Honestly, do we have so little actually going on here in Australia that we need to dissect even more completely than was done 3 years ago how Julia Gillard took over the leadership of the Labor Party from Kevin Rudd?

I mean, sure, a sitting leader of a party currently holding government had never before been replaced. But beyond that technical first, do we really need this much examination of the event. Who gives a shit if she asked her staff to prepare an acceptance speech beforehand, or what sort of polling she used and who she presented it to? To me the whole thing smacks of a beat up by the ABC and others in the press who aren’t interested in doing more real investigative journalism on something like (say) why we would want to spend $300 MM on a fairy tale like carbon capture and storage.

The truth is, Kevin Rudd backed out of several key commitments that were part of the platform he ran on, wasting the highest approval ratings of a government in a long time, and was so tone deaf to his colleagues that he lost their support. This was obvious due to his patently obvious shock and tears at the press conference after his removal. He was replaced as party head (and therefore as Prime Minister) by another through the open and well tested practice of a spill in caucus. All the rest is fairly irrelevant at this point.

Now, if we want to talk about the failings of Julia Gillard and the current government, let’s do that. But let’s stop wasting a lot of time examining a four year old leadership spill.