Given that the Prime Minister has confirmed today that the same ministers will be conducting the same negotiations with the mining industry, for the same $12 billion outcome as before today’s unprecedented political assassination of the former prime minister, what policy change has occurred? Or is the change, what many suspect a new face but still same old Labor, same old tax?

I thank the same old Deputy Leader of the Opposition for her question…

…

And wish her well as she serves her third leader. Read more »

Today’s Question Time was as the same as all the ones this week: Kevin Rudd completely untroubled, the ALP front bench looking quite happy, sand the opposition punching away without any force or reason. The oppositions asked lame questions about the RSPT, and Rudd dealt with them easily (not as easily as a better performer could, but still easily). The Government was obviously not worried about the RPT too greatly because it asked a couple Dorothy Dixers on the issue, with a few other ones – such as health thrown in for good measure. It very much had the end of parliamentary sitting period fell about it. 

But its all irrelevant, because this evening it was reported that moves were underway to oust Kevin Rudd as PM and replace him with Julia Gillard. The word is that the Victoria and SA rightwing factions are behind the move, and the AWU: namely Stephen Conroy, Bill Shorten, David Feeney, Fitzgibbon (and throw in Mark Arbib from NSW). The only problem of course is that Julia Gillard doesn't want to challenge. This is because she is not an idiot. Read more »

This morning the latest Newspoll was released. Instead of showing the ALP vote continuing to fall, as had been predicated by all and sundry in the news ltd stable of the media, it showed the ALP increasing its lead in two party preferred from 51-49 to 52-48. In essence this means nothing – a 1 percent change is statistical noise; but nonetheless it was an increase. The ALP Primary vote had not changed, but the Liberal’s Primary had gone down 2 percent. The Nationals increased 1%, the Greens’ vote fell 1% to 15% and “others” went up 2% to 10%.

So how did The Australian run the story given they had keyed up everyone to expect this could be Kevin Rudd’s last poll? Read more »

I always think the opposition starts to struggle when their questions in Question Time all come out of the same phrase book. Yeah they invariably will use the “Great big new tax” line, but today they went that step too far. Each question to Kevin Rudd on the RSPT was prefaced with quote from “real” mining executives/CEO, and then ended with the questioner asking Rudd when would he dump this “really bad tax”. Read more »

Today’s Question Time began with a condolence motion on the deaths of the two Australian sappers who were killed in action last week in Afghanistan. As is often the case, such moments brings out the best in the house.

In the last two years in such cases Rudd would make a pretty impassioned address to the house (and indeed he did this time) which would be countered by the Leader of the Opposition trying to outdo him in the impassioned stakes. Brendan Nelson would find sadness in every nook of his speech, and wring it for all it was worth; Malcolm Turnbull would invariably quote the Bible (King James Version) and would do his best Churchill meets Kennedy impression. Tony Abbott today however took a rather different tack. He was quite brief, didn’t get too emotional about it all, and sat down. Read more »