Posted on 03/20/2013 8:40:36 PM PDT by naturalman1975
JULIA Gillard has called a caucus meeting for 4.30pm to allow a ballot for leadership positions, after Simon Crean's dramatic appeal to her to end the party's deadlock.
A defiant Prime Minister began question time with the announcement of a vote, then challenged the federal opposition: “Meanwhile, take your best shot.”
Tony Abbott then interrupted question time in an attempt to move a motion of no confidence in the government.
He was refused leave to move the motion, but attempted to suspend standing orders to allow the vote to test the support of the crossbench for the government.
Mr Abbott said the nation had been let down by a bad government, and Ms Crean's call for a vote to end the leadership deadlock showed the government was divided and unable to govern.
“For your party's good, you should go,” Mr Abbott said. “For our country's good, you should go.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
Simon Crean is an elder statesmen of the Australian Labor Party - he’s been in Parliament for over twenty years, was a Minister under four Prime Ministers, and lead his party as Leader of the Opposition a decade ago.
His withdrawal of support from the Prime Minister may very well be the end of her.
Is there an Aussie equivalent to the Tea Party or UKIP?
Oh - and he’s the son of a former Deputy Prime Minister. If I’m going to talk about his position in the ALP, that’s relevant.
Maybe she can retire to wherever Helen Clark ended up?
Not with any real power - honestly, I don’t think we need much of one - Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition, and the most likely man to be the next Prime Minister at the moment is a genuine staunch conservative. Some parts of his party aren’t - but he’s from the part that is.
Correction - it might now be more correct to say Tony Abbott is likely to be the next Prime Minister after whichever Labor member is willing to be the sacrificial lamb for the next few months.
Thanks for the insight.
Lotta subtlety down under. Not that silly “My friend, the gentleman from XYZ” stuff our Congress does.
But if she’s voted out the PM would still be a lefty, correct?
For at least a short period of time, yes. How short - that depends.
Initially, she would be replaced as Prime Minister by the new Leader of her Party - unless she decided to immediately ask the Governor General for an election (it would be reasonable for her to do so), in which case, she would remain caretaker Prime Minister until the election was held in about a month - on current polls, she and her party would be more or less annihilated at this point - and the conservative Liberal Party Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, would become Prime Minister.
Alternatively whoever replaces her as Labor leader and Prime Minister, might ask for an immediate election, in which case, they would be caretaker Prime Minister for a few weeks unless they pull off a miracle recovery - most likely, same end result - Tony Abbott as PM in a few weeks.
Thirdly, if she holds on, or whoever replaces her, might try to hold on until September in the hope of a massive reversal in the polls from their current position.
Fourthly - we have a minority government at the moment, where the Prime Minister is only holding office because of personal deals with some independents. If they chose not to continue their new deal with a new Labor Prime Minister, they could force an election, or even transfer their support to Tony Abbott, who would then become Prime Minister almost immediately. He would most likely immediately ask the Governor General for the election he's likely to win, in which case he would be caretaker PM until the election, and then Prime Minister of a new government.
I doubt that we’d face an election before the budget gets handed out. Whoever is the Labor leader will want to stuff the budget full of pork to try to bribe the voters.
If the government falls then it will be interesting to see how it will impact the budget process. The new government would not have much time to get a grip on the real state of the government’s finances before having to punch out a budget.
Abbott will need to have both guts and brains if he’s going to fix the damage done by 6 years of the Rudd-Gillard/Greens goat rodeo.
You’re probably right, but I can still see Julia going to the GG and asking for an election, rather than tendering her resignation.
“...your Mr. Abbott seems 1000% better than Obama.\”
Who doesn’t?
Good luck..I’ll check back in *our* morning. Need my beauty rest. Thanks so much for the info. G’nite.
a) she would be as popular with Labor as Eddie Obeid and Sir John Kerr combined, and
b) I don't think that she could legally do it (it's been years since I even glanced at that part of the constitution).
Kevin Rudd, a slippery Bill Clinton-like character, has just turned down the chance to challenge the Marxist Gillard. We Americans that treasure Australia as a potential ‘get out of jail free card’ could shift a bit more right in the next PM election. The ‘states’ of Australia have been moving more conservative since the left took the national reigns of power.
We Americans of dual citizenship.
So what happened?
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