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Steve Marshall and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - Source: ONE News -
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Two years ago I sat with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the cockpit of a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules over the Papua New Guinea jungle. The Australia-PNG relationship had hit the skids during the John Howard era and Rudd was visiting Australia's nearest neighbour to put things right.
The locals treated Rudd like a God. One villager even named her newborn son after him, Kevin Rudd Junior. This was when Rudd's popularity was at an all time high, but now, 18 months later, the Australian PM is finished, if you believe most political commentators.
Few voters want to hear Rudd, let alone believe him. It is clear voters now see through Rudd after the latest Neilson survey shows Labor heading for a landslide defeat in the federal election later this year.
Rudd has lost the ability to sell himself and his policies. Two months ago he convinced Australian State and Territory leaders to sign up to a health reform plan that was supposed to be the centrepiece of his re-election.
Now, the reform looks like another half baked Rudd scheme, like the new super tax on mining companies designed to raise the billions of dollars needed to erase the massive deficit Rudd lumped Australia with trying to avoid the GFC.
Rudd's failed policies and schemes are building up. Fuel watch, grocery watch, his Asia Forum, emissions trading, Insulation, free solar hot water systems, green loans, more Aboriginal housing, stop whaling, halve homelessness, tackling boat people arrivals. The list is growing.
Rudd's rapid downfall has been astonishing. I've never seen an Australian PM lose so much credibility, so fast. Even Rudd's diplomacy, which I saw first-hand when I accompanied him on his trip around PNG, has deserted him.
His once cuddly relationship with China is now in tatters after it was revealed Rudd called China's leaders "f**kers" who are were to "rat f**k Australia" in the aftermath of the failed Emissions Trading Scheme meeting in Copenhagen.
A recent essay on Rudd by an experienced Australian journalist, paints the PM as a meticulous man who is privately foul mouthed, rude and disliked by many who work with him.
A brave Labor party would ditch Rudd now, and give the party reins to his deputy Julia Gillard. In 2007, in the lead up to the last election, John Howard was struggling with voter support in his campaign for re-election. The Coalition failed to relieve him as leader and it cost them dearly, with Rudd and Labor romping to victory.
If Rudd remains at the Labor helm, the party's last ditch hope is to prove that Rudd is a better man to lead Australia than Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, the lycra wearing, religious fitness fanatic.
As one commentator put it, the question for voters is: Will Abbott be worse?
The problem for Labor is: Is worse even possible?
Read more of Steve Marshall's articles.
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