothed the complexions of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott ahead of last night's people's forum has hinted that the Prime Minister was rude to her.
Lily Fontana, a Brisbane make up artist, took to Facebook after her encounter with the leaders, praising Mr Abbott but saying one of the men had treated her terribly.

Here's the Facebook post in question:

It's not the first time that Mr Rudd has behaved obnoxiously; check out the video at the foot of the news.com.au story, but not at work! But he also gave Tony Abbott the chance to make a memorable comment (the emphasis is ours):

 

Mr Abbott said he did not witness Mr Rudd's interaction with Ms Fontana because she applied his make up "in one room and I imagine the Prime Minister was looked after in another room."
"As for other conversations or lack of conversations (she had), I'll just leave that to Mr Rudd."
Mr Abbott has agreed to another people's forum with Mr Rudd, who he described today as misleading and a liar.
When asked about his outburst last night about whether Mr Rudd would "ever shut up", Mr Abbott said his opponent was "all talk and no action".
"One contest that I can never win against Mr Rudd is a talkathon," Mr Abbott said.
"I'm not against talk - my problem with Mr Rudd is he's all talk and no action and when he does take action it's invariably action that damages people."

With just two weeks until Australia goes to the polls, the tide is going out on Kevin Rudd and Labor. In two weeks time we'll know how badly the tide has gone out.

 

 

 

Australia looks forward to 7th September

Kevin Rudd seems to have settled on an election date; Stuff reports:

Kevin Rudd plans to visit the Governor-General on Sunday or Monday to seek approval for an election on September 7.
Sources have told Fairfax Media that Mr Rudd has now settled on the date and will fire the starter's gun on what promises to be one of the most intense political contests in memory.
The election campaign comes within days of an extraordinary mini-budget designed to position the government to address changing economic circumstances.
Softening conditions could force an extra 70,000 Australians out of work, as growth slows and Commonwealth revenues collapse by a staggering $33.3 billion over the next four years.
The worsening picture has shredded Labor's budget forecasts which were set just 10 weeks ago, creating a big political headache for the government. 

The Australian economy is not terribly healthy, and new Treasurer Chris Bowen faces some huge challenges; read on:

Australia's jobless rate is officially expected to climb to 6.25 per cent in 2013-14 and 2014-15. The last time the jobless rate was above 6.25 per cent was in September 2002 (6.3 per cent that month in trend terms).
Falling terms of trade and declining tax revenues have sent this year's projected deficit $12 billion higher to $30.1 billion, despite the combined $17.4 billion in spending cuts. A promised balanced budget in 2015-16 has gone by the wayside, despite Treasurer Chris Bowen and Finance Minister Penny Wong sticking with a promised surplus in 2016-17.
But to get there, they plan to send the national balance sheet deeper into the red, first with projected deficits of $24 billion in 2014-15, coming back to $5 billion in the red in 2015-16.
In the job for little over a month, Mr Bowen laid much of the blame at the feet of a slowing Chinese economy. But the opposition attacked the revised economic statement, with its treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, describing Labor's economic management as ''chaotic'' and its budget ''in free fall''.
Mr Hockey said nearly 800,000 Australians were now likely to be jobless in coming months. 

Labor got a small bounce in the polls when Rudd took over from Julia Gillard after having repeated promised not to challenge for the Labor leadership. But this week's dire economic news, following on from the ICAC fallout where key Labor figures have been accused of corruption, and Rudd's popularity is likely to be at Julia Gillard levels within weeks. Labor is already facing a clean-out in New South Wales, and although Rudd has clawed back some ground in Queensland, it is not going to be enough to save Labor's bacon.

As fate would have it, we have a trip to Australia planned the weekend before the Federal Election. It will be a most interesting time to visit, with the campaign reaching a crescendo. In the meantime, we're sure that Australians can't wait to consign the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government to the dustbin of history.

Quote of the Day - 27 July 2013

This one comes from Andrew Bolt, in the Herald Sun:

Same deal on boats. Abbott's promise to "stop the boats" in his first three years always seemed dodgy.
Too many are now coming and stopping them would take more toughness than the Senate, the courts and the media were likely to allow. But then came Rudd.
Desperate to fix a problem he caused by scrapping our tough border laws in 2008, Rudd promised something tougher than any politician before him.
All boat people as of last Friday would be sent to Papua New Guinea, he declared. None would ever settle in Australia.
With that, Rudd didn't just give Abbott the basis of a deal he himself could use in government. He also destroyed Labor's moral grandstanding.
As Opposition leader in 2006, Rudd preached that "the parable of the good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the Government's proposal to . . . rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches".
This same man now has Labor backing a Pacific Solution on steroids. Labor promises to send all boat people - mainly Muslim - to a poor, corrupt and violent country that bans homosexuality and unanimously passed a motion in Parliament to consider banning non-Christian faiths, too.
Could any Labor MP backing Rudd's plan today berate Abbott for being mean tomorrow to the "stranger in our midst"?
That Rudd's plan is already in tatters, less than a week later, will make Labor's objections to Abbott's plans seem even emptier.
Already more boat people - 355 - have arrived since Friday than there are beds left at the Manus detention centre, the one PNG facility ready to receive anyone.
Already another boat has sunk, with dozens feared dead.
Already PNG is suggesting there may be a cap to the boat people it accepts.
In other ways, too, Rudd has smoothed the way of a Prime Minister Abbott.

Kevin Rudd's back-flip on boat people is as insincere as it is unsurprising. Can anything that Kevin Rudd now says be taken seriously?

And let's not get started on the back-flip on Julia Gillard's much-reviled carbon tax...

KRudd bins Julia's knitting

As if knifing Julia Gillard and ending her political career wasn't utu enough, Kevin Rudd has twisted the knife a little bit further; Newstalk ZB reports:

That toy kangaroo being knitted by Julia Gillard will no longer be part of Australia's official gift to the royal baby.
Kevin Rudd's put a stop to that.
He's considering something a little more precious and what he calls uniquely Australian - an opal-encrusted rattle.

This is an act of unspeakable cruelty by Kevin Rudd. He should be ashamed of himself. And why would a Royal baby want opals, when it will one day have the Crown Jewels?

Kevin Rudd sent Julia Gillard into early retirement. The least he can now do is let her stick to her knitting!

The John 'n' Julia Caption Contest

Some photographs that we see just scream out for a Caption Contest, and the one that follows is no exception:

So what could John Key be saying to Julia Gillard? You know the rules; You know the rules; keep 'em short, humourous and pithy, and don't get unnecessarily personal. Beyond that, you're limited only by your own imagination.

We'll get the ball rolling:

"That knife you used on KRudd in '10; did you ever give it to Trevor Mallard?

Emmerson sticks to his knitting

Rod Emmerson has obviously been reading the Australian Women's Weekly:

This is great stuff from our favourite cartoonist, and we can't help but wonder if it is prophetic, given the fate that befell Julia Gillard just 36 hours ago. And what is Mr Shearer knitting; a stab-proof vest, made of steel wool?

Well done Rod Emmerson!

Goodbye Julia; gidday Kev

It was fascinating watching Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership unravel last night. Sky News had wall-to-wall coverage of the drama in Canberra as Ms Gillard stared down Kevin Rudd; and lost.

The pivotal moment came just a few minutes before the vote itself. Victorian Labor MP Bill Shorten, a key ally of Ms Gillard declared himself as voting for Rudd for the sake of the party. From that moment, Julia Gillard's fate was sealed.

Kevin Rudd may now be the leader of the Labor Party, but he is not yet Prime Minister; Constitutional expert Prof George Williams describes the process to be followed now via the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Australian Labor Party is entitled to choose its own leader. But unless the party also has a majority of members in the House of Representatives, there is no guarantee that its leader will be the Prime Minister. In the case of this hung parliament, that decision is also one for the crossbench members of the House.
As outgoing Prime Minister, Julia Gillard is expected to advise Governor-General Quentin Bryce as to her successor. However, the decision of who to appoint is ultimately one for the Governor-General. By convention, she must commission as Prime Minister the person who commands the confidence of the House of Representatives.
Gillard was able to demonstrate this by entering into written agreements with a number of crossbenchers. In return for policy commitments, they promised to support a Gillard government in votes of confidence and on matters of supply.
As has been said on many occasions by members such as Tony Windsor, these agreements only bind the crossbenchers to support Gillard. They do not guarantee support in the event of a leadership change.

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The question is what will happen now Kevin Rudd has deposed Gillard as leader of the ALP. All eyes should be on the Independents. If a sufficient number to produce a parliamentary majority support Rudd, or at least are not prepared to support a no-confidence motion against him, his position as Prime Minister is secure.
On the other hand, if they shift their allegiance to Tony Abbott, as Windsor has suggested he might do, then Rudd will not command a majority, and he might not be signed in as Prime Minister, or his tenure might be short lived. This though could depend upon whether the opposition is willing to move a no confidence against Rudd. Abbott might prefer to push for an earlier election than to bring Rudd down.
A final scenario is that Independent members are prepared to vote against Rudd, but are not prepared to support Abbott. In this situation, parliament could be unworkable, and an immediate election may be appropriate. This might bring the election forward from September 14 to as early as August 3, which is the first possible date for a simultaneous election of the House of Representatives and half of the Senate.

This morning in Australia, the tail is wagging the dog, and the independent MP's hold all the cards. Another fascinating day awaits, but it looks as though Australia will be going to the polls before September in what may be the most bitter and acrimonious campaign ever.

UPDATED: Tweet of the Day (ALP special) - 30 June 2013

UPDATE #3: Kevin Rudd wins the ALP leadership spill by 57 votes to 45. The Julia Gillard era ends. This has been an intriguing night, about which we'll have more comment tomorrow.

UPDATE #2: Gillard loyalist Bill Shorten has just dropped a huge bombshell and announced that he is supporting Kevin Rudd; Sky News comment is "That is a big nail in the coffin of Julia Gillard"

UPDATE: Julia Gillard has forced Kevin Rudd's hand, and the ballot will be held tonight at 9pm (NZ time). Kevin Rudd has confirmed that he he is a candidate; he is just speaking now. Both he and Julia Gillard have given a commitment to resign as an MP at the election if they lose tonight's ballot.

Sky News (Sky #85) has wall-to-wall coverage of this dramatic evening.

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3News' Australian correspondent Rachel Morton tweets:

Australian Federal politics have suddenly got very interesting. Apparently, the signatures of 34% of Julia Gillard's caucus are required, but it sounds that there may be a ballot at 9am tomorrow morning (AEST time).

The game is on.

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Julia Gillard Caption Contest

Julia Gillard is copping all sorts of flak for this staged photo of her apparently knitting a toy kangaroo for the royal baby. Headlines such as "Spins and Needles", "PM tries to knit herself out of poll doldrums" and "Julia Gillard in "absurd" Royal Baby knitting photo" grace cyberspace.

Here's the photo in question and it's just begging for a caption. You should know the rules by now; keep 'em short, humourous and pithy, and don't get unnecessarily personal. Beyond that, you're limited only by your own imagination.
We'll get the ball (of wool) rolling:

Can you let Wills and Kate know that I'll be able to knit full-time for them after September

The floor is yours...

"Symptoms, not the cause"

It seems that Julia Gillard's ALP is headed for a crippling defeat in September's Federal election; The Australian reports on the latest numbers:

FOR those wanting to use poor polling as more pressure on Julia Gillard to step down as Prime Minister, the latest Newspoll survey delivers yet another crushing confirmation that Labor is headed for a landslide defeat and Tony Abbott has Gillard's number.
The Liberal leader has turned a nine-percentage point deficit against Kevin Rudd as preferred prime minister three years ago into a record 12-point lead over Gillard.
There is no doubt voters prefer both Abbott and Rudd to Gillard.
But the simple truth is that Labor, the Gillard government and Rudd's potential leadership return are beyond polling.

"Beyond polling"; that sounds to us like media-speak for "not a hope in Hades" or "gone-burger". Barring Tony Abbott or some senior Liberal figure doing something incredibly stupid (such as proposing a doubling of Ms Gillard's despised Carbon Tax), Labor is gone for all money. The only question now will be the scope of the loss.

And there's another great line from the writer of this story; the one we've stolen as our heading; here 'tis:

These numbers - a primary vote of 29 per cent and only one in three voters wanting Gillard as prime minister instead of Abbott - and the "media speculation" are symptoms of Labor's ills, not the cause.
The polling is bad because of poor political judgment, flawed implementation of policies and a misreading of the public mood and voters' priorities by both Gillard and Rudd.

Quite so; there is no one over-riding explanation for Labor's fall from electoral grace, and the story in The Australian goes into what it perceives as Labor's failings; a lengthy list!

So just how bad are the latest numbers for Labor? The Telegraph reports from a South Australian perspective:

LABOR would keep only two of its six South Australian seats and be lucky to retain 30 to 35 seats nationally after the election, internal polling of 40 seats has shown.
But most Labor MPs have until now been oblivious to the doomsday prediction because the national report has only been circulated among selected members of Julia Gillard's leadership group.
News Ltd has obtained data from the party's UMR Research report, compiled for the ALP National Secretariat in the past two weeks.
It shows that in South Australia, it would keep only two seats - Kingston, held by Amanda Rishworth, and Port Adelaide, held by Mark Butler.
The result would oust Labor's four other federal MPs in SA - Kate Ellis in Adelaide, Nick Champion in Wakefield, Steve Georganas in Hindmarsh and Tony Zappia in Makin.

We have already blogged that one earlier poll sees Kevin Rudd as the only Labor survivor in Queensland. Now it seems that Labor is facing a similar fate in South Australia; and elsewhere. 

It would seem that the "symptoms of Labor's ills" might be about to take a significant turn for the worse.

Is Gillard a goner?

It's all on for young and old in the Australian Labor Party; the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Julia Gillard's controversial attempt to rescue Labor by claiming Tony Abbott would marginalise women and change abortion rights has backfired, with support among male voters collapsing.
In a finding certain to ratchet up pressure on the Prime Minister's besieged leadership, the latest Fairfax-Nielsen poll has found Labor's standing has continued to slide, led entirely by a 7 per cent exodus of men, while failing to lift substantially among female voters.
According to the monthly survey, the ALP's primary vote now has a psychologically devastating ''2'' in front of it with less than three months to the election on September 14.

Ms Gillard also has gone backwards as preferred prime minister, giving her the lowest approval rating in a year.
The poll coincides with the final sittings of the 43rd Parliament and shows that at 29 per cent, Labor's primary support has slipped below the 30 per cent barrier for only the second time this year. With the Coalition attracting 47 per cent of first-preference votes, Labor trails by a staggering 18 points on primary votes, putting the overall two party-preferred vote at 43-57 in favour of the Coalition or 42-58 based on how the 1400 respondents said they would allocate preferences.
If reflected at the election, that would mean a 7 per cent swing to the Coalition on the 50-50 hung Parliament result of 2010, and mean the loss of 30 or more seats, virtually halving Labor's representation now.
But the poll also shows that with Kevin Rudd in charge, almost the entire advantage to the Coalition would be wiped out, taking Labor's primary vote up to 40 per cent, the Coalition's down to 42 per cent, and the two party-preferred split to a dead-heat 50-50.

Here's why speculation is so rife that, in the words of the old Sam Cooke classic, a change is gonna come:

As nervous Labor MPs gather in Canberra for what many fear will be a tumultuous session in which the leadership issue may explode, the poll confirms Mr Rudd remains personally more popular than Ms Gillard with a preferred Labor leader rating of 58 per cent to her 32 per cent.

But among Labor voters, Ms Gillard still holds a 6 point lead. Mr Rudd's 26 point lead over Ms Gillard overall was beaten by the gap between former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and his successor Mr Abbott.
Mr Turnbull is twice as popular among all voters as Mr Abbott at 62-32, once again confirming that neither main party leader is popular and that voters strongly prefer the former leaders.
Arriving at Canberra airport on Monday morning, Mr Rudd said he had ''noting further to add'' on the leadership question.
''I have nothing further to add on what I've said before,'' he told reporters.
Earlier this month, Mr Rudd said he was not a candidate for the Labor leadership and ''I do not see any circumstances under which I would return to the leadership''.
He said that his purpose in Canberra this week - as it had been in travelling around the country in support of Labor MPs - was to stop Mr Abbott from becoming the next prime minister of Australia.
''He is the single, most . . . extreme right-wing, political leader that the Liberal Party has ever thrown up,'' Mr Rudd said.

We have little doubt that things are going to get pretty acrimonious when the ALP caucus gets together later today. We've heard radio reports this morning suggesting that Rudd has the numbers, but he was alleged to have the numbers a couple of months ago, and he bottled out.

But it's clear now that Labor is headed for an unprecedented defeat in September under Julia Gillard. The threat of impending unemployment for so many ALP MP's may be a strong motivator to try and do something desperate to limit the carnage. Rudd may not win for the ALP, but he may stem the bleeding, and save a few of his fellow MP's.

We will be watching developments from the West Island with some interest. But it seems that one way or the other, the end of the Gillard era is nigh.