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'What are you going to do if Rudd is content to sit on the back bench.'
Are you a comedian. If we was totally uncontent as Foreign Minister you could not seriously believe he would be content on the back bench. You display an ignorance of human nature.

cont'd ...

The big disadvatnge of the Australian Parliamentary System
is - the fact that
a miniscule minority, the Elected Parliamentary Party,
the Caucus, decides the Leadership of the Nation.
And not the millions of voters that elect them.

Perhaps it's time that the millions of voters do get the say
in who their PM should be - and not a handful of factional
supporters. Maybe that's why we need a Republic?

There will be a vote at 10 am monday no matter what Rudd says.

In response to Lexi, perhaps it's time people understood that they don't vote for a president but for a party or parties to run the country. The media reduces election campaigns to popularity polls, with policies taking a back seat.

There are no fewer "faceless men" behind one party over another, but that will be the new coalition mantra going to the next election after Gillard sees Rudd off on Monday. Whether labour or capital runs the country, the men are faceless. The only things standing in the way of complete domination by either one of these powers is our ability to vote them out and the good men/women in parliament with balanced views on individual versus group rights.

I cannot agree with Lexi on electing the PM.
The way the Westminster system does it means that the majority party
from amongst themselves selects their leader to be the PM.
If the public elects someone else they may vote in a PM from the
opposition party. That would be totally unworkable and would be like
the US where the government ran out of money back in 1998 and nearly
did so a couple of years ago.
They stood the public service down for a week or two in 1998.
That happened because the two houses locked up.
The US does not have a Governor General to send them back to the voters.

The current situation has only happened a couple of times in 110 years
so I think it is a quite stable system.

Graham, disentangling the policy from the personalities would take a hundred years to make sense of. Rudd has the added bonus of 'starting afresh’; Gillard can credit herself with steering the water logged Labor ship through some treacherous seas. Neither of them have been able to inspire the imagination of the wider electorate, hence the reason why the soap opera analogy is so apt. Tony Abbott might not be everyone's cup of tea, but he does present himself as a modernist (not post modernist) political force to be reckoned with, and Rudd has correctly identified him as a dangerous opponent. People often vote for the style of politician they are familiar with, in much the same way people voted for Joh here in Qld. Most punters don't understand the GFC, carbon trading, or how the trickle down benefits of the mining boom requires a government that is able to clearly explain how this works. Out of pure luck, more than anything else, we have dodged the GFC bullet, but not for long. I would not be surprised if the ALP leadership ballot on Monday is split three ways.Gillard, Rudd and?..Take your pick. Whoever wins on Monday is in many ways irrelevant because the federal election campaign will begin from that moment onward.