It was hard to believe Kevin Rudd was making a speech to concede defeat. In yet another blaze of self admiration, after a Hollywood style entrance, Kevin Rudd stood there in front of his adoring fans last night & for 22 minutes spoke in self congratulatory terms about how he had saved labor Party!
On a night when Labor Party received its lowest primary vote in nearly 100 years, and was inflicted one of the worst election defeats in its history, there stood Kevin Rudd stating how he had steadied the ship & was handing over the Party in good fighting shape!
Admittedly as many have stated, Labor cut its own throat the day the faceless men of the party executed Kevin Rudd to install Julia Gillard & the rest is history! Self preservation & self interest meant broken promises, sabotage, policy mishaps, infighting & disastrous policy implementation in the next three years!
But even those powerful faceless men underestimated Kevin Rudd's resilience, and more crucially determination to seek vengeance no matter the costs.
As if the minority government, broken promises & other disasters mentioned above were not enough, Kevin Rudd embarked on a campaign of sabotage & destabilisation of Gillard Government until the powerbrokers in Labor Party, like hopelessly desperate parents who had run out of ideas on how to deal with an out of control child, caved into him & gave his him his "rightful job" back in June!
And, Kevin Rudd's legacy will be simple: His egocentric behaviour will mean history will look kindly at Julia Gillard's tumultuous time as PM & not too kindly at his own time as PM!
I wrote a blog in the dying days of Gillard's reign suggesting a Rudd vs Abbott election would be more about policy issues & much less about personalities in the case of Abbott vs Gillard. But like many others, I had forgotten the egocentric self absorbed narcissistic traits of Kevin Rudd too!
Thanks to Rudd's ego, and Abbott's well disciplined & rehearsed strategy, the Rudd vs Abbott election turnout to be all about Rudd self promoting & sadly overestimating his popularity, & then desperately attacking Tony Abbott as a last resort.
Tony Abbott, like it or not, to his credit did not panic, did not get rattled & did not change tact. He stood his ground & continued to portray a perception of steady hands whilst waiting patiently for Kevin Rudd to be exposed for his contrived PR campaign, which steadily unfolded into a farce.
And well deserved congratulations to Tony Abbott & his team.
For withstanding all the "least popular opposition leader" jibes, for Julia Gillard's desperate attempt on class warfare & misogyny, & for steadfastly dealing with all attempts by the government figures to rattle him. He beat them all in their own & at times petty games! & His reward, the 28th PM of Australia.
I have mentioned in several posts previously that voters don't need to necessarily like their leaders! But they need to respect them for their integrity & conviction, & to trust them.
The point is clearly seen here:
For a number of reasons, Julia Gillard was neither liked nor trusted & lost respect after the broken no carbon tax saga.
Kevin Rudd was liked but ultimately was neither trusted nor respected because of his white anting & ego driven behaviour in the last three years!
Tony Abbott on the other hand, may not be well liked or trusted yet by sections of the electorate.
But the voters respect him for his convictions & have stated they are prepared to trust him for the next 3 years.
John Howard & Paul Keating were not particularly liked either. But they showed vision & conviction, and with those traits, bought themselves trust & respect.
Tony Abbott, has already proven himself as a competent Howard Government Minister, a tough opposition leader & has the full potential to grow into the job as a very good Prime Minister.
If he avoids mishaps & mistakes & translates his leadership qualities that are already evident to a competent united government. he can& will gain the voters' respectability & trust, and with that comes longevity at the lodge!
In the course of the next term, Abbott's battles with the Senate will be crucial in shaping his leadership. & vision. As it stands, the composition of the new Senate in July 2014 looks extremely difficult to deal with, considering that even some obscure minority parties with a mere few hundred primary votes may get a seat due to complicated preferences deals. (that is something that must be reformed but is a discussion for another day)
And as a sceptic until recently, I predict Tony Abbott will demonstrate steady hands & vision & will grow into the job of PM & as he stated last Wednesday night at a pre election function in Sydney, "under promises & over delivers"!
A European style austerity & cuts in spending which has caused recessions and/or slowed down growth in eg UK is not the way forward. Moderate spending in a way that can stimulate consumer confidence is the way to go forward. Abbott has already indicated that is his intention to do exactly that.
