I don’t think he lives with his son Dave and it’s not much of a secret.
For what it’s worth I thought he was a brilliant leader. I am still a ‘fan’

Now sure, it’s a given that the Liberals are compelled by populism but the Greens? It’s hard to see why Labor would be intent on freezing out prospective senate partners and antagonising them by entertaining ‘select media’ and industry stakeholders while keeping non-Labor MPs in the dark.

Hugh Mackay, more reliably informed about Australians’ attitudes and beliefs on big issues than any politician I’ve observed, gave the PM the green light some days ago to take a statesman-like lead on strategic and painful climate measures - saying Australians are ready to takes the hits to deal with climate.

The issue is wheteher the PM has the personal imagination and bottle to grab this chance. Or are we faced with a pale shadow of the rather more imaginative Whitlam government, brought down in this case by lack of vison reaching even to the head?

Well lets make sure that there are transparent declaration of donations to the Labour party from each of the top 10000 polluters.

What a joke is this policy but it guarantees unlimited funds to the labour party

Swaggie

Ali Moore is no business slouch, and no slouch generally - witness the Kerry Obrien-esque opener to Cardinel Pell earlier this week along the lines of ‘have you stopped beating the victims of se*ual abuse yet?’ Took her a while but the hammer was in there.

But then we get what is oh so apparently ‘nice and tricky’ PM Rudd last night. Hello …$500M carbon capture sequestration fund, corporate welfare, Kohler piece Inside Business last Sunday re effective CCS repudiation by Exxon Mobil Australia chief Mark Nolan, World Today piece earlier the same day with scathing critique of Prof Mark Diesendorf about discrimination to renewables.

Nary a mention to Rudd by Ali of this real bodgy, real fraud on the public interest, the real pandering to Big Coal Big Polluters, indeed Big NSW Privatisation???

PM Rudd is indeed seen with his ‘nice’ glow still, and his smarts are respected. But both of these are very small steps from morphing into his generational doppleganger - John Howard - famous in 2001 for the Shane Stone descriptor as (not ‘nice and smart’ but ) ‘mean and tricky’.

That’s the point of the Van Onselen piece about hard swearing loud mouth Rudd in private. He’s mean, not nice. He’s cunning not smart. That was the subtext of the Rudd I saw on tv last night - a John Howard style smart arse - and Ali Moore dropped the ball for the sake of reflected glory of a high status interview. But good one on Pell all the same.

Keep going Senator Milne - a breath of honest intellect, more than I can say for the PM.

Why not just put a ALP brand on his forehead and be done with it? Christine Milne and the Green Party or Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society or other financially independent groups are, and have always been, the ones to really listen to on public policy around environmental sustainability and resource use. Every time.

Any group or body that doesn’t declare it’s funding sources like the right wing think tanks is just as suspect, because they are obviously hiding their biases.

Knowing that the Senate was not going to pass the Bill; he should at least, have produced a document that was inspirational. A ‘this is how we could do it, if only the Bast*rds in the Senate would allow it.’ He could have gone for broke and made the senators look fuddy duddy and reactionary.

Andrew, worse luck, has it right. (Andrew, this should comfort you: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Labor (without a ‘U’
voter who is busy retching on her cheese and Chardonnay.) Rudd is re-known for his ambition but what good is that if you haven’t got the ba*ls to enforce it.

I am confident that under his leadership the following will have taken place:-
1. The Murray Darling rivers will be dead.
2. The environment will be totally stu*fed.
3. All forms of contraception will be outlawed.
4. The Republic will be proscribed.
5. Atheism will be knackered.
6. All forms of criticism of the government will be made illegal.
7. Books, movies and all forms of creativity will be torched.
8. Art Galleries, under pain of death, will show only depictions of cardboard boxes. Tree trunks can be positively sensual. No depictions of nudity will be allowed. All forms of good taste will be frowned upon. Gladioli flowers will be on everyones’ mantle-piece. Cold showers will be mandatory, the number of AFL and other clean sports teams will have quadrupled and TV will allow no swearing. “Kimilsungism” will be re-crafted in order to adulate Kevin Rudd. And Australians will welcome Kim’s son, Kim Jong-il every year by multitudes of grateful Ozzies, their hearts swelling with joy, as they chant the ‘Song of the pig’, oi oi oi!