The recent leadership spill in the ALP has, even by the ALP’s own rank (and I do mean RANK) and file standards, exposed an astonishing level of lies, cheating, obfuscation, poison, personal vilification, rewriting recent history and character assassination.

This, it must be remembered, has not only had the active participation of the progressive media and academia, it has all been internally targeted and self inflicted. It has been a timely reminder of the supposed “value system” of ALP politics.

Is it any wonder that The Lib/Nats have refused to put their leader/policy combatant into the arena?

If the ALP machine and the progressive media can drum up so much vicious bile against themselves, just imagine what awaits Mr.Rabbitt?

With some 18 months to go, “les dysfunctionales” bait the opposition to come out with their policies. They are drooling at the prospect of attacking them but know that they can still attack a no-policy situation just as hard.

What can TA do to counter this and indeed, should he do anything at all. Perhaps he should just stay out of it on the basis that one should never interrupt the enemy whilst they are making mistakes?

Mr Abbott should just keep attacking, negating,carping, calling for an election, and seat-warming for someone electable. Anything else, such as policy-making, would be a waste of his talent.

Spin doc rarely we agree, but in the case of my party's recent explosion I saw much the same as you.
Rank and Vile won, by ignoring the rank and file.
Some, cretin for sure, went far in to the dark places.
Abbott is not a leader, he surely can not survive.
I think he and Gillard are pretenders, not likely to make it.
While I think Gillard should/will go my party, damaged by this event,fearing a NSW illness may stick.
NSW illness was unrelated to leadership changes, it was the way power brokers picked the wrong leaders that was the problem.
Tony will go before an election.

Belly,
how about a little honesty for a change ?
The reason why you run Abbott down at every turn is not because you think he is incompetent. It's because you fear that he'll turn out to be as effective as Howard. You're hoping he'd fail, that's all it is. It's pretty poor to think that this is more important to you than the health of our country. You'd be prepared to let it all run down even further rather than let the conservatives rebuild. I work with people like you. They concede & whinge about the state of affairs but will not change their vote to make things better. I don't know if there is a word to describe this but it sure as hell isn't intelligent or decent.
You want the Police to stop crime but you still want the crims to roam the streets. It beggars belief.

Belly, I pretty much covered my sentiments of the current ALP in the Graham Y thread.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4992#133891

But this issue now goes far beyond party politics because it has done what appears to be irreparable damage to politics in general and the government, the ALP and JG in particular.

The issue for us all to consider is which side of politics can recover for the next election?

What can JG do? What can TA do?

I could suggest to you that I see opportunities for TA. The perception of him boils down to the “creation” of TA as Mr. Negative and Mr. No Policies. In addition, the ALP thrust is now constantly directed at good economic management. I doubt that this will ever get traction with the electorate for two reasons. Firstly that if the ALP is focusing on it they are telegraphing their own weakest case, they always do. Secondly, the “actual record” of good fiscal management rests with the Lib/Nats.

It seems impossible that in the run up to the next election, that the ALP can make any sort of economic management case to the public that can spin past;

$20bn in the bank, no national debt and $40bn in the future fund, vs nothing in the bank, future fund already raided to fund $4.4bn to pay compensation for the CO2 Tax, $220 bn national debt, money we don’t have so we borrowed it costing $1.2m per day in interest costs alone, and an NBN cost heading for $60bn that is not even on the books.

If TA’s remaining problems are Mr. Negative and Mr. No Policies, then perhaps he is the only one with wiggle room. A strong and well targeted policy platform is all that will be required, at an appropriate time of course.

Rather than defending “what the ALP is”, the “rusted on’s” need to suggest “what the ALP needs to be” to win the next election. With focus solely on TA, sentiment is growing that the bottom of the ALP barrel has been reached, especially as we are still 18 months out.

"...we are still 18 months out."

I wonder when (not "if") Malcolm is going to make his run...or does everyone think he stuck around just so Tony could take the top job? We might be seeing a similar leadership stoush in the Liberal ranks in the near future.