Malleable Hatred

If you talked to any Canberra press gallery journalist or any Labor politician they will tell you how much everyone hates Kevin Rudd. They had to. That was why Julia and the boys had to move on him. He was single-handedly working the public service to death. He never consulted with his colleagues and what a mess he made over the carbon tax, the resources tax and just about everything else.

Rudd almost killed his staff. He had a big cleaver in his desk and he would chop them up and serve them in the parliamentary dining room as chop suey. He was arrogant. So arrogant that when he looked down his nose he could see the rest of Australia. He was Dr. Death revisited.  He was a one man government. He dissed his colleagues. He dissed cabinet.  He was loathed by the public service who he worked in the equivalent of a Japanese concentration camp. He was, in short,the biggest bastard ever to become Prime Minister. We/they just had to get rid of him.

Only Gareth Evans and his famous ash tray flying feats could come anywhere near the tantrums and fits and peaks of Kevin Bloody Rudd.

Would anyone in caucus vote for him again to be PM? No frigging way. It would be like voting for Attila the Hun. Would anyone in the Canberra press gallery write a sympathetic story about him? Would Chris Mitchell have any sympathy for the famous dummy spitting leaker. No way.

Well hold on.

The Galaxy Poll indicates the ALP primary vote in August 2010 was 33.6%, by May it had fallen to 29 per cent and in August it was 23 per cent. The pro Labor Essential Report finds that the current two party preferred vote would mean that Labor, with only 44 per cent of the two party preferred vote, would face an absolute rout if any election was held now. News poll in September found that only 27 per cent were satisfied with the job Julie Gillard was doing as Prime Minister. Gee Kevin’s opinion rating outside the big Canberra boarding house had never gotten that low. Remember the shock horror headlines when his approval rating fell below 50 per cent to 48 per cent back in March 2010.

So go figure, the Australian people seemed to like Kevin more than his colleagues. They seemed to think that he worked pretty hard and he worked the people around him hard and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. They thought he was a wooden kind of character, but they respected his dedication to  his job.  It was a bit like a John Howard phenomena. They were happy with the flawed hard working individual in the job, because he was better than most of the other politicians who presented themselves for the job, and not only that he outclassed Tony Abbott on every occasion he faced him. Rudd had class, higher learning and a knowledge of the world that Abbott just didn’t grasp.

So gee, maybe Kevin wasn’t so bad. 'If he could lift our approval rating up to the point where I might hold my seat at the next election I might just make that parliamentary pension'.  'I have always wanted to have a crack at a Minister’s portfolio'. 'What’s the point too of just hanging on for another year with these crazy independents if there is a train wreck at the next election'.

'Of course we could always recruit Kristina into a Federal seat'. At least that’s what Mark Arbib and his mates are starting to think. But how mad is that? The woman who presided over the biggest electoral defeat in a generation could come in and take over from Julia who will almost certainly do the same.

Kevin. Hmm. Kevin. Kevin 2011. You've got to admit its got a ring to it.