Kevin Rudd is back

You may or may not have noticed that we're having a Federal Election. You may or may not also have noticed that Kevin Rudd is back!

See here.

PS It's funny.

Kevin Rudd gone

You heard it here, 593rd. Well, I don't think I could claim first in good conscience, do you? Here, for example, a New Zealand paper reports on it.

Credit to Andrew Bolt, who called it on May 31.

When you break promises, such as canning an Emissions Trading Scheme designed to confront 'the greatest moral challenge of our time'; when you make a lot of your Christian credentials and get publicly exposed as a swear bear, when you invite an ill-thought out fight with the mining lobby; it's hardly surprising that it might come back and bite you.

What is surprising is how quickly it's happened. Just over six months ago, Rudd was unassailable.

UPDATE 1: The SMH report.

Did Kevin Rudd have any friends at all?

UPDATE 2: Nicole Starling gives the right perspective on this.

K Rudd

Kevin Rudd, surely not long for this political world.

When left-leaning David Marr kicks off an article in the Good Weekend with a quote from Prime Minister Rudd, full of various brands of expletives, and proceeds to ask whether the man is driven by anger, you know that the press gallery is about to turn. As Andrew Bolt documents.

The SMH letter writers have their say as well, and it doesn't look good for our PM.

What surprises me is the number of Christians who were willing to take his profession of church allegiance at face value, without asking deeper questions about visits to strip clubs and the emerging evidence of a foul temper matched by equally foul language.

I'm disappointed because he seemed to offer a more humane response to asylum seekers arriving by boat; but the detention centres around the place are full to overflowing and the rhetoric has turned to how tough the government is being on these people. That's a flip-flop.

Rudd opposes gay marriage

There'll be a disproportionate amount of noise about this, but the Ruddmeister is right when he says:

As well as his private instructions, Mr Rudd issued a stern public message yesterday before the factional meetings.

He emphasised that Labor’s policy opposed gay marriage. The party considered marriage a union between man and a woman.

That's right, and not something that would be changed by reconsideration.

Resisting global warmening

Annabel Crabb critiques the latest steps:

Mercilessly, the Prime Minister spelled out the details of the tough new measures.

First, there would be a year's delay. Ouch!

More in the SMH.

As she says, "Bring on...the comfy chair!"

Fuelwatch

Not going to say anything about the economics of it, but John's nailed Kevin Rudd here.

Well done Kev

Kevin offers an opinion to the Chinese:

UNFAZED by the growing diplomatic unrest, Kevin Rudd has told the Chinese in their own language there are "significant" human rights problems in Tibet.

Speaking in Mandarin at Peking University yesterday, the Prime Minister said Australians were concerned about Tibet and that he would push the issue during talks with the Premier, Wen Jiabao, today and the President, Hu Jintao, on Saturday.

Mr Rudd, the first Western leader to speak Mandarin, said Australia recognised Chinese sovereignty over Tibet "but we also believe it is necessary to recognise there are significant human rights problems in Tibet".

From here.

Kevin Rudd

I like him a lot. He seems, so far, to be a man of integrity who is trying to focus on doing what he has promised.

But Alan Ramsey, whose hard-baked cynicism and vitriol is sometimes so appalling that he is almost unreadable, is almost certainly speaking truth here.

Rudd—just a regular guy?

Last week the papers were full of the news that Federal Opposition leader Kevin Rudd had visited a New York strip club in 2003. He did not, however, remember if he had indulged in inappropriate behaviour because by his own admission he had been too drunk on the night to recall anything he'd done.

On Friday night Craig Schafer asked me to speak at a men's dinner at Springwood-Winmalee Anglican on the subject "How Would Jesus Vote?" Chatting to some of the people afterwards we got to talking about how some of the people defending Kevin used the defence that the strip-club incident had helped, since it showed that Kevin was just a regular guy.

I don't know how many regular guys go to New York to meet Rupert Murdoch and while over there, get drunk and visit a strip club. But as Craig (another Craig) at the dinner said, "My next door neighbour's a regular guy. If I wanted a regular guy as Prime Minister I'd vote for him. I don't want a regular guy running the country!"

I'm sorry it spent so much time in the news, though. The story reflects badly on both Kevin Rudd and whoever leaked it.