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.