Thunderbirds Are Go

It is like the longest and most painful episode of The Thunderbirds ever.

The crises are just as contrived, the characters are equally wooden and occasionally the strings are visible.

But last week we had a rare glimpse at the faceless factional fixers who are actually pulling the strings of the lead players.

After two years of government lurching from one faux war to another, the Labor warlords made Kevin Rudd their target.

One can understand their anxiety and willingness to despatch a Prime Minister in a brutal display of their factional power. After all, Mr Rudd refused to recognise their greatness through ministerial preferment. Some of these powerful figures were left languishing on the backbench or in junior portfolios – positions considered beneath their undoubted talents.

Kevin Rudd survived while he had the public confidence but, as the maladministration of the Labor Government became increasingly evident, the ruthless Labor machine kicked into gear.

Now was the time for payback under the guise of giving the Party a shot at winning the next election. Drafting a willing accomplice in Julia Gillard, the unprecedented betrayal of a first-term Prime Minister began.

When the factional forces combined against him, Rudd had less than a dozen supporters and decided not to contest the leadership in order to avoid further humiliation.

Now the process of redefining history has commenced in an attempt to distance Julia Gillard from her predecessor. It should make for an interesting display.

After two years of being the ‘2IC’ in the Rudd ‘kitchen cabinet’, Gillard claims the government had lost its way.

After two years of defending senseless programs and waste, she wants us to believe it had nothing to do with her. The spin doctors expect us to forget that Gillard was responsible for the greatest and most expensive mismanagement of a government program in history – the rorted Building the Education Revolution – where billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted.

After years of defending, deploying and denying the failures of this government, we are now expected to believe that Julia Gillard was not a part of the problem.

I agree with Ms Gillard that the government has lost its way. I agree that the policy failures and their negative impacts on our nation are too many to list. I agree that their few achievements are modest and mostly spin, but I cannot accept her playing Pontius Pilate and washing her hands of the decisions she made.

Ms Gillard’s ascension to the leadership of the Labor Party is a desperate attempt to hide the failures of this government under the political corpse of Kevin Rudd.

It is a muscle-flexing exercise by the hidden men of Labor who have demonstrated once again who really pulls the strings.

The Australian people deserve more from their government than a puppet show and instinctively know that changing the lead puppet will never change the flawed factional culture of the Labor Party.