Ruthlessness, brutality and cowardice

It is an extremely serious matter to throw out a prime minister. Only as a very last resort should a prime minister be unseated in this fashion. Every possible avenue should have been explored first. In electing the Labor party to government Australians endorsed Kevin Rudd as leader. The party had a responsibility to respect that democratic decision. It should not have been overthrown except in the most extreme of circumstances.

In resorting to the most extreme action first, the party has done itself no favours. Any subsequent leader can be assured that she or he will face the same fate if they don’t keep the factions on side. There’ll be no warning. Nobody will front up and say, Prime Minister, we have to talk. They’ll just take the leader out, literally overnight, and be damned with the voters’ choices.

The precedent has been set, and what a frightening and dangerous precedent it is.

And where were Julia Gillard’s renowned negotiating skills when they were needed? If she wasn’t able to use them to any effect on Kevin, why should we believe they’d work on the mining magnates?

We’re told that Gillard and Wayne Swan had the bottle to fight the tyrannical Kevin and win in the matter of dropping the ETS. If this is true, it must have been quite a battle. It was pretty close to his heart, his great moral challenge, and he copped some nasty flak over the back down. Yet neither of them could talk to him about his style?

Or did they just decide to give him enough rope to hang himself? Because I’m sure that brilliant victory speech Ms Gillard gave wasn’t written an hour before she became Prime Minister.

Like obituaries, they keep them in the bottom drawer for when the moment arrives.

I know several people including myself who’ve been approached by pollsters and have refused to participate because we don’t like the concept of poll-driven political decisions. We object to our considered democratic vote being overthrown by mercurial poll results. We don’t want to see poll-driven political assassinations. How many other Australians feel this way, and refuse to engage in polling?

At least no politician can ever again publicly deny the influence of polls on decisions.

Each and every one of the federal Labor politicians is accountable for the dreadful events of the last few days.

Each and every one of them should explain to the punters why, by their passivity and contemptible lack of courage, they have colluded in turning the governance of this country into something that increasingly resembles a form of dictatorship, rather than the democracy that is held up as a shining example to the world.

Why do we bother having elections, if those we elect are incapable of conducting a robust and vigorous democracy within their own parties?