peas_and_corn
Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2010
- Messages
- 71
- Reaction score
- 16
- Location
- Adelaide, South Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Slightly Liberal
Op-ed from The Australian (this is part of the article, click to read it all):
There's a certain amount of truth to this. Who could forget The Chaser's 'In Due Season' song, parodying the 'Yes We Can' song by writing its equivalent about Rudd? (song itself starts at around 1:40 if you want to skip the banter about Obama)
I agree with the article... to a point. The inability of Rudd to capitalise on Australia not going into recession during the GFC was partly due to his inability to communicate. I agree that he had good ideas and as someone with an education in politics how he expressed himself really got to me- however I don't expect everyone to have the same sort of world view that a politics major has.
In addition to his inability to communicate, I will place the blame on a few factors:
1- The inability to shake the 'bad economic managers' tag. Beazley bungled in 1998 and 2001, handing over the label of good economic managers to the Liberal party without even putting up a decent fight. While getting through the GFC with a negligible level of debt should have caused Labor to get rid of it, a combination of poor communication and waste in government programs managed to put that monkey right there onto Labor's back. Ugh.
2- Flip flopping on the CPRS. This was just farcical and it continues to haunt Labor as Gillard flounders.
3- The RSPT. Why oh why would you go into an election with a tax increase? On the industry that you credit with not only getting Australia through the GFC but also provided the 'Big Boom' of 1999-2007? Stupid. This again was due to poor communication, but by this point nobody was listening anyway.
4- Their Hospital plan. Well, I wish this was more unpopular. What a dumb policy.
5- The Education Revolution. A small tip: if you try to revive the ghost of Whitlam, perhaps the best thing to do is to actually do something revolutionary, like Whitlam did. Putting the results of a Federally mandated test on the internet and underfunding a laptop scheme just looked pathetic.
6- New South Wales Labor, Victoria Labor and Queensland Labor. They are bad governments- why would you want to associate with them?
So yeah. For me it's not difficult to see why Rudd was eventually knifed, and the bad air has followed them into the minority government, colouring people's perception as Gillard tries desperately to herd cats.
AMID the torrent of explanations devoted to the downfall of Kevin Rudd, one issue cannot be escaped.
Had he been a better orator he'd most likely still be prime minister.
Having become Labor leader and then prime minister by pitching himself beyond the Labor caucus to the true believers on the Australian Left, Rudd not only failed to keep his followers inspired, he seemed to go out of his way to deflate them, starting with his plea on the very night of his victory to calm down and have a cup of tea and an Iced Vo-Vo.
I wasn't the only one to find it dispiriting. There were alternatives. For instance, having achieved the goal he'd set himself - of climbing from Everest base camp to government in under a year - he could have told the watching millions that Labor had just planted the flag of progress on the top of the very highest summit. Imagine the roar it would have received, and the energy it would have generated.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Time after time, Rudd was warned by senior commentators and his own supporters to drop his long-winded, technocratic speaking style. The low point came when an editorial in The Australian gave him "0 out of 10 for delivery" for an address to the National Press Club and told him to peer beyond the lectern to the glazed looks in the audience.
But he ploughed on until there was no one left listening, which was a shame, because he actually had a lot left to say.
And therein lies an irony, because Rudd will be remembered mainly for a great speech: his uplifting apology to the stolen generations. It made him loved as few prime ministers before him. With more consistency of effort and style he may have held on to his followers.
There's a certain amount of truth to this. Who could forget The Chaser's 'In Due Season' song, parodying the 'Yes We Can' song by writing its equivalent about Rudd? (song itself starts at around 1:40 if you want to skip the banter about Obama)
I agree with the article... to a point. The inability of Rudd to capitalise on Australia not going into recession during the GFC was partly due to his inability to communicate. I agree that he had good ideas and as someone with an education in politics how he expressed himself really got to me- however I don't expect everyone to have the same sort of world view that a politics major has.
In addition to his inability to communicate, I will place the blame on a few factors:
1- The inability to shake the 'bad economic managers' tag. Beazley bungled in 1998 and 2001, handing over the label of good economic managers to the Liberal party without even putting up a decent fight. While getting through the GFC with a negligible level of debt should have caused Labor to get rid of it, a combination of poor communication and waste in government programs managed to put that monkey right there onto Labor's back. Ugh.
2- Flip flopping on the CPRS. This was just farcical and it continues to haunt Labor as Gillard flounders.
3- The RSPT. Why oh why would you go into an election with a tax increase? On the industry that you credit with not only getting Australia through the GFC but also provided the 'Big Boom' of 1999-2007? Stupid. This again was due to poor communication, but by this point nobody was listening anyway.
4- Their Hospital plan. Well, I wish this was more unpopular. What a dumb policy.
5- The Education Revolution. A small tip: if you try to revive the ghost of Whitlam, perhaps the best thing to do is to actually do something revolutionary, like Whitlam did. Putting the results of a Federally mandated test on the internet and underfunding a laptop scheme just looked pathetic.
6- New South Wales Labor, Victoria Labor and Queensland Labor. They are bad governments- why would you want to associate with them?
So yeah. For me it's not difficult to see why Rudd was eventually knifed, and the bad air has followed them into the minority government, colouring people's perception as Gillard tries desperately to herd cats.