 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
|
| Post subject: The dysfunctional Rudd and Gillard Governments |  |
|
As Hawke said Labor did not deserve to win the last election.
Must get back to the centre and dump the greens if they want to avoid a long stint in opposition.
"BOB Hawke and Paul Keating have given a blistering assessment of Labor in power under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and warned that retrograde policies, ineffective communication, divisive class warfare and a lack of conviction will keep the party out of office if not urgently addressed.
The two former Labor prime ministers have urged the party to undertake radical reform to reduce the power of unions and factions, steer policy back to the centre ground and heed the lessons of the often chaotic and dysfunctional Rudd-Gillard governments. They argue that Labor must undertake structural reform to curtail union influence over policy, candidates and the party organisation."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bob-hawke-and-paul-keatings-brutal-verdict-on-the-ruddgillard-years/story-fn59niix-1226894001139 |
|
|
|
 |
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Since the Australian Paywall can be tricky, here's the whole article.
| Quote: | BOB Hawke and Paul Keating have given a blistering assessment of Labor in power under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and warned that retrograde policies, ineffective communication, divisive class warfare and a lack of conviction will keep the party out of office if not urgently addressed.
The two former Labor prime ministers have urged the party to undertake radical reform to reduce the power of unions and factions, steer policy back to the centre ground and heed the lessons of the often chaotic and dysfunctional Rudd-Gillard governments. They argue that Labor must undertake structural reform to curtail union influence over policy, candidates and the party organisation.
For the first time, the two Labor elders say the party must slash the 50 per cent weighting given to unions at state conferences — a reform Bill Shorten this week ignored. “The reality is that the unions are now only a small percentage of workers,” Mr Hawke said. “They should still have a right to be affiliated with the party but they should not have an undue influence.”
He wants the 50 per cent quota for union delegations to conferences reduced. “I think that’s an undue weighting in the world in which we live today,” he said.
Mr Keating said: “I’ve always been in favour of a much more representative Labor conference structure, reflecting the participation by earnest people truly interested in the Labor Party rather than the blocs of people at conferences representing union members. As the level of unionisation has dropped in the workplace, so too should the representation at conferences drop.”
The exclusive interviews with the two former Labor prime ministers, Mr Hawke (1983-91) and Mr Keating (1991-96), are included in a new book, Rudd, Gillard and Beyond, published next week. Mr Keating said the party’s membership had become so “limited” and “confected” that it was unrepresentative of the community. As the authority of members has diminished, he said the power of party officials had increased. This had been “brutally bad” for Labor.
He said party officials have “an unerring sense of what they believe is right” and “lord it over the parliamentary party” to get their way. “The rot had set in to the federal organisation of the Labor Party when the state party secretaries raised their reasonably ugly heads” in the 1990s.
Mr Keating said the last Labor government struggled to define its purpose in a compelling narrative and failed to balance the political and policy work needed for successful long-term governments. “Kevin’s government was doing reasonably badly reasonably quickly,” Mr Keating said.
He argued that the global financial crisis “gave the government purpose” and it responded appropriately.
“After the crisis, or the immediacy of the crisis, it started fraying again.
“There was a sense of urgency which guided the big reform agenda in the 1980s and ‘90s. We knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to create a modern, efficient, outward-looking economy. You have to conceptualise the big reform ideas into a framework.”
Mr Keating said he told Mr Rudd in July last year, after he returned to the prime ministership, that Labor had to reclaim the model of governance that he and Mr Hawke had pioneered in the 80s and 90s.
“That was a model which fostered economic growth, which put a high premium on social equity and justice, which fathomed a way of us, as Australians, tying ourselves competitively to the East Asian economic renaissance,” he said. “What happened is that the public had fallen out of love with the Labor Party organisationally and as a government, Rudd’s demise being part of that, but they hadn’t fallen out of love with the model.”
Mr Hawke is critical of Labor for promulgating class warfare for political gain and criticised the development of the mining tax. “That sort of class-warfare rhetoric never resonates with me,” he said. “The simple truth about good government is that you need to have good relations with both sides of an industry, workers and business, not just one side.”
Mr Keating also spoke about the need for party leaders to win support from voters and work with business and unions to implement a reform agenda that was in the national interest. “We had to be able to garner the authority of the caucus and the wider Labor Party and trade union movement to make these kind of changes,” he said.
The problem Labor often had, Mr Keating said, was a lack of belief. “Leaders proselytising policies without deep inner belief in the end fail. Policies can’t be picked up like pretty boxes at a gift shop. They have to come from the innards of the politics.”
Both former prime ministers said the party was failing to recruit candidates with a diversity of life experience. “The organisational leadership has always got to look around for the people who are different and who have talent, spot it and help them through the party,” Mr Keating said.
Assessing the Rudd-Gillard legacy, Mr Hawke said the party needed to be “brutal” in its assessment and acknowledge that they “didn’t deserve to win” the September election. “They just distracted themselves with internecine strife.”
Mr Hawke said it was inevitable Mr Rudd would be toppled by Ms Gillard in 2010 “because he just wanted to run so much of things single-handedly” and a reaction against that was inevitable.
Both said that despite the many problems, there were policies that Labor could be proud of after six years in government. While Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard “deserved to lose”, Mr Hawke said, they “achieved a lot of good Labor things”.
But Mr Keating said it was wrong for Ms Gillard to challenge Mr Rudd for the leadership.
“I don’t think Kevin Rudd should have been replaced in 2010,” he said. “Leaders often have low to mid-points in a term. The party, I think, should have stuck with him through that.”
Troy Bramston is the author of Rudd, Gillard and Beyond (Penguin) published next week. |
I bolded one bit where Hawke says basically what I've been saying. C'mon Bob, stop being Anti union.  
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
They're certainly right the organization is out of date and needs huge reforms; let's hope they both get more involved in backing new ideas and movements within the party.
The unions are now so outmoded and the ALP so inbred that combined they're almost 38.34% as corrupt and destructive as the Gliberal Party and their main sponsors. And that's a bad thing, to be sure.
But did H-K give their views on Abbott and his government? I thought not.
Rest assured Keating still thinks Abbott is "the resident Liberal nutter", and Hawke almost throws up trying to be diplomatic when mentioning him, so don't take the comment that the ALP "deserved to lose" as an endorsement of the creeps the racist mob voted in.
This was purely about internal reform, something the Glibs never ever do because they don't have a democratic party in any serious sense of the term, they have a Mason-like sect of elite wealthy sponsors who simply shake hands at cocktail parties and whose network of business interests tells people what to do without argument, question or need for messy public bickering.
The amusing thing to me is how Glib supporters can tell you how the ALP works, and indeed crap on about it incessantly, yet they have no idea whatsoever how their own "party" works. Apparently being "born to rule" also means never ever having to justify yourself even as you demand others justify themselves.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I love how every discussion about Labor gets twisted straight away into how the Libs are worse. Defensive tactic No.1 through 10.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| pietillidie wrote: |
Rest assured Keating still thinks Abbott is "the resident Liberal nutter", and Hawke almost throws up trying to be diplomatic when mentioning him, so don't take the comment that the ALP "deserved to lose" as an endorsement of the creeps the racist mob voted in.s. |
One hopes that the ALP goes beyond your infantile rantings about racists etc.
Hawke always said he had faith in the Aussie people to get elections right and the fact that he believed Labor did not deserve to win, says that the Libs were more deserving in his view.
The left believed its delusion that Abbott was unelectable only to see him win in a landslide. Guess it is easy to just blame racism so you do not have to confront the reality that the Rudd Gillard governments were just plain incompetent and that the Australian people were intelligent enough to see this and throw them out emphatically.
Hopefully the ALP is more honest in reviewing their shortcomings, because we need 2 good centrists parties to marginalise the extreme parties such as the Greens. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| thebaldfacts wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: |
Rest assured Keating still thinks Abbott is "the resident Liberal nutter", and Hawke almost throws up trying to be diplomatic when mentioning him, so don't take the comment that the ALP "deserved to lose" as an endorsement of the creeps the racist mob voted in.s. |
One hopes that the ALP goes beyond your infantile rantings about racists etc.
Hawke always said he had faith in the Aussie people to get elections right and the fact that he believed Labor did not deserve to win, says that the Libs were more deserving in his view.
The left believed its delusion that Abbott was unelectable only to see him win in a landslide. Guess it is easy to just blame racism so you do not have to confront the reality that the Rudd Gillard governments were just plain incompetent and that the Australian people were intelligent enough to see this and throw them out emphatically.
Hopefully the ALP is more honest in reviewing their shortcomings, because we need 2 good centrists parties to marginalise the extreme parties such as the Greens. |
Geez, you've got a short memory. The infantile rants were all Abbott's, targeted at boat people and the Indonesian government. His only serious campaign policy was a racist rehash of the Yellow Peril in the form of miserable boat people (the rest of the "policies" were ad hoc announcements now being done away with as expected). That leaves you with racist panic and the racist hate vote as the primary policy platform.
On the other hand, my judgement is based on the known data. You have zero data to show R-G-R were incompetent; on the contrary, they left the country in excellent shape statistically, and took it through the GFC with world-leading socio-economic data. All that and I didn't even like them both because I thought they were too cowardly.
Instead, you have imaginary Alan Jones for Dummies rhetoric about the nation collapsing into the sea (none less than the child-like claims that debt levels of national economies with their own floated currencies function much like they do in households LOL). I'll grant you poor media management, ALP in-fighting and half-arsed Liberal-lite policy that didn't seriously address the decline in real income growth for middle and lower earners, but you don't have a serious rational claim rooted in any meaningful facts to support "incompetency".
This is very old ground, however.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | | I love how every discussion about Labor gets twisted straight away into how the Libs are worse. Defensive tactic No.1 through 10. |
Well, there are only two choices. What other logic is there to be employed?
Plainly, not being worse than the Glibs means being better than the Glibs, with reservations about them still not being good enough. How is that difficult to comprehend in a political duopoly?
Now, the rise of the Greens could be good news on this front, or maybe not. It's hard to tell at this stage, but more ideas are presumably better than less.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| pietillidie wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | I love how every discussion about Labor gets twisted straight away into how the Libs are worse. Defensive tactic No.1 through 10. |
Well, there are only two choices. What other logic is there to be employed?
Plainly, not being worse than the Glibs means being better than the Glibs, with reservations about them still not being good enough. How is that difficult to comprehend in a political duopoly?
Now, the rise of the Greens could be good news on this front, or maybe not. It's hard to tell at this stage, but more ideas are presumably better than less. |
Well, a constructive choice would be to address the actual issue instead of saying, "yeah, we suck but they suck worse" 
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Gee pietiillidie guess Hawke and Keating and the Australian people got it all wrong. Fortunately we have your insightful comments to educate us all. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| thebaldfacts wrote: | | Gee pietiillidie guess Hawke and Keating and the Australian people got it all wrong. Fortunately we have your insightful comments to educate us all. |
Keating, the political benchmark in my lifetime, clearly thinks Abbott is a nutjob and has called him such. Why not let that educate you?
Yes, the ALP is an organisational mess, but IMO that's the nature of the beast. And given they don't control the vast proportion of the mass media, that intrinsic organisational reality is always exploited as "incompetence", which is an empty term not correlated with any verifiable reality.
Saying "the ALP deserved to lose" is clearly internal chastisement. It is nothing more than that. I actually agree, but for reasons Keating has expressed elsewhere several times now: They had a weak Liberal-lite policy platform, and made the error of thinking they could out-flank the right on the right when it came to asylum seekers.
Again, why not let that educate you? Look up his speeches, articles and interviews.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I suppose it's a point that many people, here and elsewhere, defended Krudd and Gillard and kept saying how well they were actually doing. In retrospect, Hawke and Keating have both now debunked that and said that they did not do a good job.
The fact that neither of them can probably stand Abbott only makes it worse for them because, in their opinions, Labor stuffing up let Abbott win what he should never have been able to get. It would be like watching a Collingwood coach make obvious blunders that gift a premiership tp Carlton.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Guess you are right pietiillidie.
The Rudd Gillard governments were actually brilliant it was only the Murdoch press and Andrew Bolt as well as the misogynists who conspired to destroy the greatest government in the history of mankind. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| thebaldfacts wrote: | Guess you are right pietiillidie.
The Rudd Gillard governments were actually brilliant it was only the Murdoch press and Andrew Bolt as well as the misogynists who conspired to destroy the greatest government in the history of mankind. |
No, they were average and lacked conviction. However, Gillard's achievement will have important long-term ramifications, while the Apology, NBN, and focus on the carbon and mining taxes were plainly on the right track. And no, the country clearly didn't collapse into the sea and was left in good shape, aside from the exaggerated racist obsession with asylum seekers, and the unchecked rise of the mining lobby.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
Last edited by pietillidie on Sat Apr 26, 2014 5:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
|
thebaldfacts
Joined: 02 Aug 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | I suppose it's a point that many people, here and elsewhere, defended Krudd and Gillard and kept saying how well they were actually doing. In retrospect, Hawke and Keating have both now debunked that and said that they did not do a good job.
The fact that neither of them can probably stand Abbott only makes it worse for them because, in their opinions, Labor stuffing up let Abbott win what he should never have been able to get. It would be like watching a Collingwood coach make obvious blunders that gift a premiership tp Carlton. |
We also forget how much the previous government attacked Rudd for his incompetence when he first tried to win the job back, until they realised their loss would have been even worse if they stuck with Julia.
Hard to put a positive spin on what Hawke and Keating have said, but full points to some for trying. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^Except you don't really know what Keating thinks in detail, because you've apparently never listened to his many interviews or read his many speeches.
He was always against Gillard going for the job because he thought it signaled instability for no gain, which of course it did. He has always opposed the left factions of the party and been biased against the Vic ALP because of that, too.
But you have to now blend that with everything else Keating has said over the period.
(Hawke rarely says much at all; he's more a statesman now than a party man).
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
