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Will Australia have a new Prime Minister by August?
We came back from our holiday on Saturday just in time to hear the announcement of the next election on August 22. Will Julia Gillard continue to be our Prime Minister or will she break the record for the fifth shortest serving Prime Minister? Since taking over as PM on June 24th, she has made some great speeches but I have not really seen much achievements in her action.
Her main achievement was supposed to be the quick resolution of the pesky RSPT problem. While initially seen as a “win” for the new leadership team, I was a little skeptical when I saw how happy the mining magnates were with the deal. As this is a zero sum game, if the mining industry think they have won, this means that the other side must have lost and true enough, after a week or so, it was found that the government has lost to the tune of $7.5 billion! Wayne Swan got his numbers wrong again – based on his flawed calculations, he thought the government only lost $1.5 billion at the time the deal was struck.
Our treasurer now claims this $7.5 billion shortfall can be easily be made up for by rising commodity prices and/or volumes. However, from what I read in Eureka report, iron ore production capacities have been increasing globally and demand from China is not growing so it looks likely that supply will exceed demand in the next few years. We all know from the price of bananas what happens when supply exceeds demand – prices definitely do NOT go up!
I also don’t know how much I can trust what Julia says. She repeatedly told the media that she has no intention on challenging Kevin Rudd but her actions on June 24th was the complete opposite to what she said. Not only did she kick him out, she did so in the most ruthless way. Even people like me who never liked Kevin much felt sorry for him. He was our Prime Minister and I think his removal could have been done a little more respectfully. I believe what goes around, comes around. If Julia can do this to Kevin, she should not be surprised if she loses her leadership in an equally unceremonious way. If Labour loses this election, I doubt if she will be retained as the leader of the Labour party.
She also told the media that there will be no early elections. I remember her saying “there is plenty of governing to do before the elections”, yet she called the election in less than a month after she took over as Prime Minister, which makes me wonder if she is doing what she believes in or doing the bidding of some faceless group of ALP men? It looks like the people who put her in power are not confident she can prove herself as a worthy Prime Minister, so they better call an election quickly before the people find out!
The polls currently indicate that Julia is the favourite to win. However, if Marion can get eliminated on satay sauce in Masterchef, I don’t think there are any guarantees for Julia either. Perhaps the Liberal Party should persuade Peter Costello to take on a key leadership role on their team. To me, this would be a winning strategy for Liberal as the Australian people won’t have to chose between two unproven leadership teams.
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