Since Parliamentary sittings have ended, Kev is in the enviable position of being able to promise anything and everything to everyone in order to get elected. If the electorate are stupid enough to fall for this and he actually does win, then of course he will discover all sorts of reasons why it's not 'expedient' to carry out his promises at this time. I would have thought that the Australian public were too smart to fall for this old trick, but the opinion polls suggest that a fair number of them are.

But I pin my hopes on Abbott's election campaign when it begins in earnest. There is enough mud in Rudd's trail to slather him inches deep.

"There is enough mud in Rudd's trail to slather him inches deep."

And there is a correspondingly deep pool of mud to throw at mrabbott and the rest of his colleagues and supporters.

If the Lieberals choose this path they should be very wary as Laborites are way way better at that game.
You only have too look at preselections, factional brawls, branch shenanigans not to mention union and university politics to see Labors proficiency at dirty politics and the campaign of the smear. Indeed we have just witnessed a perfect example of it with the demise of Julia Gillard.
The tories, and mrabbott in particular, are featherweights when it comes to that sort of gutter politics.

Personally I think politics and elections should be about more than mud slinging and playing the man (or woman) not the ball.
But when it comes down to it rabbot started it and by refusing to discuss his policies (if he has any) he isnt leaving Labor with much choice is he?

Both comments already posted miss the point of the article.... And the article is correct. Both Howard and Hawke managed their Ministers very effectively giving them plenty of scope so they could run their portfolios effectively.

The idea of broader party participation in the election of the leader is almost a non-sequiter. Voting requires the electorate be informed to some degree about the candidates. Debating the merits of candidates in public is destructive as the Australian Democrats found out in the clash between NSD and Meg Lees. Lees could never say what NSD failings were and her subsequent leadership led to the destruction of the party's vote.

The alternative, I suppose is for the Parliamentary Party to state their choice and have the organisation accept or reject it. That would be time consuming and so problematic.

revisionist grabbage the author hasn't even bothered to read the wikipediea bio's of the men he talks about, let alone aground anything he says in facts.

arh but that opion pieces for your, no need to sully your thoughts with the facts.

The hangers-on will board the taxpayer funded bandwagon, waiving their taxpayer funded slogan boards in their taxpayer funded time. It's going to be an ugly battle between moral & immoral.

Yep...but the "people" are obviously happy with the change...

Rudd has left us a punishing legacy of uncontrolled entry of boat people. Unskilled, usually Islamic and a future social security load. Rudd should be continually reminded that he destroyed the Pacific Solution which stemmed this tide.

I cannot believe the way the polls bounced when Rudd took over the Labor leadership. Have people forgotten already why his own party removed him before the last election?

This man was a typical "messiah" all bright sunny smiles and glib speeches. Always in front of the cameras with something upbeat to throw to the press who uncritically lapped it up. In the corporate world I used to inhabit he would have been referred to as a crawler or, more bluntly, a brown-nose. After two years of fumbling incompetence and wasteful squandering of the cash reserves left by the Howard Government people finally woke up they had been conned and the polls reflected this.

I just hope the voters wake up a bit quicker this time around and consign Kev and his pack of no-hoper ministers to the opposition benches.

There's nothing wrong with a positive (or positivist) approach to persistent problems. It's much to be preferred over a piecemeal reactionary series of bandaid solutions that have nothing informing them other than a rent-seeking self-interest and that lead to unintended consequences which are ignored because the self-interest dominates.

Feminist ideological social policies that have caused so much destruction of families and the social fabric are a classic example. Based on the self-interest of the perennially rent-seeking Hawke who was easy meat for the manipulative skills of psychologically-trained journalists and teachers (Summers, Kirner, et al) the nation was set on a path that over 30 years has seen it deteriorate to the point that a smaller proportion of men are now in work than during the Great Depression while the demand for office space to house women doing part-time work that only exists because it is regulated by statutes specifically intended to "increase female workforce participation" has never been higher.

These policies are not questioned because the people negatively affected are insufficiently educated to do so effectively, while the ones who benefit have the credibility of a degree (education optional) and the "false certainty of consensus" enforced by allowing no dissent to be expressed.

The commonality of interest that is part of being human has been supplanted by a narrow self-interest deliberately fostered by anti-social, dysfunctional women who have no vested interest in the perpetuation of the social model beyond their own lifetime with the willing cooperation of men who are driven by their instincts to fulfil the requirements of the female of the species and a few cynical male rent-seekers and "pro-feminist" spongers.

It nearly ruined this nation and it is severely damaging the whole world. Rudd had and has no choice.

Having reconsidered my post above I have to say I think I am mistaken. The way Gillard was deposed was not right and I sincerely regret having wished for her downfall. Whatever else we have is dependent on a strong Party system and it has to be kept functioning properly and running smoothly.

The role of the Unions is critical in that and the worker relies on the protection of the Unions to ensure his best interests are maintained. If the Unions are weakened, the worker has no protection from the exploitation of bad bosses.

The rise in the number of female workers meant that the need for a female PM was great and whether Gillard is flawed or not was not up to me to judge. I'm afraid that I sometimes get carried away with my own sense of importance and forget the effect on others.

I hope the Party can rebuild itself into a proper workers' party run by the unions and continue to be a voice for all those who rely on it. I'll be doing my best to make sure that can happen, God willing. I owe it to the people who need it so much.