Just for a bit of variety:
Jun. 28th, 2010 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pathology_docHaving (cautiously and with some qualifications) sung Julia Gillard's praises, I now proceed to take apart someone who is nominally "on my side". I'd like to think he is, but I'm dreadfully concerned that he's got a gun pointed at his own foot.
Here's the source; my comments in bold.
Australians deserve more than a factional puppet show in government, writes Senator Cory Bernardi.
It is like the longest and most painful episode of The Thunderbirds ever.
The crises are just as contrived, the characters are equally wooden and occasionally the strings are visible.
Um... no. The crises contrived by the Rudd Government to justify doing this, that and the other crazy, stupid thing were certainly contrived. The main character was certainly wooden, but had he had half Jeff Tracy's brains and common sense, we'd not be in this situation.
But last week we had a rare glimpse at the faceless factional fixers who are actually pulling the strings of the lead players.
After two years of government lurching from one faux war to another, the Labor warlords made Kevin Rudd their target. One can understand their anxiety and willingness to despatch a Prime Minister in a brutal display of their factional power.
Um, no. It was more like a brutal display of "Holy fuck, this guy is incompetent and out of control, and we are careering towards electoral annihilation and the ruin of the country."
After all, Mr Rudd refused to recognise their greatness through ministerial preferment. Some of these powerful figures were left languishing on the backbench or in junior portfolios - positions considered beneath their undoubted talents.
Don't belittle your opponents. They may be ruthless, they may be fumbling the ball, but they're not that stupid or that selfish.
Kevin Rudd survived while he had the public confidence but, as the mal-administration of the Labor Government became increasingly evident, the ruthless Labor machine kicked into gear.
And so it should have. Kevin Rudd had the public's confidence for far longer than he deserved, and it's mostly due to Labor-friendly political commentators and a refusal of previous Opposition Leaders to take him seriously to task.
Now was the time for payback under the guise of giving the Party a shot at winning the next election. Drafting a willing accomplice in Julia Gillard, the unprecedented betrayal of a first-term Prime Minister began.
Betrayal? Please, that's how the Westminster System works. The precedents are Hawke/Keating and (in Britain) Asquith/Lloyd-George.
When the factional forces combined against him, Rudd had less than a dozen supporters and decided not to contest the leadership in order to avoid further humiliation.
A vain, narcissistic and fragile mind that couldn't stand losing. That much I agree with. He did not want to risk defeat in a double-dissolution election over the Emission Trading Scheme. He did not put candidates up in two by-elections which were contested in the wake of "Climategate", in case his candidates were butchered and made his polls look bad - a critical error in that by contesting them and winning them, he might have had the numbers to force the ETS through. Instead they were contested by raving lunatics who dribbled on about the suspension of democracy being necessary to cope with climate change, and cybernetic appreciations of connections to Greater Gaia and the like - who were systematically slaughtered at the polls as they deserved, and did the climate-change position far more damage than a thousand "skeptics".
Now the process of redefining history has commenced in an attempt to distance Julia Gillard from her predecessor. It should make for an interesting display
After two years of being the 2IC in the Rudd ‘kitchen cabinet’, Gillard claims the Government had lost its way.
She stated nothing more or less than the truth.
After two years of defending senseless programs and waste, she wants us to believe it had nothing to do with her. The spin doctors expect us to forget that Gillard was responsible for the greatest and most expensive mismanagement of a government program in history - the rorted Building the Education Revolution - where billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.
I think we'll see evidence of Kevin Rudd's involvement in that plan in a BIG way. I'm suspending judgement on that one.
After years of defending, deploying and denying the failures of this Government, we are now expected to believe that Julia Gillard was not a part of the problem.
History will be the judge of that. I am the last person on Earth who will defend the way Kevin Rudd ran his show - he was a minor megalomaniac who wouldn't take no for an answer; it was his way or the highway, and no questions asked. It MIGHT be proven in the long run that his colleagues tried and tried to argue him out of courses and were loyal to a fault. Until then, judgement should be reserved.
I agree with Ms Gillard that the Government has lost its way. I agree that the policy failures and their negative impacts on our nation are too many to list. I agree that their few achievements are modest and mostly spin, but I cannot accept her playing Pontius Pilate and washing her hands of the decisions she made.
Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately it was Rudd's show, but I think we're going to have to wait until he's out of Parliament for the full truth to emerge. Given his reputation for being foul-mouthed, abusive and tyrannical, I can understand why Ministers might have been more concerned with trying to run their portfolios as best they could. I still think Julia Gillard's got a lot to answer for, but she made a better Acting Prime Minister than Rudd ever made Prime Minister, and she may do a better job with a lot of the load off her plate. I suspect with three portfolios to run and the Big Chair to fill whenever Rudd was out of the country or on leave, she was simply overloaded.
Ms Gillard's ascension to the leadership of the Labor Party is a desperate attempt to hide the failures of this Government under the political corpse of Kevin Rudd.
There's no hiding the failures; the question is whether you're willing to concede the Government the possibility of rectifying them. I am. If Senator Bernardi is not, and generalises this belief to the entire electorate, he's on the cusp of a major political error that could lose his party the election.
It is a muscle flexing exercise by the hidden men of Labor who have demonstrated once again who really pulls the strings.
The Australian Labor Party was formed to be the political representation of the unions. Imagine Kevin Rudd allowed to run riot and do more of the damage he's already done this country. We should be glad they took him out and replaced him with someone who, whatever her failings, doesn't share his.
The Australian people deserve more from their government than a puppet show and instinctively know that changing the lead puppet will never change the flawed factional culture of the Labor Party.
It won't change the culture, no. But it will change something abysmal to something possibly salvageable. If Julia Gillard's got half the balls (metaphorical ones) I credit her with, she'll make some real changes. I'll say it again - I despised Rudd, and I would not have been willing to bear the thought of another three years under his governance. With Gillard, we have the beginnings of a reasonable alternative to the Coalition. So long as prominent Coalition senators like Mr Bernardi indulge in paranoid fantasies about hidden, faceless puppetmasters, that alternative will seem increasingly more reasonable.
Senator Cory Bernardi is the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition and a Senator for South Australia. This article is courtesy of his personal blog which can be found at http://www.corybernardi.com.
Senator Bernardi, if I recall correctly, did a lot of good work opposing the insanity of the ETS. Unfortunately I think he's gone off the rails here. I hope the rest of his party doesn't follow suit - although even if it is that flawed, it would have been better than three more years under Kevin Rudd. Julia Gillard has shown the second most priceless gift a politician can have - knowledge of when (and more importantly how) to compromise. She's also shown signs of the most important gift, one I've only ever seen in one other Labor politician (Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister) - the ability to sell a viewpoint your audience disagrees with in a way that doesn't insult or demonise them.
There are those who believe that immigration should be curbed because of serious concerns about lack of supporting infrastructure and the inevitable sprawl of suburbia. Because much of that immigration is of people who do not have white skin, English as a first language or Christian faith, these critics (who quite often are on the more conservative* side of politics) have been decried as racists hiding behind a cloak of legitimate concern. Prime Minister Gillard has stated their position bluntly: "It's all very well to talk of a 'big Australia' but when you talk to the people of Western Sydney and Western Melbourne, they're going to say 'but where are you going to put all these extra people?'"
* Conservative politicans in Australia are more in the British mould (thus corresponding more to the centre-right) than the American (far-right creationist-fundamentalist Republican). Please do not confuse the two. We have a few of the latter, most notably Steve Fielding, but even they are well to the left of the worst the United States has to offer. I would like to see "Conservative" removed from its present usage. Most of those who claim the title in the US are, from my perspective, actually extremist-reactionaries. True conservatives move forward when they are convinced that progress is warranted and safe. As I see it, a true conservative would not indefinitely oppose gay marriage on principle even if they had started out doing so, and might happily have voted for Barack Obama had he been four to eight years older and more experienced.
Conservatives do not refuse to change their minds. Only reactionaries do that.
Here's the source; my comments in bold.
Australians deserve more than a factional puppet show in government, writes Senator Cory Bernardi.
It is like the longest and most painful episode of The Thunderbirds ever.
The crises are just as contrived, the characters are equally wooden and occasionally the strings are visible.
Um... no. The crises contrived by the Rudd Government to justify doing this, that and the other crazy, stupid thing were certainly contrived. The main character was certainly wooden, but had he had half Jeff Tracy's brains and common sense, we'd not be in this situation.
But last week we had a rare glimpse at the faceless factional fixers who are actually pulling the strings of the lead players.
After two years of government lurching from one faux war to another, the Labor warlords made Kevin Rudd their target. One can understand their anxiety and willingness to despatch a Prime Minister in a brutal display of their factional power.
Um, no. It was more like a brutal display of "Holy fuck, this guy is incompetent and out of control, and we are careering towards electoral annihilation and the ruin of the country."
After all, Mr Rudd refused to recognise their greatness through ministerial preferment. Some of these powerful figures were left languishing on the backbench or in junior portfolios - positions considered beneath their undoubted talents.
Don't belittle your opponents. They may be ruthless, they may be fumbling the ball, but they're not that stupid or that selfish.
Kevin Rudd survived while he had the public confidence but, as the mal-administration of the Labor Government became increasingly evident, the ruthless Labor machine kicked into gear.
And so it should have. Kevin Rudd had the public's confidence for far longer than he deserved, and it's mostly due to Labor-friendly political commentators and a refusal of previous Opposition Leaders to take him seriously to task.
Now was the time for payback under the guise of giving the Party a shot at winning the next election. Drafting a willing accomplice in Julia Gillard, the unprecedented betrayal of a first-term Prime Minister began.
Betrayal? Please, that's how the Westminster System works. The precedents are Hawke/Keating and (in Britain) Asquith/Lloyd-George.
When the factional forces combined against him, Rudd had less than a dozen supporters and decided not to contest the leadership in order to avoid further humiliation.
A vain, narcissistic and fragile mind that couldn't stand losing. That much I agree with. He did not want to risk defeat in a double-dissolution election over the Emission Trading Scheme. He did not put candidates up in two by-elections which were contested in the wake of "Climategate", in case his candidates were butchered and made his polls look bad - a critical error in that by contesting them and winning them, he might have had the numbers to force the ETS through. Instead they were contested by raving lunatics who dribbled on about the suspension of democracy being necessary to cope with climate change, and cybernetic appreciations of connections to Greater Gaia and the like - who were systematically slaughtered at the polls as they deserved, and did the climate-change position far more damage than a thousand "skeptics".
Now the process of redefining history has commenced in an attempt to distance Julia Gillard from her predecessor. It should make for an interesting display
After two years of being the 2IC in the Rudd ‘kitchen cabinet’, Gillard claims the Government had lost its way.
She stated nothing more or less than the truth.
After two years of defending senseless programs and waste, she wants us to believe it had nothing to do with her. The spin doctors expect us to forget that Gillard was responsible for the greatest and most expensive mismanagement of a government program in history - the rorted Building the Education Revolution - where billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.
I think we'll see evidence of Kevin Rudd's involvement in that plan in a BIG way. I'm suspending judgement on that one.
After years of defending, deploying and denying the failures of this Government, we are now expected to believe that Julia Gillard was not a part of the problem.
History will be the judge of that. I am the last person on Earth who will defend the way Kevin Rudd ran his show - he was a minor megalomaniac who wouldn't take no for an answer; it was his way or the highway, and no questions asked. It MIGHT be proven in the long run that his colleagues tried and tried to argue him out of courses and were loyal to a fault. Until then, judgement should be reserved.
I agree with Ms Gillard that the Government has lost its way. I agree that the policy failures and their negative impacts on our nation are too many to list. I agree that their few achievements are modest and mostly spin, but I cannot accept her playing Pontius Pilate and washing her hands of the decisions she made.
Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately it was Rudd's show, but I think we're going to have to wait until he's out of Parliament for the full truth to emerge. Given his reputation for being foul-mouthed, abusive and tyrannical, I can understand why Ministers might have been more concerned with trying to run their portfolios as best they could. I still think Julia Gillard's got a lot to answer for, but she made a better Acting Prime Minister than Rudd ever made Prime Minister, and she may do a better job with a lot of the load off her plate. I suspect with three portfolios to run and the Big Chair to fill whenever Rudd was out of the country or on leave, she was simply overloaded.
Ms Gillard's ascension to the leadership of the Labor Party is a desperate attempt to hide the failures of this Government under the political corpse of Kevin Rudd.
There's no hiding the failures; the question is whether you're willing to concede the Government the possibility of rectifying them. I am. If Senator Bernardi is not, and generalises this belief to the entire electorate, he's on the cusp of a major political error that could lose his party the election.
It is a muscle flexing exercise by the hidden men of Labor who have demonstrated once again who really pulls the strings.
The Australian Labor Party was formed to be the political representation of the unions. Imagine Kevin Rudd allowed to run riot and do more of the damage he's already done this country. We should be glad they took him out and replaced him with someone who, whatever her failings, doesn't share his.
The Australian people deserve more from their government than a puppet show and instinctively know that changing the lead puppet will never change the flawed factional culture of the Labor Party.
It won't change the culture, no. But it will change something abysmal to something possibly salvageable. If Julia Gillard's got half the balls (metaphorical ones) I credit her with, she'll make some real changes. I'll say it again - I despised Rudd, and I would not have been willing to bear the thought of another three years under his governance. With Gillard, we have the beginnings of a reasonable alternative to the Coalition. So long as prominent Coalition senators like Mr Bernardi indulge in paranoid fantasies about hidden, faceless puppetmasters, that alternative will seem increasingly more reasonable.
Senator Cory Bernardi is the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition and a Senator for South Australia. This article is courtesy of his personal blog which can be found at http://www.corybernardi.com.
Senator Bernardi, if I recall correctly, did a lot of good work opposing the insanity of the ETS. Unfortunately I think he's gone off the rails here. I hope the rest of his party doesn't follow suit - although even if it is that flawed, it would have been better than three more years under Kevin Rudd. Julia Gillard has shown the second most priceless gift a politician can have - knowledge of when (and more importantly how) to compromise. She's also shown signs of the most important gift, one I've only ever seen in one other Labor politician (Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister) - the ability to sell a viewpoint your audience disagrees with in a way that doesn't insult or demonise them.
There are those who believe that immigration should be curbed because of serious concerns about lack of supporting infrastructure and the inevitable sprawl of suburbia. Because much of that immigration is of people who do not have white skin, English as a first language or Christian faith, these critics (who quite often are on the more conservative* side of politics) have been decried as racists hiding behind a cloak of legitimate concern. Prime Minister Gillard has stated their position bluntly: "It's all very well to talk of a 'big Australia' but when you talk to the people of Western Sydney and Western Melbourne, they're going to say 'but where are you going to put all these extra people?'"
* Conservative politicans in Australia are more in the British mould (thus corresponding more to the centre-right) than the American (far-right creationist-fundamentalist Republican). Please do not confuse the two. We have a few of the latter, most notably Steve Fielding, but even they are well to the left of the worst the United States has to offer. I would like to see "Conservative" removed from its present usage. Most of those who claim the title in the US are, from my perspective, actually extremist-reactionaries. True conservatives move forward when they are convinced that progress is warranted and safe. As I see it, a true conservative would not indefinitely oppose gay marriage on principle even if they had started out doing so, and might happily have voted for Barack Obama had he been four to eight years older and more experienced.
Conservatives do not refuse to change their minds. Only reactionaries do that.