Relda,

I feel you are correct. A reworked ALP with Rudd would stimulate debate. Also, one hopes good debate. Bob Hawke before he came to Office wanted an improved quality debate, perhaps, with Rudd will do better. Hope so. Think the Party has a better than 50:50 chance at the next election too. But that is way off, yet. Never understood why Mark Latham was chose.

Albeit, in seniority centric patrimonial based Asia, Little Johnny's long dynasty might be an advantage? Pitty the Pacific is falling apart.

A world without George Bush and Bonsai Bush might not be far off.

[The Sells thread is still quite lively.]

Labor party with a better chance only for those who only recognise two party's.

Labor party is stale from the ground up,inside and out.

They with the unions have what to offer that they have had the monopoly with the liberal party now for how many years.

these two have lost touch with the people and changing the face is just like when they did it with latham nothing more.

Rudd doesnt make policy the labor party and unions make policy.

Peter McMahon writes “Can Labor pull itself together and regain relevance, as it did in the early 1970s? Not with its current leadership, membership and party processes it can’t.”

Oh so, it is not the Liberals fault that Labor cannot “get it up”

it is

The leadership – oh those leaders, elected by who,

wait for it

The Membership – of course, the membership oh so undeserving

And the “processes”, well processes are only as good as the people who operate them, that darn leadership and membership again.

And all this time, I thought any organisation is only as good as its membership.

“The ALP is defunct - run by soft-headed opportunists with minimal understanding of the contemporary world”

And I suppose the “Peter McMahon for world domination party” is waiting in the wings to destroy, with a single blow, the low life curs who have reduced labor to a pitiful dollop of doggie doos.

Alternatively, maybe the one time “party faithful” have seen the irrelevance of socialism and wiped it off the underside of their shoes as they move onward and upward to a the economic wonders of free-market economics, which turns the bright light of honesty on all those socialist lies and myths.

Oh, I could have a field day on this thread but I will resist, in polite society, it is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead.