{"id":6809,"date":"2012-02-27T19:41:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T09:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6809"},"modified":"2012-02-27T19:50:21","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T09:50:21","slug":"kevenge-of-the-nerds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6809","title":{"rendered":"Kevenge of the Nerds"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Previously…on AusPol:<\/em><\/p>\n

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Australia is a democratic country with a two party majority:\u00a0 the conservative Liberal Party and the slightly less conservative Labor Party.<\/p>\n

Australia lived and thrived in economic prosperity under Liberal Party legend John Howard in the late Nineties and early Two Thousands.\u00a0 Howard had endured plenty of peaks and troughs in his tenure as Australian Prime Minister but after winning four elections, he had entered Liberal Party folklore, much in the same way that Ronald Reagan is revered by Republicans in America.\u00a0 He could do no wrong.\u00a0 After beating Paul Keating to get into office, he saw off challenges from Mark Latham, Simon Crean and Kim Beazley over three re-election campaigns.\u00a0 He did this by creating divisive wedge issues just before an election which made him stand out from his opposition counterpart in an issue that he manufactured.\u00a0 This ensured that he would set the agenda leading into an election and he was wise enough to play to his base that responded to events such as Children Overboard and The War In Iraq by voting him in a record four times in office.<\/p>\n

After a string of failed opposition leaders, the Australian Labor Party turned to Kevin Rudd.\u00a0 Rudd saw the mistakes the other ALP leaders made.\u00a0 They all positioned themselves as being ‘Not Howard’ which is not enough to an election, much in the same way John Kerry couldn’t beat George Bush in 2004 by being ‘Not Bush’.\u00a0 Rudd immediately set out and created his own agenda.\u00a0 He immediately stated he would apologize to Aboriginals, create a national broadband network, roll out a carbon emissions trading scheme and repeal the controversial Workchoices.\u00a0 This bamboozled John Howard who has never heard of the Internet, didn’t know what climate change was and was stuck with the other two because he was famous for refusing to apologize to Aboriginals and introducing Workchoices in the first place.\u00a0 Still, unphazed, Howard went about finding a wedge issue.\u00a0 But Rudd was ready for him.\u00a0 Anything that Howard tried to raise as a political trump card, Rudd agreed with him.\u00a0 They shared a similar foreign policy.\u00a0 A similar view on gay marriage.\u00a0 A similar view on tax relief for working families.\u00a0 Rudd outplayed Howard and handily won the 2007 election by a massive margin – what is referred to as a Ruddslide.<\/p>\n

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Two years into his term as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd was ousted by his own party<\/a>.\u00a0 Rudd had a reputation for being a workaholic who micromanaged, was tempermental and wasn’t open to ideas from his colleagues.\u00a0 Although they tolerated this during the initial honeymoon period, as soon as his popularity dipped in the polls, the party took action.\u00a0 Y’see, Labor is a weird, fucked up political party that almost operate like the Freemasons.\u00a0 Internally, there are clandestine factions, union leaders and kingmakers who hold influence that isn’t immediately apparent in their official job title.\u00a0 ‘Faceless men’ removed Kevin Rudd from power and installed Julia Gillard as the new, unelected prime minister of Australia.<\/p>\n

After establishing herself for a couple of months, Gillard called an election and went to the polls.\u00a0 She would be running against Tony Abbott as leader of the opposition.\u00a0 Abbott is likely the most rightwing leader the party has ever had.\u00a0 Although not quite<\/em> as extreme as today’s Republican presidential candidate, he still appears to have a values system based on a worldview from the 1950s or thereabouts.\u00a0 It was clear the country didn’t want Abbott but they also didn’t like the way Gillard assumed power either.\u00a0 The election produced a stalemate.\u00a0 Neither party got enough votes to assume leadership so Gillard retained after brokering an alliance with four independant candidates.\u00a0 This created an uneasy, gridlocked parliament where Labor are beholden to the special interest needs of the independants to stay in power.\u00a0 Rudd meanwhile, stayed on in the party and was given the foreign minister position.<\/p>\n

As the next eighteen months went by, neither Gillard nor Abbott got any more popular with voters.\u00a0 Gillard actually slumped in the polls, with voters explicitly wishing for Rudd to return as leader of the party.\u00a0 For his own part, Rudd never categorically denied that he would one day assume a fresh leadership challenge.<\/p>\n