r3830, I find myself nodding in agreement with the points you've made.
I cannot see the removal of Kevin Rudd from his position as Prime Minister in the same terms that you've described, Elantra. If Mr Rudd had decided to stand down, that would have been an entirely different situation, don't you think? But the sense that so many voters have is that machinations and scheming occurred in the back rooms, where the decision was taken that Kevin Rudd would be summarily ejected and Julia Gillard would take over. Clearly a lot of this scheming occurred without Julia's presence... and one could argue that she merely took the bat and ran with it once the "faceless men" presented her with their views... but in my opinion that isn't a tenable conclusion, for the following reasons:
1. It is unthinkable that the "faceless men" had any discussion about Ms Gillard taking over without having sounded her out prior to any serious and definite discussions.
a) If the faceless men had made a confirmed enemy of Mr Rudd by backroom plans for his political assassination
(which I think is inarguable), they would have been incredibly stupid to have done so without having a replacement
not only in mind but poised and ready to take over. (It could be argued that Mr Rudd and the faceless men were
ALREADY at loggerheads, since the most persistent accusation against him is that he wouldn't take advice... and to
my mind this signals that Rudd was not kowtowing to the faceless men in the backroom when they wanted to enforce
their wishes onto him. In that case, they were already enemies... but there's a difference between an enmity that is
really just a strong difference of opinion, and an enmity that is the result of concerted and brutal attack.)
b) If the faceless men hadn't already had Julia Gillard's approval (however tacitly and cautiously expressed), they would
have been blowing hot air and wasting their incredibly valuable (in dollar terms) time by all of their closet discussions.
c) If the faceless men had not sounded out Julia Gillard sufficiently in advance for their plans to undergo discussion and
development, they'd have had someone else in mind as the challenger, and backed him/her instead. That didn't occur;
ergo, Ms Gillard was the one who'd been sounded out all along.
d) A serious issue like a leadership challenge in Australian politics requires an awful lot of backing and influence from men
who either have decision-making power OR who hold the strings behind the scenes. When it's less a challenge than it
is a mugging, it's even more a case of great backing and influence being needed. Men with that sort of power
do not play nice games along the lines of "Well, so it's agreed then? We'll ask Julia - who will be SO surprised by our
request - to save us all by taking over the leadership?" No. If Ms Gillard were to swear upon a signed first edition of
The Female Eunuch that she was telling the truth and had NO intention of challenging for the leadership before that
evening, I'd look her straight in the face and tell her that I knew she was lying.
2. ... I had another lot of points I wanted to make, but the pain has just got worse and I'm going to lie down. (sorry)
