:shock: news to me, i only resigned as foriegn minister, doesn't that mean he goes to the back bench???[/b]

Governments have been far worse in opinion polls much closer to elections and still won. There's still 18 months - and all the decisions that affect popularity negatively (ie tax) are done. When the election comes round a lot of what labor have done will be there to see, who knows we may even still have a mining industry...

Pretty sure that's incorrect.

It's pretty well acknowledged across the board the the ALP/ greens will cop a hiding under Gillard.
Same might not be the case under Rudd though and although he may not win back leadership tomorrow , he will win back leadership as the ALP become desperate and dump the greens much closer to the standard election timetable.They can't do that at the moment because the numbers would change forcing an election

Very interesting times for the ALP

Nope, far from the end.

I think Gillard's individual approval will drop further and another challenger will emerge, Rudd will step in and pick up the pieces.

Now to get Gillard, Swann, Brown andAbbott to follow :)

So what does his resignation really mean for Gillard?

Bob Carr to take foreign affairs role

Judith Ireland
March 2, 2012 - 12:23PM

In a shock announcement, former NSW premier Bob Carr will join the Senate and take the role of Foreign Affairs Minister.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard revealed her new cabinet after a week of speculation Mr Carr may have stepped into the prestigious role. However, as late as this morning it was believed that Defence Minister Stephen Smith would be reappointed to his former role after internal resistance to Mr Carr's appointment.

Mr Carr was approached for the job earlier this week but the offer was then reported to have been withdrawn amid protests from Labor ministers such as Simon Crean and Stephen Smith who were also in line for the job.

Mr Carr said he was offered the opportunity for signing on for more public service "and I couldn't say no". He told reporters in Canberra that often you don't choose the moment, it chooses you.

He described himself as as "public servant" and praised the previous achievements of former foreign minsiter Kevin Rudd.

"I admired the way Kevin Rudd saw a window of opportunity in Burma", Mr Carr said.


Defence minister Stephen Smith, who gave up the foreign affairs portfolio for Kevin Rudd, would like the job back. Photo: Andrew Meares
Mr Carr also mentioned increasing Australia's aid contributions and UN Security Council bid.

Yesterday in question time, Ms Gillard confirmed for the first time that she had spoken to Mr Carr this week.

Mr Carr was initially supposed to come to Canberra on Tuesday for an announcement, and had then said that he was not interested in coming to Canberra.

In other movements, Craig Emerson will continue as acting foreign minster until Mr Carr takes up the Senate vacancy and has had his portfolio expanded to include role of Minister for Trade and Competitiveness, paying particular attention to increasing Australia's international economic competitiveness, with a focus on the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper.

Brendan O'Connor has been promoted into cabinet as the Minister for Small Business and as Minister for Housing and Homelessness.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon picks up Emergency Management. Environment Minister Tony Burke will take on the additional role of Vice-President of the Executive Council.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/bob-carr-to-take-foreign-affairs-role-20120302-1u731.html#ixzz1nv0f6M1G

at this rate keating and hawke might have a job...LOL pathetic

It's scary to think, but they'd be an improvement!

Arbib's stab at nobility was 'paying the price'

Nikki Barrowclough
March 3, 2012


Mark Arbib is playing by politics' golden rule - choose your fate.

'There aren't any bombshells,'' Mark Arbib says. ''No one has threatened me. No one has cajoled me. No one knew I was going to resign until I went to the PM.''

The now former politician has the same, semi-exasperated, incredulous tone he adopted the last time we spoke, for a Good Weekend profile - although on that occasion we were discussing his notorious outing by WikiLeaks in 2010 as a ''protected source'' of the Americans, highly regarded for his inside information on the workings of the Australian government and the ALP.

"You won't see me on ABC 24, or Sky TV. I won't be writing any books," adds the most machiavellian of the so-called ''faceless men'', unwittingly throwing down the gauntlet to a publisher, perhaps. A Mark Arbib memoir, even one read beneath the bed covers with a torch, could well knock off the sales figures of the other famous Mark's political memoir about the Labor Party, The Latham Diaries.

"I find it incredible that people are cynical about politicians who leave for family reasons. What other reason is so important?" Arbib asks, which only serves to make that question stand out even more than it does already. Unlike our previous encounter, which took place face to face, we're speaking on the phone, so I can't read his expression.

Last Monday, only a few hours after Julia Gillard's win over Kevin Rudd in the leadership tussle, Arbib managed to upstage the rebirthed Prime Minister with his seemingly inexplicable decision to quit federal politics - in order to spend more time with his wife and their two little girls.

Announcing his decision at a hastily organised press conference, the renowned Labor factional powerbroker, son of a Libyan-born migrant from Italy, said that when he was promoted in the ministry late last year, his six-year-old daughter cried because he'd explained this meant he would spend more time at work.

Arbib, who's only 40 despite his reputation as a formidable weaver of political dark arts, says the same when we speak. His decision to leave the Senate was all about family. Although Bob and Helena Carr are ''family friends'', Carr's move took him by total surprise. ''I wasn't involved in any of the discussions … [But] if I had known he was interested in going into the Senate, I would have stepped aside for him.''

Arbib's decision to leave the ministry was to give Julia Gillard the best chance to win the next election, he goes on. "It takes the faceless men out of the equation. She deserves clean air. I've been at the forefront of so many of the deals and it takes away some of the enmity."

He's not the only ''faceless man'', I suggest of the tag that will probably always precede Arbib's name, even when - and if - he does start a new career in the corporate world, as he indicates might happen.

"You know that I've got the stigma," he replies.

Though he wasn't the only ''faceless man'' involved in the push to overthrow Kevin Rudd in 2010, to install Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, Arbib is seen as the most notorious of the plotters - not least because he was also the driver of Rudd's successful 2007 election campaign.

He accepts the stigma, he continues. "I've been the person who made the hard calls and now I'm making the hard call about myself. But I'm paying the price on my own terms and I'm picking my own time. The golden rule of politics is to decide your own fate."

But that too seems to leave an echo when spoken by the man who became assistant treasurer in Gillard's government, while also sports minister and small business minister.

Love of family aside, Arbib's departure from politics has mystified some of his present and former parliamentary colleagues, although the Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, says Arbib's decision to go for family reasons is certainly consistent with conversations the two of them have had over the years. In fact, Albanese says, they had exactly that sort of conversation on the Friday before Albanese held his own, emotional press conference, when he declared he'd be voting for Rudd in the secret ballot.

The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, says Arbib's departure is a big loss. "He's a first-class political strategist. I tried to persuade him: 'mate, you should stay'," he says.

But a Labor insider prefers to think along murkier lines. "Who would spend 20 years of their life trying to get into politics and then quit? For him to walk away at this stage doesn't make sense,'' this person says.

Arbib had 2½ years to go before his term in the Senate was up and when he resigned, he'd recently been made manager of government business, a key strategic role.

"I've got no idea why he resigned," Nick Xenophon, the independent senator for South Australia, jokes. ''I rang Bob Brown and asked if he was coming over to be the Greens' chief strategist, but Brown denied it.

''It's certainly seen as a bit of a mystery - why now?" he adds.

Xenophon mentions Arbib's work as sports minister, pointing out the admiration for him for tackling match-fixing and corruption in sport. The reluctance in many quarters to accept Arbib simply missed his family too much comes partly because the sports-mad politician would have been a VIP member of the Australian Olympic team travelling to Britain for the London Olympics - now less than 150 days away.

"I can't win on this one. If I had stayed until the Olympics, and then resigned, you guys [in the media] would have said, 'he only stayed in the job to be able to go to the Olympics'," Arbib retorts.

When he turned 30, he says, he promised his wife, Kelli Field, an associate director at Macquarie Bank (and formerly chief of staff to one-time NSW treasurer and police minister Michael Costa), that he'd reconsider his career at 40.

"I've loved being a minister, I've loved the policy work," he says. "But when all the Qantas staff know my first name and my kids are forgetting it … in 2010 after the election, I was very close to resigning then, because I was one of the people who made the tough call - one of the toughest calls - and it was the right call, and I stand by that.

''But there's a price that had to be paid. I hope my decision helps close the chapter on the past 18 months for the party, and for Kevin [Rudd]. It has been a difficult period for all of us."

How did Gillard react to his resignation when he walked into her office last Monday? "It was an emotional decision for her and I. She asked me to stay," he replies.

Has Rudd contacted him?

"I'll have to check my messages. I've got about 250 of them," he says.

All week the speculation has continued to swirl, although his generous farewell speech on Thursday, when he thanked parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the political divide, was certainly noted. As was his tweeting that the real reason for his resignation was his ''role'' in the popular Australian soap opera Home and Away, as seen in a spoof video posted on the internet.

But some aren't laughing.

The former diplomat and political commentator Bruce Haigh, a regular guest on ABC TV's The Drum, says Arbib's explanations aren't credible.

"He's acting as if someone, or some people, have come and said he has gone too far and have threatened to put [some information] into the public domain unless he removes himself from the political scene. The public don't care about Arbib going," Haigh adds of Arbib's claim he quit in the interests of party and government.

"It won't change Gillard's standing [in the public mind] one iota. In fact, it gives traction to Tony Abbott, who can now say, 'who knifed Arbib, and why?'. His going in this way is much more a thorn in Gillard's side than by him staying.''


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/arbibs-stab-at-nobility-was-paying-the-price-20120302-1u8bp.html#ixzz1o0nj1l91

Julia Gillard finds a spine, turns defeat into a breathtaking win

by: Laurie Oakes From: Herald Sun March 03, 2012 12:00AM

THAT'S one for the books. Julia Gillard unbotches something. Turns failure into success instead of the other way around.

Bob Carr's appearance at her side as the new Foreign Affairs Minister - after the apparent collapse of the deal earlier in the week - was a breathtaking political development.

For days the PM had been lambasted in Parliament and the media for weakness because she had allegedly allowed a few senior ministers - particularly Defence Minister Stephen Smith - to veto the recruitment of Carr.

But suddenly on Thursday she discovered a spine - and a bit of political nous - and decided to revive Plan A despite the opposition from her colleagues.

It was a show of strength. And not before time. If Gillard is to capitalise on her resounding defeat of Kevin Rudd in last Monday's leadership ballot, she has to show both courage and flair.

Parachuting a 64-year-old retiree into the Senate and the Cabinet might seem like a strange way to refresh a government, but this Government is in such desperate straits that it has to be willing to try anything.

In The Financial Review yesterday morning, Carr himself wrote that Labor needs "inventive leadership".

Bringing the former NSW premier out of six years of retirement is certainly inventive, but it is also logical given his long-standing interest in defence and foreign policy.

The idea might have come from NSW ALP secretary Sam Dastyari, but - after an initial stumble - the PM is the one who ran with it.

Smith's nose was out of joint because Gillard had promised him a return to his old foreign affairs post.

Headlines about "mutiny" were not accurate. Smith is no mutineer. But he made it clear he thought he was being treated unfairly.

Several other ministers resented the idea that an "outsider" should get such a plum job, arguing it suggested a lack of talent among incumbent ministers.

Gillard was foolish to bow to the pressure. This was the Gillard who bungled the last reshuffle in December through weakness.

She wanted to dump two underperformers, Robert McClelland and Peter Garrett, from Cabinet, but when they and their factional supporters resisted she went to water.

They were given reduced responsibilities, but retained Cabinet ranking. This put Gillard's lack of authority up in lights.

Gillard made the same mistake this time, but - presumably because of the avalanche of criticism - recognised her folly while there was still time to change her mind.

Carr, angered by the way the deal was dangled and then withdrawn, had by his own admission, "moved on".

But the PM used all her persuasive powers on the telephone late on Thursday morning, flattered Carr and salvaged Dastyari's plan.

It is just as well. Caucus members were in despair that she appeared to be involved in yet another monumental stuff-up only days after the leadership ballot. She went from stuff-up to master stroke in

24 hours. Again to quote Carr: "In the end, it's the leader who cuts through."

Gillard cut through. The ridicule the Coalition hurled at her in Parliament, devastatingly effective at the time, carries no weight now. She is in charge. And Carr's sparkling performance at their joint news conference yesterday left little doubt that he will be an asset.

Carr might have spent his political life up to now in NSW state politics, but he is well known internationally - especially in Washington.

I have seen up close the respect he has among high-powered US officials at meetings of the Australia-US leadership dialogue.

His arrival in Canberra will make a huge difference to Labor's Senate team, at the moment overwhelmingly made up of drab and largely talentless factional hacks.

Merely by entering the Cabinet room he will raise the average IQ of the ministry significantly. The Gillard Government does not boast a surfeit of intellectual firepower.

Possibly most important, he will bring to the Gillard operation the kind of political brain and performance fizz it so badly needs.

In 2002 Carr did one of those radio interviews where guests play some of their favourite music.

The song that stood out to me was from the musical Chicago - one that, in the movie, was sung by Richard Gere as he performed a nifty tap dance.

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle.

Razzle dazzle 'em.

Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it

And the reaction will be passionate.

As I wrote at the time, the song describes the skills a successful political performer needs. They are skills that Gillard and her senior colleagues conspicuously lack.

Carr is a master razzle-dazzler. Labor had better hope he can teach his new colleagues how to do it.

When Simon Crean turned out to be a dud leader in 2003, a serious attempt was made to persuade Carr he should step down as NSW premier and take over the federal Labor leadership.

He declined, telling friends his batteries were too flat to start over again.

But, after half a dozen years of books and travel and fine dining, Carr's batteries are presumably recharged.

His return to politics will help Gillard. And, by showing the toughness and determination to ignore those opposing his appointment, Gillard has helped herself.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network and his column appears every Saturday in the Herald Sun

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/julia-gillard-finds-a-spine-turns-defeat-into-a-breathtaking-win/story-fn56baaq-1226287818689

Bob Carr destroyed NSW, says Newman

March 3, 2012 - 1:06PM

In his first address as Foreign Minister, Bob Carr says he's looking forward to serving his country once again, but he's no "saviour".

Queensland Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman says Bob Carr, the man selected as Australia's new foreign minister, is "the guy who destroyed NSW".

He sidestepped a question about himself being "parachuted in" to the LNP leadership, and whether that meant the LNP had no confidence in its own MPs, by vehemently attacking Mr Carr's record as NSW premier from 1995 to 2005.


"Bob Carr has been parachuted in and he's the guy who gave NSW all the problems that Queensland has with Anna Bligh," Mr Newman told reporters today.

"He bailed out (leaving) other people to deal with the consequences and to try to patch them up.

"Bob Carr was a disaster of a premier, he didn't build anything, he didn't build dams, he didn't build infrastructure and he racked up debt and really crippled the state's economy with new taxes and charges, and I don't want that to happen to Queensland.

"He was a dud premier and it's the same with the Labor party."

AAP


Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/political-news/bob-carr-destroyed-nsw-says-newman-20120303-1u9ib.html#ixzz1o3leSlL

Come on mate just resign

i'd prefer if the whole parliament resigned they are hopeless.......who doesn't she fight with???? they are completely dysfunctional

Fixed for you ;)

Actually, Adam Bandt can stay.

One dark cloud among ministerial sunshine

March 5, 2012 - 12:56PM

With the sun finally shining over Canberra, Julia Gillard's new ministry was sworn-in by Governor-General Quentin Bryce this morning.

But there was one thunder cloud during the proceedings: the face of Senator Kim Carr.

The newly-appointed Minister for Human Services looked downcast throughout the official ceremony at Government House, and the group portrait on the steps.


A prominent Kevin Rudd backer, Senator Carr was not booted out of the ministry in the latest reshuffle, like Robert McClelland.

But he was kept in the outer ministry and has lost his manufacturing portfolio, which he was passionate about, and had held on to after he lost his cabinet-level Industry and Innovation role last year.

Ms Bryce - resplendent in a white suit - glossed over the politics of the reshuffle, congratulating Senator Carr on his ''significant'' new role.


Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks on as new members of her ministry are sworn in. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The 10 other ministers and parliamentary secretaries who were sworn-in during the short ceremony this morning laughed, smiled and joked with one another. Trade Minister and Minister for Competitiveness Craig Emerson showed no sign that he had been looked over for the foreign affairs gig, which went to former NSW premier Bob Carr.

Mr Emerson kept things cool in a pair of sunnies (which he removed once inside Government House) and chatted to Attorney-General Nicola Roxon (who now also takes on the Emergency Management portfolio) and new cabinet colleague, Small Business Minister Brendan O'Connor, during the ceremony.

A beaming new Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury had a whole entourage of family members to see him sworn-in to his first ministerial role.


Governor-General Quentin Bryce welcomes Prime Minister Julia Gillard and members of her new team at Government House. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Already keeping active in her new job, Sports Minister Senator Kate Lundy drove herself to the ceremony and parked the car in the driveway (no COMCAR chauffeurs for her).

Ms Bryce congratulated Senator Lundy on her first ministerial role, noting that it was ''wonderful'' to see another female minister in the week of International Women's Day.

Jason Clare got his old job back as Minister for Defence Materiel, but he still needed some coaching from the Governor-General during the swearing-in. ''You go first,'' she instructed Mr Clare as they were signing the affirmation. ''Ministers first.''


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/one-dark-cloud-among-ministerial-sunshine-20120305-1uc7b.html#ixzz1oDyaDZM2

Julia Gillards government is a waste of space.