If Mr Rudd can learn his lessons, I believe, his return as Labor Party leader and Prime Minister would indeed be beneficial not only for Labor Party but for Australia.

I do not want Rudd back. The main environmental problem is uncontrolled population growth. Considering the water resources available in Australia we may be overpopulated now, but Rudd ignores that in wanting a BIG Australia. Rudd, like Abbott and Gilard, has little regard for the separation of Church and State.

i want a prime minister who is aware of Australia's fragile environment, committed to an adequately resourced public school system and can think of Australia's interests beyond the next election.

david f for PM!

David, there is no person to fit your 'suitable PM' description currently in parliament, and none would be attracted either.

The return of Rudd, 'Hello, I'm Jesus, I come from The Cave, and I'm here to help' is hopefully unlikely but would be a (bad) miracle if it did come about.

Shame Faulkner is not in the lower house, or that Combet would be pilloried by the NewsCorp media and gutter TV goons for being a 'faceless union thug', a meme the sport obsessed Oz public would not have the ability or interest to consider for more than a nanosecond, and then accept as 'fact'.

Plibersek sounds human and trustworthy, a rare combination in politics but it is actually hard to imagine any of the current crop of ALP drones being suitable as a PM.

Belly will be promoting the gnome from Australia's Worst Union as the next saviour if he comes on here, I will predict.

Well you've got Ruddy right Blue, a more arrogant fool you would require a very long march to find. Typical linguist, most of them never do learn to count.

You shock me with Faulkner. He's the Hindmarsh Island man. The bloke who wanted a sealed envelope used as evidence, in a law court, to prove "secret womans business". This was to buy some green votes, & be damned to truth or justice. I was amazed he was reelected after that lot. Says a lot doesn't it.

Is he really what you would want as PM? If so there really is not much hope for getting rid of the "what ever it takes" attitude in Labor

Faulkner from Labors left is very nearly our best.
TBC bet that shocked you, I and a third of center unity broke ranks to vote for him.
Combet too is very good.
Any one can we but Rudd looks the one I agree with our author.
But understand this, right now, within the party maneuvering is taking place.
If the numbers existed for any one other than Gillard change would have already been done.
Bill Shorten must be a chance.
Change a certainty.

Hasbeen, yes, the Hindmarsh affair, a sorry episode all round, both on the ALP and the develop-at-any-cost sides.

I have no excuses for anyone involved in that, Faulkner included.

Was it real? was it all a hoax? I have no idea and no view either way, mainly because I have no knowledge of it beyond the grime in the media.

A casualty of bad politics, is the most generous view I can muster, in the absence of knowledge or interest in it.

Belly, if Rudd is the answer now, he was probably the answer then.

Gillard was never an answer, to anything, and remains so.

But if Rudd was the answer prior to the election he won, then that tells us all what a total shambles the ALP is, and has been for a very long time.

And it goes back to Beazley also never being the answer as a leader, so why was he ever a deputy?

Because Beazley was so unsuited to the task of leadership, the vacuum the ALP is trapped in now, is the result of very poor decisions taken by the ALP post-Keating's loss.

It was at that point, when I saw the ALP was drifting aimlessly under Beazley, that I cut my ties with them. No doubt a decent person, no doubt he should have been able to lead the ALP to victory, but due to the nature of politics today, he simply failed to cut the mustard.

Let's face it, Howard was a magnificent political operator, even if he was surrounded by drones most of the time.

Rudd is no Howard, Gillard is no Rudd, and neither is a Hawke, a Keating or a Chifley-Curtin type.

But Howard was no Menzies either, so it should be possible for the ALP to select someone who can achieve the acceptance of voters, like a Chifley or a Hawke, without trying to emulate them in vastly changed times. Best not to create a Keating clone yet, some love him but too many demonise him still.

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