Dear old Lindsay Tanner

Mr Tanner stressed yesterday his commentary was about the Labor Party not the federal government. While there was overlap, it was much broader than the current government. He would not comment on individuals or the Labor leadership.

Context is everything. Criticism isn't a bad thing. I haven't read the book but I think I need to. I think there is a malaise at the core of modern social democracy.

From what I heard on ABC News Radio this morning, Tanner made the point that many people who supported Rudd's ouster by Gillard in 2010 now acknowledge that it was a mistake. I agree. I'm one of them. That doesn't mean that we have to make amends by reinstating Rudd. What's done is done and all the king's horses and all the king's men ... etc. Besides, just as Rudd stupidly and uselessly squandered his political capital during his Prime Ministership, he maliciously and destructively squandered his moral capital after his ouster, firstly with the leaks to Laurie Oakes during the 2010 elections - which Gillard was on track to win comfortably before those leaks, remember that Abbott had not been performing all that well prior to those leaks - and with the constant way he manoeuvred to undermine Gillard from the time he became Foreign Minister until the leadership ballot last February.

I know I've been critical of Gillard and I don't resile from those criticisms. She has shown appalling political judgement and her lack of communication skills has made her seem more like an android. I'm listening to Lindsay Tanner right now and he talks of "poll driven panic". He's right! Look at the way the Abel Tasman fiasco was handled as a case in point. Poor political judgement and poll-driven panic have caused the Gillard government firstly to run scared from Tony Abbott and secondly to run scared from the Greens. I'm encouraged by the first glimmerings of a bit of steel in the spine of the Gillard government and I just hope it isn't too little too late.

I think Tanner has a point in his critique of the way policy has been formed within the Gillard government. He says that the Labor Party has ceased to be an incubator of reform and that things like disability reform have been outsourced to outside bodies like the Productivity Commission. I'm not qualified to comment on that in detail but he appears to have a point.

Certainly he deserves better than to be dismissed with a crack about "relevance deprivation syndrome".

Phil, I agree about Gillard handling the hung parliament well. She's got guts. I also believe that in, say, ten years down the track, this Parliament will have been seen to have been one of high achievement in spite of the poisonous political atmosphere in which it has had to function.

I hesitate, now, to get into crystal ball gazing. I vividly recall during the Fraser years that Labor people consoled each other by saying that "History will judge Fraser harshly!" And yet these days it's Fraser's erstwhile colleagues in the Liberal Party who judge the Fraser government harshly as a period of opportunities squandered and foregone, while it's Fraser's erstwhile political adversaries in the Labor Party who tend towards generosity and kindness in their assessment, not only of the man but also of his government. History is a funny beast. Who knows what generations to come will make of Rudd's ouster, the 2010 elections and the subsequent hung parliament and minority Labor government?

But it's undeniable that they've achieved a lot during their time in government. What's more my confidence in growing that the legislative architecture left by the Gillard government will survive the depredations of any subsequent Liberal government, whether led by Abbott or anybody else.

Great destination!! Pity about how we've had to get there.

Well yes Zombie, and the thing is, we have no idea how a hung parliament would have worked had the Libs won in the same circumstances. All the problems of the GFC, working with the Greens and Independants, not an easy situation for either of the major parties.

That's the point Darj, this Government has put through some tremendous reforms, that no Coalition Government will dare roll-back. Even despite Rudd, whose biggest problem is that he blinked when he shouldn't have and called a DD then ram the ETS right up Abbotts arsk.
The last thing that the PM and her Government needs at the moment, when finally, the Polls are turning, and she is inexorably gaining the ascendancy, we get another Former Government member who comes out publicly just to open old wounds, in the name of flogging his book.
The country needs this like a hole in the head.