It's Crud for K-Rudd

It’s the big news of the day – hell, the year – in Australia. The country of kangaroos, surfers and a woman called Matilda who just loved to waltz has a new prime minister, and not just a new prime minister but Australia’s first ever female prime minister. It’s a huge thing for the women of this country and a historic day for Australia. The only thing is, I didn’t think they’d had a general election. Well, that’s because they haven’t. Labour, Australia’s leading party, have done just what their British cousins did and have elected a prime minister of their own choosing. The difference is, Kevin Rudd did not step down because he knew the public wanted him out. The former prime minister of Australia was forced to resign because of lack of support within his party – his own party wanted him out. They went to Julia Gillard, asked her to stand against Rudd, and she agreed. Rather than force a ballot, as he knew the numbers were against him, he saved himself the embarrassment of being voted out by his own party and gracefully stepped down this morning.


Of course, you can’t separate the public from this. The main reason so many of the Labour party wanted him out is because his popularity with the people of Australia has plummeted over the past few months, largely due to his backing down on a massive climate change initiative that was key to his environmental strategy and, more recently, his hugely unpopular mining super-profits tax. With a general election looming towards the end of the year, Labour was terrified that the public was increasingly showing support for the Opposition. They thought that they would fare better at the election with Julia Gillard at their helm.

So, what do the public think of all this? The leaders of a country are supposed to be serving their people, after all, not their own party’s interests. The general consensus seems to be that people like Julia Gillard, that she will be a competent leader, but that they would have preferred to have made that decision for themselves. Many people feel betrayed by the fact that the system’s factional leaders and union bosses have overturned the votes they cast at the last election. Whatever they currently think of Kevin Rudd, they voted him into leadership, not Julia Gillard. They wanted the opportunity to decide whether to get rid of him and vote in a new leader. They now have a leader, making decisions for their country, that they did not elect and they are angry they have been left out of the process. They are angry that this could happen at all. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the upcoming election when the people of Australia do get to decide. Will they see Gillard as a backstabbing bitch who shafted the man she was supposed to be loyal to, or as a strong female who saved the Labour party and can lead their country to greater things?

I do feel sorry for K-Rudd. Ok, so he made a few mistakes but he also did some great things for this country, most remarkable of all perhaps was keeping Australia largely out of the recession that has mired most of the rest of the world. And we mustn’t forget the historic day he apologised to the Stolen Generation on behalf of the Australian nation for the terrible sins of the past. Australia doesn’t often make it into international news but that was something that the world paid attention to. Since then, he has tried to close the wide, gaping gap between indigenous and white Australians. His departing speech, which listed these and the many other achievements of his since winning power just two and half years ago, was emotional and he struggled to fight back the tears. I’m not surprised – he has had a horrible 24 hours. For not only the majority of your party but your deputy, who is supposed to be loyal to you, to stab you in the back like that must hurt. It would be like a member of your family horribly betraying you. And yet the astonishing thing is that he has maintained that, rather than go on the public speaking trail where he could not only get out of all that political in-fighting but also earn huge amounts of money, he will remain in the Labour party. He must be crazy. Maybe his party were right to oust him after all!