Fixing The Mess

Julia Gets Her Way

And amazingly, Bob Carr is now a Senator replacing Mark Arbib, and Foreign Minister to boot. One marvels at how this deal got done, but it did.

Just hours before this morning's announcement, one minister, who like everybody else, was in the dark that Carr was back in the game, said: "She looks like she's lied and has no authority.
"This is not good for her; it's not good for us.
"I despair, I really do."
The truth is that, by Tuesday, the prospect of Carr coming to Canberra was over.
Gillard, stung by the criticism, rang Carr yesterday and put the offer to him again.
Carr accepted and, once more, Smith took one for the team.
Gillard ends the week as she began it - her leadership ascendant.

I guess it's a case of crash or crash through. You'd hate to be Stephen Smith, but them's the breaks.

The way I figure it, this doesn't really do much to add back credibility to the Federal ALP in as much as they had recruit a retired politician from the State ranks. Makes it look like the ALP in NSW really is short of talent. I probably shouldn't keep bagging Julia Gillard because this is a big victory on her part, but it says a lot that this is a big victory for her. Unfortunately I've made up my mind and i won't be voting for her; doubly unfortunate is the fact that Bob Carr isn't really in my good books so this leaves me cold; triply unfortunate is that I don't really care about her accomplishments in technical aspects of politics. She can be deft, so what?

All of this sort of explains why Kevin Rudd came out smiling from the caucus meeting in which he only got 31 votes. It's all a set up including Simon Crean smoking out the Rudd supporters to the brazen hypocrisy of Arbib claiming he's quitting politics for family to the yes-no-yes drafting of Bob Carr. how could one not laugh?

All it takes is for a couple of backbenchers on the Rudd side to call it quits and it's back to a hung parliament and they'd better damn well call an election - but  Julia Gillard would lose that too if polls are to be believed. I short, this is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. The Federal ALP government is as lame as any lame duck government has been.

Colour me unimpressed.