Gillard keeps job
"Thank goodness for that ... I would have soooo missed those dulcet tones."
Featured commentUPDATE 7pm: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has kept her job.
Rival Kevin Rudd refused to participate in the snap leadership ballot called by Ms Gillard earlier today.
Ms Gillard and deputy leader Wayne Swan were elected unopposed.
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EARLIER: Australian government MPs are to vote in the next hour over whether or not to have a new prime minister.
Labor Party MPs go in to an emergency caucus meeting at 6:30pm New Zealand time to vote on the leadership of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Ms Gillard attained the premiership after a similar “spill” against predecessor Kevin Rudd, who had faced a run of bad poll results in 2008-09 before being dumped in June that year.
Her polling over the past year has been worse than Mr Rudd’s ever was, and although Mr Rudd appeared to be in the running to take over the leadership again despite his reputed unpopularity with his colleagues, he ruled this out this afternoon and it is not clear whether there is another candidate for Ms Gillard's opponents.
Sitting prime ministers are seldom deposed by their MPs in most Westminster democracies but Australia has dumped three since 1970: John Gorton, Bob Hawke and Mr Rudd.
In each case the fallout has been further disunity, and Australian National University in Canberra political marketing researcher Andrew Hughes was quoted on Bloomberg as saying any change this evening will only work if it is not accompanied by “a back-stabbing bloodbath”.
That, though, would also not be within the Australian political tradition.
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Comments and questions9
Thank goodness for that ... I would have soooo missed those dulcet tones.
And so good that the electorate gets to tell her what they really think.
Maybe.
Smart move Kevin, but your party is history.
Hey, love that pic of Julia and John. That's more than an affectionate kiss; they's plucking each other's tonsils out.
So you can oppose gay marriage and be politically successful. Who would have thought.
And so once again Labor Australia have shown that they couldn't organise a drink in a brewery, let alone something more complex. Luckily for us NZ Labour are so much better organised...
Do we have actually have a NZ Labour Party leader?
Sure we do. You know, whatshisname, always wears a shirt, that guy with all the money kept safely offsore out of reach of the IRD.
It's so unfortunate that the NZLP is better organised than the ALP. It means the NZLP is a rather boring organisation of asexual females and house trained males. Most of the ALP women seem to have been cougars, even Gillard a few years ago. Its impossible to imagine a politician named Nicola Roxon in NZ Politics. Also its unlikely a NZLP politicians after years of allnight drinking and partying with the boys in Canberra, would sacrifice her career for her children.
The popularity of Gillard here seems mainly because of the wrong perception she was a gay. Just as Hillary Clinton's popularity in kiwiland was based on the questionable view she was a militant feminist peacenick to the left of Obama.
Most of the great ALP politicians would never have got past one three year term as a backbencher in NZ, ie Bob Hawke, Keating, Lantham, Kevin Rudd. The idea of a hetro 140 IQ male in NZ politics would be obscence to NZLP.
'Gillard Keeps Job' .... until the next election, then it's on your bike.