Saturday 14 February 2015

Just before the demise of

Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party he had the rules changed so that all members of the party had some say in the electing the leader. I have no doubt at all that he agitated for this because he has an ego larger than the party itself. He almost certainly believed he was there for the long haul, that Labor was going to win the election again - and again. 
They didn't of course. The government changed. Rudd resigned and the Labor Party elected a new leader. Or did they? 
The new rules give 50% of the vote to the "rank and file" and 50% to the party room. 
The contest was eventually between two men. One was a well known and popular face, Anthony Albanese. The other was Bill Shorten, married to the daughter of the then Governor-General.
Shorten won with 52% of the vote. 
There was surprise expressed at the time and there were some rumblings that all might not have gone according to plan. The day before yesterday there were more rumblings. An internal inquiry found there were questions to answer about missing votes - votes that would have favoured Albanese.  He had been tipped to win.
Curiously this only made the headlines in one newspaper. There was a brief mention on a television news service website. The rest of the media was quiet, very quiet. 
What should have been headline news - and would have been headline news if the same rules applied to the present government - was almost ignored. It was ignored despite other questions about Bill Shorten, including a court case against him which was dismissed for "insufficient evidence" but which a number of knowledgeable people believe might have succeeded.
The reasons are clear. The media has been making much of  the present Prime Minister "losing" the vote in the party room and "losing" the confidence of his party. They have been claiming that the 61for 39 against vote is a shocking result. At the time of the election it was even stronger than that and support for him among party members at local level was at an all time high.
The media however sees it differently.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Either we have a lot of very stupid reporters or we have a lot of very corrupt reporters.

catdownunder said...

simple answer to that - corrupt - look at the latest story on the PM