Julia Gillard was part of the inner sanctum which concocted these 'brilliant' ideas such as the Mining Tax so how can she escape scot free?.

The real issue is this: Labor have wasted huge amounts of money during an economic downturn. They were saved from the GFC more by our Mining Industry and the relentless push of China's development than anything else. They need money urgently. They can only get it in one of two ways 1.Mining Tax or 2. Carbon Tax. Either way, the populace will lose massively.

Gillard or Rudd makes no difference. Labor is after our money and that's all you need to know.

How are your heating bills now? If the Carbon Tax goes through they'll double.

I was just think that at least we are now safe, & that we won't be seeing our Ruddy in a lead position at the united nations.

Then the thought occured to me that it just may make him more attractive to the UN. After all, incompetence comes standard with with all their programs.

"You too...Brutus"?

Good riddance.. and WELCOME instabilty.. = less electoral viability...

Now at least we know about the morality of the Labour leadersip....

*A barren wasteland of base treachorous political opportunism at all costs"

Lindsay Tanner just read the Bible.... Daniel Chapter 5 to be exact.

5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.

The words written ?

25 "This is the inscription that was written:

Mene , Mene , Tekel , Parsin

26 "This is what these words mean:
Mene : God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

27 Tekel : You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

28 Peres : Your kingdom is divided and given to the "Nationals and Liberals"

Mild artistic licence with the last verse :)

Of course..this is why Lindsay is not going to stand in the seat of Melbourne now.... running for cover. Though in the specific case of "Melbourne" it seems that the Greens might get it. No matter..we will expose their greed, schemes and moral bankruptcy in due course over time.

Brisbane based blogger, Bertrand - I don't think you are giving credit where credit is due. Australia escaped the worst of the GFC for two main reasons;

1. The banks' lending was kept within sensible limits by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

2. The Australian government's stimulus measures put a floor under retail spending, housing and construction activity.

Those 2 points are recognised professionally and institutionally here and abroad.

To think that mining was our saviour is, what do you say ... spin.

Sure, China's stimulus helped us recover, but only after the worst had passed.

What else could they do?
Rudd made a huge mistake dumping the ETS and an even worse one by trying to take away the trough from the piggy miners before an election. He should have kept banging away at Abbot on carbon and climate change and left shafting the miners for right after winning the election.
No matter which way he jumped rudd was going to fall. The miners were ripping him apart and if he backflipped on the mining tax he would have been seen as a total joke and crucified (even more) by the media.
Now Julia can dump/change/defer the tax and get the miners off labors back and the focus back on phoney Tony and his gang of howardites.

In the end it was the people of Australia that turned on Rudd as evidenced in recent polls.
Pissing off the people who voted for you is not smart and Kevin paid the price. Smokers, teachers, the unemployed, students, internet geeks and the indigenous and their supporters all got shafted while those never likely to vote labor like bankers, financiers, shareholders and big business in general got massive gifts and handouts during the GFC, which they caused in the first place with their greed and fraud.

Kudos to the "faceless backroom men" for making it so clean and quick and to Kevin himself for going gracefully(almost). Less of the mournful hangdog kev and a bit more mongrel, especially if you're gunna stay on.

continued

continued

Julia should call an election immediately and get a mandate from the people and hopefully a better organised senate. Fielding has got to go. The man is a moron. Some new talent on the frontbench might be good too. Give Maxine Mckew something (education maybe) or she will lose Bennelong. Give Rudd foreign affairs. Where he should have been all along and where he will quite probably do extremely well. Get rid of Conroy. Give him defense or something. Bring back Garret and give him proper control over Environment and get him talking to the Greens. If, as seems likely they hold the balance of power in the senate, the the Libs will be in big trouble as they can now be totally ignored and marginalised. Another good reason to get rid of Kev. He never could countenance negotiating with the greens(thats how we got Fielding) and a backflip now would have been one more fatal wound for rudd.

All in all a fun and interesting week. Long may we have many more to come.