In a turn of events best described as fascinatingly familiar, totes dramatic and really very embarrassing for everyone involved, Canberra is ablaze with a rash of rumours and reports that have flared up again (even though they never went away) suggesting that Kevin Rudd and his backers will make another move on Julia Gillard’s leadership of The Labor Party sometime this week.
Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe TGIFriday; it’s too soon to call it, maybe. Who knows? It’s all part of the fun and mortification that is #AusPol; a lifesize game of Risk where all the world’s a stage and everyone is choking on their little plastic horses because they don’t know what is actually happening anymore.
Reports have recently surfaced that Rudd’s backers, working title The Happy Little Vegemites, have raised the prospect of another leadership challenge with the caucus before week’s end. Parliament sits for the last time tomorrow [Spring Break!] before resuming on May 14th for the federal budget, so if something’s going to happen it needs to happen now before we all lose interest again.
Today Rudd toldThe Daily Telegraph that “Unlike others who have used the phrase, when I say will not challenge for the leadership, I mean it. That means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or beyond.” If we’ve learnt anything from Life and motivational quotes posted in Instagram, it’s that actions speak louder than words and people mince both their words and their actions all the time, especially when vehemently denying something they’ve literally told the same fibs about before.
With that in mind, here are Five Completely Tenuous Tell-Tale Signs That Kevin Rudd May or May Not Challenge Julia Gillard For The Labor Leadership Before Spring Break[ers hits theatres, whenever that may be].
1. BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH
“Who is it in the press that tweets @ me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all Justin Bieber music, cry “@KevinRuddMP!” Speak, Kevin is turn’d to hear” is a tweet Shakespeare would’ve written were he a political journalist reporting from Canberra in the last week; provided that the idea of Twitter, let alone a phone or the Internet, didn’t send him into cardiac arrest. It would receive at least 49 RTs.
Friday last week of course was The Ides of March, a day favoured historically by politicians disposed toward shafting their leaders using a shiv fashioned from a piece of blunt cutlery. Last weekend, Rudd gave a speech to a bunch of drunk leprechauns at a dinner where cutlery was present in which he joked all about the Ides of March, “A day which demands the stark attention of anyone engaged in the fratricide – I mean, the profession – of politics. [Pause for laughter; you’re killing it Kev!]
It’s time to announce that I will challenge [a beat] any of the Liberal politicians to demonstrate that they have any more Irish blood than me!“
Classic Kevin. Fratricide, while a frowned upon criminal offence punishable by life imprisonment, is second only to domestic and exotic animals doing human things in its capacity to generate humour. But like monkeys trapped in Ikea wearing people clothes or cats reading the newspaper, jokes about fratricide also make you think twice about the underlying message, the one clearly defrosting in Rudd’s mind.
2. #DECONTEXTUALISED TWEETS
Rudd issued a tweet in an impenetrable cipher on February 28th, a day second only to the Ides of March as the strangest day of the calendar year. Like Kevvy, it was “supposed” to be a PM [Private Message/Prime Minister] but Rudd claims it went public after he deleted the recipient’s name. Strange. That’s not how private messages work, Kev. They don’t become public once you delete the other person’s @name. What then could this mean? Is it a call to arms to all bilingual ALP conspirators? An enquiry into loaning a book from a friend in Beijing? Who knows?
Scouring Rudd’s feed, one then stumbles upon this cryptic missive from the last day of 2012, a similarly as auspicious date. Never one to go against his word, let alone his New Years Reolutions, Kevin now has little choice but to stand by his unbreakable vow to do whatever it is he thinks will make Oz a better place.KR, even if that means painfully opening old wounds using a spoon fashioned into a knife, just like the one he pocketed from the leprechaun dinner:
And as for New Years reolutions? Hmm. Exercise more. Eat less. Think more. Swear less. And do everything I can to make Oz a better place.KR
3. ARTFUL CROPPING AND PERFECT TIMING MASQUERADING AS PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF A SIMMERING, BARELY-CONCEALED MALCONTENT
This is a SOON if I e’er did see one; and SOON’s, I’ve seen a few.
4. “SILLY” PEOPLE RUNNING THEIR “SILLY” MOUTHS
Noted Rudd supporter Joel Fitzgibbon this afternoon told Fairfax that it’d be “silly” to pretend that nothing was happening in the party, claiming that Rudd supporters number 50 in their ranks out of the 102 vote caucus. The Australian are writing that, “Their strategy is predicated upon Ms Gillard relinquishing the leadership, thus necessitating a leadership ballot in caucus,” and while no one is aggressively campaigning as of this moment, Rudd’s backers are canvassing support using a “nuanced” approach; one that Fitzgibbon regrets is making its way into the media because he wishes these kinds of things would remain private.
Wait, just like a private message between Twitter followers that somehow makes its way into the public realm. #Coincidence?
5. MUTUALLY SKIPPING THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY
Both Gillard and Rudd have failed to show at a breakfast at Parliament House this morning which either means something or nothing
