John Button on both side of politics is held in high regard.Kevin Rudd has elected to visit Kate Blanchette in hospital instead.Surely a brief visit to Kate would have surficed while Kevin paid respect to a man who gave so much to the Labor Party.

It does not auger well for party unity or the lack of good judgement displayed by this man who seems to be over awed by Hollywood glitz.

It does make me wonder if Kevin fully comprehends the importance of the the job which the Australian people have laid at his feet.The whole ring to the theme of his public persona is shallow eg,K07,a rolling barage of cliches,and the 2020 Cricket Summit.It sounds like image has won over substance.

The whole scenario has flavours of the Gough Whitlam fiasco,with the movie stars pushing public/political agendas of which they have no experience or expertise.

It has been 5 months since Labor has taken office.Other than giving more power to the RBA,what has Labor done or planned to address the problems of infrastructure and the waste and mismanagement of our Labor State Govts?

Arjay it will come but this is not the mistake you crave.
In fact it is clutching at straws to claim it is polls shout of a continuing decline in conservative ratings.
And of further comfort with Kevin Rudd, it must come both a new direction for conservatives and a slip from Rudd.
But your thread is not unlike Liberal comments both in the house and the Medea direction less carping without structure or true worth.

A simple question for you Belly.Do you think that Kevin should have attended John Button's funeral?

Kevin may have won the attention of the airheads with his populist appeal,thus the election,but I see no real policy initiatives eminating form the Labor Party that gives me any faith in their ability to tackle the hard issues.Unemployment must be on the rise since he has just taken $20 million form their budget so reliable and frequent statistics are now in doubt.

They talk about taxation reform,does this mean an increase in the GST,or are they actually going to decrease taxes.With all the left wing noises about social equality,I think it is the former scenario.

I don't want to see Labor fail since that will only hurt us all,but looking at their past track records does no inspire me one iota.I'll just apply the blow torch to the belly [pun intended] to make sure they're awake.

Of course Kevin should have attended John Button's funeral - but JB would turn in his grave if he knew what Kevin was up to.
Sorry Belly but Kevin is about publicity opportunities for Kevin.

As I understood it, Kevin visited Kate in hospital for 10 minutes, whereas the funeral was a 3 or 4 hour affair including flights to and from Melbourne.

Therefore it was not a simple case of one or the other. I would imagine that taking half a day out of the Prime Minister's schedule is not done often, but a 10 minute visit to someone can be easily accomodated.

But good to see you making an effort to find out why first, rather than just start bagging him out straightaway.

Arjay

No, Kevin’s biggest party’s mistake was to mislead the public two or three weeks out from the federal Elections. I can assure you they won’t forget it.
On ABC Landline Kerry O’Brien presenting the ALP policies to the Australian and international public that he had more correspondence regarding the barbaric treatment involved in the live Animal Trade than any other topic.

He went on to say under a ALP Government they would be forced to consider the public out cry and insist all Animals were slaughtered in Australia.

So many people voted for him on his pre election promises.

Within weeks of being elected he booted Kerry O’Brien and gave it to somebody else - you guessed it supporting live animal exports and protecting the few people in the industry that of course make donations to political parties.

Since then in outrage the world has united at the arrogant lies.

RSPCA and world wide people have come together in outrage at this betrayal. =

I remember hearing Rudd say= I won’t be banning live exports. My family was involved.

I understand these things! We say Do you Mr. Rudd? And what would THAT be? Money before Humanity? Lie to the public?

Take a LOOK at these pictures Kevin RUDD and know the Shame you are bring to this country.

YOUR family may have approved but as you WELL knew the Australian pubic said it must be banned.

That’s the reason you got Kerry O’Brien to mislead the public ISNT IT.?

We who are from QLD know your track record especially regarding Animal Welfare and anything sensible to do with farmers.

You’re no more a farmer than I am a poly. I couldn’t sleep at night with all the bull told.
So it’s the milky bar kid - who’s not short of a quid that has made his biggest mistake.

http://www.handlewithcare.tv/au/index.asp

http://www.horsepoint.com.au/portal/alias__horsepointau/tabID__3435/ArticleID__2910717/DesktopDefault.aspx

Boys and girls please!We have lots bigger things to do than monitor Kevin's appointments.Any politician is a busy person,- if he's a leader, he needs someone to tell him what's next when he finishes shaving. He is not always the master of his next move.Mistakes can occur, but who are we to judge?

Honestly, I couldn't give two flying figs about either of those meetings.

There is far too much focus on these supposed 'indications of character' matters when it comes to leaders. The media, and public, agonise over whether some politician smoked pot in high school, whether they're married or not, or a multitude of personal matters and decisions which have little bearing on leadership.

This thread for instance, is a fine example. I would have said, Kevin's first big mistake, is this push to allow employers access to their employee's emails, without notification - with 'terrorism' being put forward as the excuse.

It was Rudd's first decision that rubbed me the wrong way - something like this, actually HAS repercussions on our society, instead of some tenuous character indication one way or the other.

Focus on what our leaders do, not who they are.

Wow. I disagree with TRTL. First time for everything I guess.

"There is far too much focus on these supposed 'indications of character' matters when it comes to leaders."

I couldn't give a crap about all the good vs evil stuff we've endured for the past decade and neither, I suspect, do most Australians. But given image management on one hand, and a largish chunk of the public who don't pay attention and therefore have no other criteria by which to judge on the other hand, I think it's reasonable for people to apply the same judgement methods to politicians that they use to measure any other public figure. Celebrities, Big Brother and Australian Idol come to mind.

It's unreasonable to expect everyone to be a policy analyst, let alone interested in political gamesmanship. If gut feelings about character is as engaged as people get, at least it's something.

It's true that Button deserved more respect than Rudd gave him, but given that only a handful of people know or even care who Button was let alone that Rudd didn't go to his funeral, it's unlikely to mark the beginning of his downfall. Nothing he's done to date has had any negative impact on his popularity as measured by polling.

HI TO ALL THE FORGOTTEN AUSTRALIANS

VICTIMS OF RAPES AND ABUSE WHILE IN STATE INSTITUTIONAL CARE

This is something kevin rudd should of done and that was to acknowledge the forgotten australians and that of the victims the, protecting of vunlerable children in institutional care through out the states of australia some state have addmitted to what victims suffered but here in new south wales the state does not care about us and still continue to cover up what we suffered as children

we are real victims and the states and the australian goverment are still covering up the rapes and abuses that we as children suffered by the very people who were to look after us not rape and abused us we are the victims and real victims

addmitt the truth you goverment leaders and stop the cover up of these senate inquiries that were don in august 2004 and march 2005.

we are real victims and we are not going away and will no longer be forgotten

Diploman,mistakes likes these just don't happen.Bob Hawke,Gough Whitlam and even Malcolm Fraser was there along with many other Liberal politicians.If you don't know the fundamentals of your past,how can you ever successfully plan for the future?

Both of the major parties have successively given more economic power to the RBA which is a very convienient way of negating responsibility.In reality the pollies are saying we are minnows to the forces of globalisation,and Govt can no longer have the same influence on living standards as they had in the past.

We have enormous amounts of natural gas which we sell to China for 2c a litre yet pay 70c retail.Who has the real power,Govts or the multi-nationals?Kevin's fuel watch is just designed to placate the masses.We as a nation,no longer have economic autonomy over our resources or energy.That is why we are presently doing it so tough.

Sold up,sold out and beggars in our own land.