I hadn’t thought Peter Van Onselen a Murdochist. He seemed to me a bright and honest young fellow, albeit a Liberal voter. But here he is, lying, like the rest of them, in his teeth.
‘A Rudd return is Labor’s best option,’ he says. ‘Rudd is popular,’ he says. ‘Marginal seat Labor MPs won’t be too proud to beg him to save them,’ he says.
What part of Narnia (with Rudd its resurgent Aslan) is he filing from? Rudd as PM with limitless powers would sack Wayne Swan (with all the added venom, as Oscar said, of an old school-mate), thereby speeding him, Gillard, Garrett, Ferguson and Crean out of parliament, lose his majority, advise an election, lose forty seats and end as unpopular as Billy Hughes in Labor’s demonology.
No other choice, the young dill says.
No other choice? The Liberals, faced with extinction in 1995, called back their last leader but four, John Howard, and won handily in 1996. Labor’s last leader but two, Kim Beazley, could be put in Robert McLelland’s seat, McLelland sent off to Washington, and Beazley as PM outpolling Abbott by June, with no party split and only Rudd miffed, and what would he do then? Rudd, I mean. If he quit his seat, Labor would win it. If he crossed the floor and forced an election, Labor would win it.
Van Onselen is lying, or sadly mistaken, or not thinking things through. Why would Labor put Rudd, its most divisive figure since Evatt, into the Lodge again when the Great Unifier Beazley is eagerly and affably available, and once won 19 seats his predecessor Keating carelessly mislaid, from Howard at his canniest?
Similar scenarios could give, overnight, the Prime Ministership to Faulkner, Tanner, Beattie, Carr, Gallop, Clare Martin, Maxine McKew, Tanya Plibersek, Nicola Roxon, Albo, Smith, Swan, Shorten, Richo, Dawkins, Refshauge, Jason Clare and Mike Rann, all of whom would get more votes than Rudd, and it’s not a problem.
Rudd alone in politics, and the Murdochists alone in the media, think Rudd the only option.
It would be like putting back Mark Latham, only more divisive.
What a wank. What a beat-up. What a pack of lies.
It’s the Oselen response to the Murdoch First Commandment: Imagine the most damaging, the most divisive, the most destructive thing Labor could do to itself, and say it’s their only option.
He can debate me anywhere, any time.
The young fool.
Why won’t he reply to this?
Where is he?
Name:
I think that bringing Beazley back is a brilliant idea, possibly even the only idea that might save the ALP.
They’ll never do it though, the entire political establishment have their heads stuck inside the little Murdochist box.
Lately I’ve been thinking that even though Rudd got rid of Howard and put them back in government, it was still a terrible thing for the ALP. He presented himself as a clone of Howard and apart from a few things (workchoices, apology) there’s not really much difference between the two parties any more.
What happened to the social democratic vision of the ALP? Where are the big ideas? What happened to the ideas summit and the henry tax review?
Not that I’m saying I agree 100% with the traditional ALP ideals, but voters should be given more of a choice than a centre right party and a slightly less centre right party.
Beazley has always struck me as a good man, and I can’t see him governing by poll results like the current mob. A shame it won’t happen.
I think that a return to Rudd (and his vicious revenge on his colleagues) would probably put Tony Abbott in charge of the country for 10 years.
Bob: How much in the backroom is about your place in the hierarchy: how long you have been in the queue?
I found it astonishing that the very popular and media-savvy Maxine McKew disappeared from the public view once elected.
As did Cheryl Kernot: her last appearance being as a huge white manatee in red taffeta on the cover of the Women’s Weekly.
Both could have been such assets.
What did McKew do as a local member or for the government in general? I must have blinked and missed it.
She overthrew a long-term popular Prime Minister. She was given by an ungrateful Rudd an invisible parliamentary secretaryship which allowed her neither to ask nor answer questions on the floor of the House and she threfore lost visibility. She performed well on Q&A. No complaints against her as a parliamentary secretary were heard. If she had got what she deserved, Arts or Communications, she would be Prime Minister today.
She lost her largely Mandarin-speaking seat because Rudd, a Mandarin-speaker, was rolled.
All clear now?
The Greens leader Bob Brown has declared the “unrelenting criticism” of Prime
Minister Julia Gillard is sexist and said male media commentators were the biggest culprits.
Is this the first time Bob Brown has been wrong Bob?
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/media-attacks-on-pm-sexist-says-greens-leader-20120206-1r0oh.html#ixzz1lYyJeZOn
I dunno, I’ll check.
Beazley would be a great option if there was any vacancy at the top.
But there isn’t; Julia Gillard is the leader and Prime Minister and doing quite well in my opinion, thank you.
Don’t you believe the Murdoch hype that Gillard is without hope; the Party, your Party, obviously disagrees.
Quixote, you sound more and more like a fool.
Name four good things she has done in her four years of high office.
Okay, three.
I’d settle for someone naming 3 things she hasn’t managed to fuck up too badly.
That too.
Bob, you’ve labelled Rudd’s (so presumably it applies to Gillard’s) ministry as the most talented since federation.
Given how things are turning out, do you stand by that? Or is it simply poor leadership and not giving the MP’s enough opportunity to get out there and achieve?
No, Gillard lost Tanner, Faulkner, Debus, Kerr, McMullan and McKew and made a potentially great Defence Minister, Mike Kelly, Minister for Cheese. She decimated her inheritance, as she tends to do.
All clear now?
Since late June 2010 you mean? I thought we had agreed to review her record after the 1000 days, ie about May 0f 2013. There are probably 100 days of virtual caretaker mode in that, but who’s quibbling.
So far :
1. The carbon price legislation will lead to the Emissions Trading Scheme.
2. The NBN continues to be rolled out
3. The parental leave scheme (one which works and not Abbott’s pie in the sky never to be implemented until he has a surplus of, say, $100bn ie never)
4. The significant and far reaching reforms in education and in health are proceeding
5. The restrictions on tobacco
6. The gambling reforms, which have a chance of passing the parliament;
7. The successful herding of cats ie the Independents and the Greens to achieve workable legislation;
8 Immigration intake has been steadied, not the virtual explosion of the previous 5 years;
9. Ministers are now able to run their own portfolios without the interference and micromanaging – leadership style is more collegiate;
10. Foreign Affairs policy may well be able to do without the megaphone, though the opposition gets an amazing level of coverage for its irrelevant megaphone hysterics;
11 She has kept Abbott out of the lodge, and Rudd out of the country whenever possible, though the state of parliament makes this difficult.
And those 11 points are without having to try hard. There is plenty of work in progress.
Some are fools and don’t know it.
1. The carbon price legislation could have been passed, should have been passed back when Rudd was PM. More to the point, the legislation is going to do precisely fuck all for mitigating climate change. They can’t even sort out the party message on which companies will be affected and there’s just too much compensation for anyone to bother changing their behaviour.
2. I believe that the NBN belongs to Rudd.
3. The parental leave scheme is good, but why the irrational hatred of Abbott and anything he proposes? His policy is better for parents. If you just assume he’ll automatically renege on all his policies and light the country on fire then I guess you’re just assuming gillard = good regardless.
4. What reforms? What do you mean, proceeding?
5. That turned into a giant media shitstorm, I doubt it will make much difference anyway.
6. The gambling reforms aren’t going anywhere near parliament. Wilkie is rightly pissed off.
7. So sheer volume of legislation passed is the measure of good government, is it? As if the greens would ever form government with the coalition anyway.
8. So Australia is full, is it? Can’t have too many nasty foreigners coming in, they’ll TERK UR JEERRBS!
9. Everything is still being run like shit.
10. Not actually sure what you’re trying to say here.
11. fair enough, if Abbott makes you that crazy then I guess this is a big one.
Now I’m not saying the country is in a bad place, compared to the rest of the world the economy and society is in great shape. However, I’m saying this is in spite of how we are currently being governed, not because of it.
Your rose coloured gillard glasses must be 10 miles thick. I’m not saying the coalition would be any better, but surely you can notice there are some pretty big problems with the way things are being run now.
Bob asked me for three, I gave eleven and I stand by them all.
No.5 must be good, the tobacco companies are
mounting a desperate challenge which has little chance of success.
No.6 Not Wilkie’s flavour of the month legislation, but do-able reforms which won’t frighten the horses so badly.
On No.8, you sound hysterical. No we’re not full but the debates of 2010 suggested ‘Big Australia’ was not in favour.
Details about no.9 if you please : “it is all being run like shit” doesn’t really cut it.
But thank you for your contribution to the debate.
You can only mean that Gillard is a better option as Prime Minister than Beazley. Can you say that?
None of the policies you mention were hers. Hers were East Timor, Malaysia, the Myschool fuckup, the betrayal of the unions, the agreement on gambling with Wilkie, the agreement with Brown on Tasmanian trees, the retention of McLelland as Attorney-General, the failure to keep Debus, Kerr, McMullan, Tanner and Faulkner in Cabinet, and the curious view that Rudd could be housetrained.
A better Prime Minister than Beazley, you say?
Just say it.
Take a deep breath.
As far as I know Beazley is not available. Nor is Winston Churchill John Curtin, Barack Obama, Abe Lincoln, Ben Chifley or Nelson Mandela.
We go with what we have – and what we have is Julia Gillard, or nothing.
Is nothing what you want Bob? You
assist in destabilisingthe Gillard government and playing into the hands of Murdoch and Abbott.
Destroy Gillard and you won’t get Beazley, you’ll get Abbott and the rag tag of the LNP :
Abetz, Bishop, Pyne, Brandis, Mirabella, the list goes on.
Your call.
Of course Beazley is available. Just say she’s a better choice. Say it.
It’s not me that’s destabilised this government, it’s she. Can you imagine Tanner, Shorten, Smith, Swan, Plibersek or Faulkner making her mistakes?
Just say yes.
You are such an obvious Menzies House stooge, Alistair. Sydney is full and if you don’t care about native bushland, nick off to Hong Kong. Abbott’s parental leave scheme is skewed toward rich people working for big organisations. The rest of your comment, if you re-read, has no content.
“I’m not saying the Coalition would be any better”??? Here’s hoping you’re not on under 100k and have no need for any rights at work. And don’t give a shit about anyone who does, that always helps. I’m sure Abbott looks great wearing those kinds of glasses.
a Rhodes scholar….yet not a syllable to suggest he completed high scool.
how peculiar.
alistair, I have issues with each of your rebuttals……but let me take point 3 as a suitable template: you say ‘his parental scheme is better for parents”.
is it really?
how so?
What of the country……is it “better”?
when was the last time you heard the scheme uttered by
Abbott? Or his colleagues?
hmmm, that long?
why is that?
I shall labour the point no further.
for me this ridiculous Ellis hypothetical sits on a fulcrum that none here, except Quixote, have located: what of Abbott as alternative?
what is the substance of the man?
I have heard NOTHING from him worthy of sensible consideration.
if you have Alistair, by all means, unburden yourself……let us gauge the value and bias of your hearing.
Bob, what is your view on the Carbon Tax? Are you a believer? Do you bow to the Great Green God – Gaia?
No, I think we should buy up the forests of Indonesia, patrol them with Elvises and thus bring down aerial carbon by twenty-five percent a year world wide.
It would cost eleven or twelve billion dollars plus two or three million a year to administrate.
“administrate”?
Remember you’re a guest, Doug Q
Fuck off.
By ‘administrate’ I mean keep the Elvises flying and the arsonists discouraged by occasional arrest and long years in gaol.
Sorry to confuse the issue Bob. I detest the word ‘administrate’ as a verb, along with ‘tasked’ and ‘injuncted’
But perhaps we are stuck with them : “any noun can be verbed” it seems.
(Sighs)
Like ‘spin’.
Just answer the question. Beazley or Gillard. The better PM.
Do it.
Do it.
Bob, you may like your little games, but I don’t get bullied easily.
Questions like “Have you stopped beating you wife? Answer yes or no, Do it now” don’t work on me.
Destabilise the Gillard Government and you will get Abbott, not Beazley. You may as well seek Barack Obama for PM.
I recognise that your heart is in the right place; please accept that mine is too.
This entire Beazley train of thought is a deadend, a what-if scenario that has no future.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
Not even as much as Rudd.
Find some other scab to pick.
Doug Quixote has wasted not a word here BobEllis.
As a favour to me though…….Let me ask the question begged by your hypotheticals:
List for me one, two…..or three ideas of Abbott”s that warrant consideration.
Seriously.
……a bottle of Dymple to you if you can tell me any single syllable uttered by that Fool that is worthy of his station.
If you cannot……I expect no more of this tomfoolery from you.
Thank you JG.
We can surely sympathise with the frustration most of the Left experience with the minority Labor Government; but the alternative is not some Goldilocks government headed by Beazley, but the imminent conservative push to get their trotters back in the trough.
Hundreds of thousands of syllables, actually, in pp 49-79 of his book, the chapter entitled ‘What’s Right?’ about conservatism, from Edmund Burke to Pauline Hanson.
As one he has sued for libel, I warn you to apologize swiftly for your extraordinary sentence. How can I, or he, take seriously anything you say hereafter, if you can be this wrong?
The question was before you BobEllis and you have buckled……I asked you for a syllable-you gave nothing but your standard defensive mannerism: “look at the book, look at the book”.
Pffffft!!!
I have read the book……and my challenge stands, Either you have forsaken the Dimple or your mind is Rendered Counterfeit or Bewildered by the seductive Scottish, “complex, rich and smooth” Befuddler.
You surprise me Bob…..all ‘bluster and bounce” in the challenge….yet an empty vessel in the Action.
Why?
Oh, I shall not retract my statement……and my position is unassailable., for what Jury in this land could convict me of stating the patent truth.
it’s not as if Abbott, or his Dull Apologists, could offer, HAS offered, any Abnegation or Contest.
not even a bottle of Dimple could excite the cognitive processes to flicker beyond calling forth a book written 3 years ago……as if the Alternative PM need utter nothing more?!?!?
Name it BobEllis!
Name the syllable that demands consideration!
Do it Now!
Pffffft!
‘According to my daughters, I’m a lame, gay, churchy loser.’
Find any Gillardism as interesting.
If you won’t read the book, or even a page of it, you’ve ruled yourself out of this debate, I think.
Imagine Dawkins not reading the Bible. Or Hitchens not reading Kissinger’s memoirs.i
Jesus fucking Christ, you can’t even seem to keep it together for the length of a comment. SHE HAS READ THE MOTHER FUCKING BOOK. I’M THE ONE REFUSING TO READ IT BECAUSE I KNOW IT TO BE SHITE AND YOU ONLY EVER CONFIRM IT WITH YOUR BIZARRE BRIDESHEAD REVISTED RELATED APOLOGIA. I STILL FEEL PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED WITHIN MYSELF TO MAKE ASSERTIONS AS TO HIS CHARACTER. HIS CHARACTER IS SHITHOUSE, ANYONE WITHOUT SOME WEIRD VACUUM OF A PERCEPTION FACULTY IS AWARE OF THIS.
THIS, MY GOOD MAN, IS SHOUTING.
I apologise for shouting and will blackball myself. Temporarily. You are technically allowed to like Abbott on a personal level I suppose, although it is a questionable aesthetic.
Reader, I esteem your…….self restraint.
Abbott thought being called a “lame gay churchy loser” was funny, because he thinks none of that applies to him. Many of us think differently.
In the sense meant by his perceptive daughters:
lame : “stupid, un-original, or lifeless” hmm, unoriginal sounds about right.
gay : not homosexual, but with negative connotations ; he seems averse to any suggestion of homosexuality; perhaps he doth protest too much??
churchy : fairly self evident in a failed RC priest and a regular churchgoer who confers with George Pell at times;
loser : he has been failures as a priest, as a boxer, as a federal minister, as an opposition leader, and regularly comes 95th in triathlons.
Perhaps his girls know other details.
LOL
He thinks it applies to him, he wouldn’t have quoted it otherwise. Laughter is based, for Christ’s sake, on familiarity.
Read his book.
Ah, what’s the use.
Do you think so? Would he quote it especially at a celebratory occasion, if he thought that it was applicable?
If so, he goes up in my estimation.
Humour depends on our mutual recognition of the human condition. I don’t know if that is trite, or whether I have been original again; perhaps you can tell me.
Regards, DQ
Read the book.
Why NOT read the book?
I have, and I’ve told you so before, often. “It is bullshit, but very well cooked bullshit”.
Remember?
BobEllis,
shame on you!!!
Utter, utter, utter…..shame!
You drag forward this sentence of bourgeois banality, uttered a thousand times by a thousand mouths, as some perverse affidavit, some…..apodictical……of Abbott’s Acumen?!?!?!
You’ve got to be fuking kidding me?!?!?!
Try this.
it may suit your…..inclination for patent absurdity.
Choose the odd one out.
A prize for the correct choice.
roll up Bob Ellis…..this Carny is calling on you!
Roll up man!
“the fun is where I am”
Whitlam
“if you want something said, ask a man. if you want something done, ask a woman”
Thatcher
“Stop the boats”
Abbott
“There is no such thing as a non political speech by a politician”
Nixon
“……politicians promise to build a bridge even when there is no river”
Khrushchev
“To insist on strength … is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering”
Goldwater
“One insult pocketed soon produces another”
Jefferson
“There never was a good war or a bad peace”
Franklin
“…..I did not slither out of the cabinet room like a mangy maggot”
Keating on Howard
“The rich require an abundant supply of the poor”
Voltaire
Bob, your polemic, this Abbott Apologia, has…..congealed into mannerism.
Leave it alone.
You shame yourself, exasperate your confederates, and excite the
Dull to new heights of mockery.
Leave it.
Universal maternity leave for eighteen months. A Youth Green Corps. Six billion to the disabled.
Ah BobEllis……you have made me smile, you have made my argument better than I could have hoped!
You’ve had 2 days to trawl through Abbott’s 4 years of Alternative PM, 4 years to cite and plot the Man”s intellectual/political currency, 4 years from which to summon to the stand each and every syllable that could vouchsafed the worth of the Man…….
…….and you come bearing these……paltry articles; political promise dross, figments of campaign promises……unrealized, unrealizable and already, ALREADY, forgotten by the principal.
but not by you……the struggling, smitten, beau…..forever defending the Virtue of the Man.
And Unrequited!
a shame really……at your age too,
To be disdained by by the one you wish to embrace.
dignity BobEllis, dignity!!!
Regain it!
Let your list shame and shock you back to the realm of Reality.
Look at it!
Turn them in your mind!
…..these 3 baubles, these 3 coquets….
And ask yourself, in a private moment, “Is this, THIS, the best I could do”????
come back to me, back to us, Penitent and True, and we shall forgive your…….Affectation.
you have……24 hours.
I have not had two days. I am writing a book, a play, a miniseries and a film, and more of my contributions to this space. I am not sure which of Abbott’s policies anpre not also Gillard’s — a surplus, offshore detention, maternity leave. I assume you mean his own special policies, those not imposed on him by his Party’s bad habits of mind. So it’s not as easy as you imply. I’m not sure why I should be asked this.’ I never said he’d be a better Prime Minister than anyone. I just said he’s smarter, and more conscienceful, and more electable, and keener of mind, than all those who first rejoiced at his uplifting knowing he was a dud, thought then, or now.
It’s the duds who are the most dangerous.
PS. Warning to JG – you’re skirting perilously close. You’re not allowed to call it a bromance. Bob completely loses it. It’s not something I want to live through twice.
I recall with a broad smile Reader THAT particular tussle!
I say – call em as you see em!
By the way……who are you?
Bob, that you saw fit to employ, let me count them, 4 fallacies……is well noted…..and I am cheered beyond measure that you saw fit to employ such dastardly discursive tactics.
It is my firm belief that no truer mark of a yielding or of mea culpa has yet been
conceived that could better that of (one)resorting to
Fallacy.
Anyway, I acknowledge and accept your apology……let us speak of this Abbott Avarice no longer.
Let us instead speak of more interesting things: tell us about the play and film that occupy your time…..I do believe you have already mentioned the book.
how is it progressing?
Bob, vis a vis my latest comment
“Humour depends on our mutual recognition of the human condition.”
I decided to Google my own words and turned up a review of – wait for it . . . Don Quixote!
See : article by John J Allen
http://www.jstor.org/pss/25659549
Is that spooky or what?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Look at the reference. Not everything is about politics, you know.
Man does not live by bread alone.
When did I say everything i is about politics? Do you read my theatre reviews? My film reviews? My love sonnets? My songs?
What are you talking about?
I’m pleased you think so. I was talking about the definition, the wellsprings of humour.
The words I used transmogrified into :
SMILES AND LAUGHTER IN DON QUIXOTE
John J. Allen
Comparative Literature Studies
Vol. 43, No. 4, Don Quixote and 400 Years of World Literature (2006), pp. 515-531
(article consists of 17 pages)
. . . which are not available without paying, but included the interesting page 1.
You should do a murder mystery.
I’ve done about eight. The Casting Couch, Goodbye Paradise, Black Snow, Warm Nights On A Slow-Moving Train, Goodbye Adelaide, Goodbye Oriana, two Ernie Dingo vehicles whose names escape me…
She meant me. But murder mysteries don’t interest me.
I did actually mean Bob. But I like my murder mysteries old school. Every cliche you can manage to stuff in. I’m not sure Bob deals in English village life and dodgy butlers.