The blow-dryer story has long ago been debunked by people who were there; it
was a silly Murdoch beatup.
He was very close to signing off on a deal with the mining companies - this is
according to Twiggy Forrest, who should know.
He made a big mistake in dropping the CPRS, but that was on the advice of
Gillard and Swan, who were taking their orders from Arbib and Bitar. I think
he should have gone to a double dissolution, but that's just me, and I'm nobody.
And Gillard again caved in to political pressure from the pokie industry and
backed away from her agreement with Wilkie. The backdown was made worse
by the fact that Wilkie's scheme was for lowering the maximum bets that could be made, which most experts agree is the way to go, while Gillard substituted the lumsy and unworkable mandatory pre-commitment, which had little support from people involved directly in dealing with problem gamblers. She has also weakened in the face of pressure from the mining companies, and the tax rate as currently proposed will barely cover the compensation payments promised. Her tax is less tan Rudd was holding out for and was close to getting.
As leader of the government at the time, Rudd can take credit for seeing us through the GFC. The BER school building campaign was 97% successful to date; the insulation scheme less so, because it was rushed, and that is the fault of Rudd. Blame him for that, although Peter Garrett had to take the fall. Rudd was at least smart enough to see that keeping the economy in surplus was less important than stimulating the economy, but Gillard, bowing this time to pressure from Abbott & Co., is giving preference to bringing the budget into surplus again, when in truth, more stimulation is still needed. The mining companies and big industrials are doing fine, thank you, but the rest of the community is suffering.
Rudd definitely had problems with the public service because of his demands, and with his own staff because he simply wore them out. Those things would have to change. Whether that's possible is something we wouldn't know until it happens.
Labor has a real dilemma - Gillard is the better parliamentary performer, but she
is disliked and mistrusted by a majority of the electorate, and for this her own poor political judgment and inability to communicate are largely to blame. She has the dubious honour of being the first politician in our history to knife her leader in the back to get the top job, and that is part of her own poor judgment. It was going to come to her in time anyway. Just like Malcolm Fraser, who did a dirty deal to grab power before his time,
she has never been able to get past it in the public mind, no matter how much she might
achieve otherwise.
There can be no doubt that Tony Abbott would win the next election even though the majority of the electorate doesn't like him either, and he may well not have a sound working majority. If she can't score even against Abbott, that says a lot about her unpopularity, because many conservatives don't really like him either. Rudd in turn is disliked by the factions who rule the caucus, and by many of his colleagues, but he can win elections.
The best scenario I can see is that Rudd will get his old job back, Abbott's figures will nosedive as a result, and the Coalition will dump Abbott and replace him again with Turnbull. Then people on both sides of the spectrum will vote for Turnbull, and we can all go about our business as normal.
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