With Rudd gone, Libs are on a loser
With Rudd gone, Libs are on a loser
- From: The Australian
- June 25, 2010
- 106 comments
HERE is my prediction and I am well aware I will be held to account for it. Julia Gillard won’t just win the next election, she will increase Labor’s majority.
Kevin Rudd was Labor’s biggest problem, not the policies his government has enacted, not the personnel in his parliamentary team. The published polls and the internal party polling all showed Rudd had become a drag on Labor’s vote.
It is a big call to depose a first-term prime minister, but it was the right thing for Gillard to do.
We all knew even if Rudd won the next election he wasn’t going to last very long in the aftermath. At least this way Gillard is letting the Australian people decide who they want to run the country after the election – her or Tony Abbott.
Of course the first few weeks of Gillard’s prime ministership are going to be critical to how she performs at the next election.
New ocean’ will split Africa”
New ocean ‘will split Africa’
Posted
British scientists say a new ocean is developing in Africa that will eventually split the continent in two.
In 2005, a 60-kilometre crack opened up in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
In 10 days it reached a width of eight metres and has been expanding ever since.
A University of Bristol seismologist working in the Afar region, James Hammond, says the split will happen over about 10 million years.
Rio declares RSPT dead
Let’s hope he is right. Neville Gillmore. Rio declares RSPT dead Friday June 25, 2010, 5:00 pm The head of Rio Tinto in Australia says the mining super profits tax, in its previous form, is dead. Sam Walsh made the comments at the opening of the company’s new operations Continue Reading →
Change came even faster than the plotters knew
Change came even faster than the plotters knew
PHILLIP COOREY
June 25, 2010
FOR months, a group of Labor senators who did not like Kevin Rudd had been meeting regularly for dinner.
On Tuesday night, the location was La Capanna restaurant in Kingston. Senators David Feeney, Steve Hutchins and Mark Bishop were among those at the table.
There was the usual grumbling about the boss but no serious talk of a coup. With two days of Parliament left, there was no momentum to roll the leader and Julia Gillard was not openly agitating.
The next day, the mood changed. A story in the Herald revealed Mr Rudd had charged his trusted chief-of-staff, Alister Jordan, with gauging support for the leader in the wake of bad polls. It was seen by those looking for an excuse as a sign the leader did not trust Ms Gillard’s pledges of loyalty.
At 9.30am on Wednesday, Senator Feeney, from the Victorian Right, and Mark Arbib, from the NSW Right, asked Ms Gillard to challenge.
Ms Gillard, also cranky at the Herald’s revelations, asked Labor’s veteran fixer, John Faulkner, to organise a meeting with Mr Rudd. They had a hostile exchange before question time.
Big Oil plays jobs cards as it fights offshore=drilling moratorium
Workers of the Gulf Unite!
Big Oil plays jobs card as it fights offshore-drilling moratorium 16
Feel our pain: Drilling proponents arguing for a temporary injunction against the ban say it could cost more than 10,000 people their jobs if you count everyone on shore whose income is linked to the 33 affected deepwater rigs. Government attorneys counter that until they know what caused the Deepwater Horizon explosion, they can’t risk another underwater blowout. A federal judge will decide today or tomorrow whether to grant the temporary injunction. [UPDATE: On Tuesday, the judge granted the injunction and blocked the ban.]
Reasonably high chance BP files for bahkruptcy
The final figure will be enormous, I heard a figure of $42Bn early on.
‘Reasonably high’ chance BP files for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy expert Peter S. KaufmanPhoto: Gordian GroupThere is a reasonably high chance that BP could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the next few years, or even months, and the result would be an “absolute horror” for the government, according to a bankruptcy expert.
Peter S. Kaufman, the President of investment bank Gordian Group and head of the firm’s Restructuring and Distressed M&A practice, told me that if he had BP’s ear, “I’d advise them to explore the option of bankruptcy.” If he had the government’s ear, he’d tell them to stop berating the company to the point where BP would find it appealing to use bankruptcy to limit its liabilities.