The people, not caucus, must decide

Public confidence will hardly be reinforced by Kevin Rudd's attack on the Labor Party and the competence of the Prime Minister, nor from Treasurer Wayne Swan's vitriolic counter attack.

This comes on top of the recent spectacle of a senior Cabinet Minister and former Labor Leader in Simon Crean conducting multiple interviews to verbally savage another then senior Cabinet Minister and former Prime Minister in Kevin Rudd.

To make matters worse, Simon Crean, a Victorian colleague of Prime Minister Gillard, was reportedly putting himself forward as a compromise candidate while other Victorian colleagues were walking away from the Prime Minister, with backbencher Darren Cheeseman publicly calling for her to resign and Minister Kim Carr ostentatiously refusing to back her leadership.

With a leadership spill likely next week, there will be no end of plots under way from the rival camps, all involving attempts to fatally undermine each other.

Beyond the turmoil and uncertainty this increasingly chaotic situation is creating, there are already serious problems arising from the fact that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have not been talking to each other.

Kevin Rudd made it clear that he was not consulted before the Government took the unilateral decision to ban the live cattle trade to Indonesia, after footage collected by animal rights activists was broadcast on ABC's Four Corners.

This panicked decision damaged our live cattle industry and has had the residual effect of halving this important trade for northern Australia, valued at almost $320 million in 2010.

It has undermined Indonesian confidence in Australia as a reliable supplier of food and has had wider ramifications as Indonesia has reviewed the trade relationship with Australia across a range of agricultural products.

There are reports of obstacles and barriers being placed in the way of trade in horticultural produce, for example.

There is little doubt that had he been consulted, the former Foreign Minister would have counselled against arbitrarily imposing such a ban without proper consultation and further official investigations.

Similarly, the former Foreign Minister has made it clear that he was not consulted before the Prime Minister announced her "Malaysian solution" for asylum seekers.

Again there is little doubt that the former Foreign Minister would have counselled against that policy on the grounds that it undermined Australia's obligations under the United Nations Refugee Convention, but also that proper consultation with other countries including Indonesia had not been undertaken.