Rudd is waging an undeclared war of attrition against Julia Gillard, but the real question in my mind is why anyone would go back to Rudd.

Rudd failed comprehensively as Prime Minister, mostly because he didn't have any plans for what he would do once he got there - getting there was enough.

So after winning he went looking for agendas, which led to the 2020 Summit, which was a colossal failure - virtually nothing that came out of it was implemented.

Then, after making such a big deal of the carbon tax he reneged on it - wasn't prepared to push the issue and go to a double dissolution on it.

Along the way he alienated his colleagues and his staff with his aggressive self-promotion and micro-management of every issue. By the end he was leading them to defeat, so they opted for Julia.

I can understand why they want to move on from Julia, but Rudd wouldn't be moving on, he'd be moving backwards, and at a very fast rate.

No Graham,I want them to bring Rudd back so a new independant Party of the people,rises out of their ashes.Let them decay and rot in their own corruption and decadence.

We will be all better off without them.

Graham, while I agree with every word you say, I think labor are miss understanding the real issue, that being listening to the people.

It is the voting public that want Rudd back, not the labor caucus.

Regardless of who leads labor, they (labor) are only part of the problem, as what the people really want is a chance to rid our nation of this unworkable arrangement we have in government, whereby we have deals being broken and constant threats of withdrawal from independents.

Regardless of who we get next time, it is more than likely we will have a fairly large majority government and in my opinion it can't happen soon enough.

Personally, I don't think it makes a blind bit of difference who's the nominal figurehead, which is all that Gillard is capable of and all that Rudd could aspire to if he was to be put back in the chair. The ALP is not able to offer anything more than such figureheads because their collectivist culture is disproportionately in the thrall of relatively small power blocs, including the Unions and the femi-warriors of Emily's List. Genuine leadership is impossible.

The elephant in the room for Labor is the Greens and they're not going to go away, nor are they going to become easier to manage. It seems increasingly likely that the Left will need to consider the problem of governing in coalition as a normal fact of life if they ever manage to gain office after this term's debacle.

Believing what you read in the media won't cut the mustard. No one is proposing Rudd come back. The way things are going, Abbott could end up in the minority.

My concern is the influence of the media on the actions of governments, an influence that increases with every tweet, every blog, every opinion forum entry, as well as with the output of every desperate journalist, generating controversy simply in order to earn a crust.

While this phoney war between Rudd and Gillard may indeed result in a spill, and even more blood-letting from the ALP, it is most certainly a symptom of deeper issues of communication between the governed and the government in this country.

The first, and obvious question is... whom can we believe any more? There are so many avenues for self-interested communication that proliferate across the various channels and into our consciousness, the idea of a consistent, properly-researched and even-handed analysis of political activity is entirely obsolete. If that state ever existed, of course. It may have always been this way, but the ability of personal prejudice to reach every corner of the community in a nanosecond is new, creating problems of both quantity and quality.

As a result, deep analysis and reasoned discussion are reduced to the "Like" button.

Now, none of this is a problem at the individual level. It is the stuff of perfectly normal daily discourse. But when it becomes the driving force behind political activity, the actions of politicians and the operation of government in general, it undermines the entire concept of democracy, and the manner in which our society is conducted.

Sorry about that. It must be Monday morning.