Losing popularity, the Labor Party stages a surgical strike in the leadership

As I said over a year ago PM Rudd is incompetent.

He said "sorry". Even my children know how hollow this is without action. He specifically legislated to stop any compensation being made available. Wow, he assuaged the guilt of his ancestors with one word and no action - right - fail.

He came to power with a government free of debt. The Liberals took 10 years to repay all the debt from the last disastrous run of the Labour party. What did he do? He put the country in $40b in debt in his first year so his constituents could by LCD panels. Wow, what fore thought, strategic brilliance... Wait, Australia was the first Western country to put rates up AND has done so 5 times. Totally unnecessary and incompetent - yet he claims credit for saving Australia from recession - Fail!

PM Rudd came out and incompetently said "we will back the banks" causing an immediate run on money market accounts. In a sign of things to come he had to immediately back track and blame the opposition - fail.

PM Rudd introduced a poorly thought out and disastrously executed "green" program of installing pink batts. Wow, pure genius - no, a demonstration of his small mindedness - fail.

PM Rudd dismantled some of the Liberal labour laws so that companies would find it more difficult to shed workers - having companies second guess hiring is just what Australia needed going into a WW recession - not - fail.

PM Rudd signed Kyoto a few months before it was due to expire - so what - fail.

Thinking a country with less then 2% of the WW GDP will a) matter to anyone and b) have any effect on WW cooling (actually been happening in the last decade) or warming was incompetent before he went prancing around Copenhagen - fail.

PM Rudd putting in place an inquiry to find out how to reform the tax system and in the end adopts a couple of them from a list of 100 (and those that were adopted weren't recommended). PM Rudd chose one (which demonstrated his severe political cynicism and populism) that taxes miners - the very industry that is the biggest contributer to keeping Australia out of recession. "Them foreigners are stealing them gold!", well what about the foreigners who hold stocks in Woolworths? "Them foreigners are stealing them food!". Ridiculous - fail.

To further the evidence of his racism he denies any issues with hard working Indian students being targeted with violence. He puts a stop to "those evil foreigners" from buying properties in Australia - FAIL!

So as I said before (with some comments claiming I was sooo wrong) PM Rudd is incompetent and will need to go - soon. I say GOOD RUDDANCE!

With Australia's new PM we will see the barrenness of the Labour party's ideas....

It is fantastic to be sure to have the first female PM of Australia! I often say race and sex etc... is irrelevant and only experience, talent, and a strong work ethic are what it takes, but as I have gone through life I have experienced comments and actions from all sides of the street that has made me doubt that everyone thinks the same way.

So good on PM Gillard for making the sacrifices necessary, having the smarts and the political savvy to get here. Too bad the Labour party is so mendacious, incompetent and bereft of ideas that everyone hopes they lose the next election.

At least it will be proof that everyone is treated equally when it comes to politics and incompetence.

It is a sad day for Australian democracy when the wealthiest people in the country ie. the mining entrepreneurs and executives, can spend millions on TV advertising and rent-a-crowds to destabilize an elected government. What is even worse, is that the millions they have spent on this advertising will be claimed by them as a tax deduction, so the public will foot their bill for a campaign that is against the interest of most people in Australia.

The mining industry have gained extraordinary amounts of airtime on news bulletins and via paid advertising to mislead and frighten the public about their jobs and their superannuation disappearing. An analysis I received from a respected, major financial advisory company the other day, stated that this tax would make approximately a 2% difference to the profits of a mining company. For this small reduction in profits, all Australians would have benefited from improved infrastructure, which is so badly needed after 12 years of neglect by a previous conservative government. They preferred to spend the mining profits of those years on sweetners for local communities, particularly in areas that voted for them, to ensure their reelection.

It should be acknowledged by those who allege this government is incompetent that it was absolutely scandalous the way the previous Howard Liberal Party government, totally neglected spending on necessary infrastructure and left the cities, regional areas and transport needs of this country in a parlous state.

It has left the current Labour Government with the task of "catch up," and the imposition of the mining tax is a relatively painless way for the public to be provided with safe and essential, modern facilities.

How the public can be deceived by these billionaires shouting "Poor me" and bringing down an elected leader and possibly a government, is beyond me. It is bad for democracy because no other interest group or sector of society has the financial capacity to mount such a campaign against an elected government. Yet our governments are supposed to be controlled by the people, not by a few highly manipulative, mining entrepreneurs and executives whose only interest is to accumulate even more wealth. The hysteria surrounding this tax has been extraordinay.

Rudd made two mistakes: he gave the editors of one of Newscorps papers the stick at a dinner in Melbourne and then he picked a fight with the Miners: The result was a disaster: the Press and the Miners put the government under the hammer. There is a moral to this story somewhere. I do not like Rudd or trust him but I do feel sorry for him. It was really a brutal execution by his party. If his party thinks that he was not good for them and executed him on the eve of an election why should any one vote for them. They too are driven by the polls and not by principle and conviction.

I find it baffling for there to be a reference to Australia being a bastion of male chauvinism. I found Britain and Italy quite backward in this regard on my last trip, and wonder who could possibly have written that line in the article.

It is disgraceful that large corporations have so much power that they can bring down a prime minister and hope to bring down an elected government. It is even more disgraceful that they are upheld and supported in this endeavour by the liberal party under that unlikeable man Abbott who is not interested in the welfare of ordinary Australians but only in gaining power for himself. It is interesting to note that he has kept some of the Howard era stalwarts on his front bench which gives some indication of his and their intentions. You might have mentioned his belief (openly stated) that all women should be virgins prior to marriage!!! You might also have mentioned that he fathered a child as a young man and attempted to pressure the mother into an abortion - so much for his staunch catholicism - he is an evil man and one can only hope that the Australian electorate realise this.

Julia Gillard, as former deputy PM, was responsible for the many failed policies of the Rudd Government including the

1. failed insulation program
2. poorly managed education building program
3. failed ETS scheme
4. failed health reforms and
5. proposed mining super profits tax.

She is also a left wing unionist and will be seekeing to use the union power base to further her cause. It is therefore difficult to see any significant change in policies and this should assist a Liberal / National Government at the next election later this year.

Australia has now lurched back to the bad old days of heavy union influence on government policy. The union hacks have now got one of their own in the top job and will want payment for it, despite Julia saying otherwise. The amount of discord this bunch of incompetents have ruled over needs to be got rid of and one can only hope it is done quickly before we head down the left wing path of politics, which no one will want in Australia, we are not like that and do not want it.

The current comments seem to have forgotten the strong social mandate with which the Labor Government was elected with.

Australia has strongly endorsed initiatives related to a caring compassionate society e.g climate change, abolishment of work choices, education revolution to name a few.

A few short years does not change this and I doubt the majority wants to see a return to the highly conservative Liberal government agenda. Gillard needs to remind Australia that they will deliver what they were elected for...

There seems to be little point in blaming Howard for a lack of infrastructure: infrastructure is to be provided by the states and
we have seen what a mess New South Wales made of their infrastructure and then the Commonwealth made a worse one with their schools program: and wasted the tax payers money: there is waste and rort all over Australia. The Rudd government were singularly incompetant and were to put it very poitely guilty of a singular lack of thought. They have to go. Why blame the miners: Rudd Swan and Henry ambushed them by ignoring the parliamentary process for introducing legislation. The banks and the Grocers have a far more profitable business than the miners but they picked on the miners for political reasons.

Wait and see what happens if this mob are reelected: Henry has said that the super profits tax should apply to all busines:

As the fat lady said: Be carefull what you wish for.

To DW Marks

'struth mate they've chucked a bloody sheila the keys to the country!

Satisfied now?

;-)

The liberals should replace the Abbott with the Bishop. Do that, and they'll win.

These comments are alarmingly partisan and, for British readers, most unhelpful.

Rudd did not so much win the elections, as John Howard lost. In fact, Howard was severely punished by an electorate that hated his cruel proclamation of an era of prosperity whilst millions of Aussie families disintegrated under the impact of poverty and harsh working conditions. They punished Howard with even greater fury for claiming 3.2% unemployment when the real figure was 19% (Ryan Research).

Aussies would have voted for Daffy Duck to get rid of Howard, so a Rudd mandate of any kind was inconceivable. Rudd, proved to have the same disregard for the welfare of Australians, and for democracy. The one non-media survey showed that 80% either disbelieved the AGW theory or rejected the ETS proposal; or both, yet Rudd trotted off to Copenhagen to deliver Australian sovereignty to the global bankers.

This infuriated the electorate, which now also became fearful that a mining tax would trigger even worse unemployment; anxiety fertilised and nurtured by the media and miners.

ALP politicians were told bluntly in the street, get rid of Rudd, Penny Wong, and Peter Garritt or face very public attacks. Gillard was the single figure not yet detested. Whether the Gillard replacement means real change or not has yet to be seen. But all who are not rusted-on party faithful know that Abbott, Turnbull and Bishop are even more distant from the people.

"Too bad the Labour (sic) party is so mendacious, incompetent and bereft of ideas that everyone hopes they lose the next election."

"Everyone"? I hate to dash your hopes, Tom Silo, but polls taken in the days following the new PM's accession have Labor back in a strong election-winning position.

By common consent Kevin Rudd deserves credit for steering Australia virtually unscathed through the GFC and for laying down a strong nation-building policy agenda. But his political instinct began to desert him, leading to growing concern in his party about the outcome of the next election, and as Ms Gillard correctly observed, "a good government was losing its way". Certainly the Labor front bench, which Rudd under-utilised and micro-managed, is miles ahead of their opposite numbers in terms of intelligence and talent.

A return of the bad old days of the do-nothing Howard regime would have been disastrous, and the rot had to be stopped. I'm confident that the formidable Julia Gillard will prove to be one of our best prime ministers.

It is ironic that Gillard and Swan convinced Rudd that the ETS should be postponed to the never-never, which then caused Rudd's popularity to plummet and consequently for Gillard to become prime minister. As the public is acutely aware that the opposition currently has a climate change policy that reflects its disblief in anthropomorphic climate change, it will be interesting to see whether or not this turn of events will result in a swing to the Greens in the coming election.

As someone once said ' We have a labour government as long as we can afford it , and a liberal government as long as we can bear it.'

If Julia is true to her left wing base we will have a liberal government in shortly.

Ms Gillard says she will re-prosecute the issue of putting a price on carbon IF she is elected (she does not intend to campaign on it) and IF a "community consensus" develops.In her view, no such consensus exists at present.

As deputy PM, Ms Gillard pressed for the shelving of the ETS, a position supported by the 'right-wing faction'of the Australian Labour Party which engineered the coup.

Climate change is becoming a "third rail" in Australian politics – instant death. The leader of the opposition (Macolm Turnbull) was deposed only a few months ago on the same issue.

Interesting to see this article presumably written from an independant position. Pretty factual and on the money.
A couple of earlier comments are obviously from Liberal party sources and should be disregarded.
The Murdoch stable of papers in Oz had a lot to do with the downfall of Kevin Rudd but he also contributed heavily with his inabilities to communicate in a simple fashion and not using his ministers. He relied more upon advisors (not elected) over a reasonably talented front bench.
With the election due any time, Labor was dropping disastrously in the polls and Australia was on course to elect an underprepared opposition.

We in the U.S. can only look with incredible envy at Australia. Australians realized they had made a political mistake with Rudd. That he wasn't up to the job, and their system let them make a change. We in the U.S. have begun to realize the enormity of the mistake we made in Nov 2008 when we elected Obama. The person we thought we elected disappeared on the day he was sworn into office. Instead of moderate bringing us new politics, change, and hope we have an arrogant, incompetent, ideological, radical left wing Elitist who has divided the country even more deeply George Bush. Yet we can only start to make change this Nov. Correcting our biggest mistake has to wait until 2012.

Notwithstanding the Labor Party's seemingly ruthless ways, the decision to have Julia Gillard as our first female Prime Minister is a very sensible one indeed.

It is the Coming of Age for Australian politics. No longer is politics the domain of the Aussie Bloke for the top job.

It is fantastic that we have a woman as a PM and it will go a long way towards helping Australia's image.

Julia, like myself and many of us, is a first generation Australian. Many of us have deep respect for the great opportunity this country provides and can continue to provide.

I believe Julia has the intelligence, courage and tenacity to do what is best for Australian society as a whole and not just kowtow to the rich and powerful.

I think we can trust Julia.

However, Tony Abbott's views change depending on the day of the week. He definitely can not be trusted.