After all the turmoil of yesterday, last night I ended up in a strange slump; feeling depressed about the days events. To be honest, despite what my brain rationally says about the differences between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in the leadership battle, I was rather disappointed to see Gillard victorious once again.
Now, I’m not normally one to spend too much time writing about leadership spills and the internal workings of the Labor, but this is something I feel like I need to get off my chest.
Lately, as we face a Labor annihilation at the 2013 election, I’ve been thinking a lot about about 2007. I’m not sure whether I’m looking at it through rose coloured glasses, but 2007 makes me think of a very exciting time. Whilst at the time I certainly was not a Labor man (a member of and campaigning for the Greens at the election) I felt a sense of euphoria at the thought the of a new Government. Howard was about to fall, and we were finally going to get action on climate change, a change in asylum seeker policies, and the abolition of Workchoices, as well as many other changes I was hoping for. Things were finally looking up in Australian politics.
And I am pretty sure I am not the only one who felt this way at the time. It felt the whole country (well at least a lot of it) was ready for change. We wanted not just new policies, but some new politics as well – to use the Labor slogan – ‘new leadership’. And whether we like it or not, Kevin Rudd embodied that new leadership, and that feeling for change.
Today, looking back at 2007, and the tatters of what’s left of the ALP’s primary vote, and what will soon be the tatters of the ALP caucus, that feeling has completely disappeared. The last few years have seen that hope from 2007 slowly eroded away to be replaced by a bitterness and sense of despair. We’ve not only seen a reversion back to the very sorts of policies we thought we had finally defeated (asylum seekers, welfare policy, taxation (i.e. the mining tax), and in many ways climate change), but a denigration of the very hope for change that was built in 2007. The sense of moving forward in 2007 has reverted to one of going back to years of the Howard Government.
And what I think many don’t see is that that sense of moving forward, that hope, went well beyond the hopes for good policy; it also connected to the man who was the leader bringing about the change. That means that whilst Gillard and her people have worked hard to discredit, do the numbers and outmanoeuvre Rudd (something which I think they have done very well), I feel that the community has seen an attack on a person that help hopes and dreams up in within them. More importantly, through the significant changes to many of the key policies of 2010, Gillard also brought a reversal of the very reason for the hope in the first place – the reason people wanted change.
Now of course, no one can argue that Rudd was the perfect Prime Minister, nor that he hasn’t used similar sorts of tactics since his disposal. With the stories that have come out over the past three years, we could easily argue that his continued popularity isn’t particularly logical. Yet, it makes total sense that people want that feeling back – we were not ready to let the feelings of 2007 leave us, and we want it back now.
On the day of Kevin Rudd’s demise in 2010 I was working on a Greens campaign in the ACT. Throughout the day I spoke to many people from many political persuasions (to be fair, most Greens and Labor people). One of the strongest senses I got was a feeling of sadness, and regret for what just happened. For most it wasn’t logical – it was the loss of a man whose policies we didn’t think a great deal of. But what that showed was a sense of connection lost – a connection to a person who brought such excitement a few years earlier. Through her moves, I don’t think Julia Gillard, and now by extension the ALP, have ever been able to bring those feelings along with them and I think that may be one of the reasons why the ALP continues to struggle today.