It's hard to see how Julia Gillard can survive the vicious war of words that has broken out between Labor and the Greens.
This lover's tiff is long overdue and will surely be the last nail in her prime ministerial coffin, although the hammering may take some time — even into early next year.
Labor's NSW Right faction leaders were always going to be the ones to pass sentence on Ms Gillard's blighted leadership and to choose the time of her passing.
That Labor's NSW secretary, Sam Dastyari, feels confident enough to directly challenge Ms Gillard's authority, declaring open war on the minor party that keeps the Government in office, shows we have reached the endgame.
Mr Dastyari would not be taking his motion to Labor's NSW conference this weekend to preference the Greens last in coming elections if he did not think it would succeed.
Disclosing his strategy exclusively to Labor's nemesis, the Australian newspaper, he backed it with the potent accusation that the party Ms Gillard signed up to support her minority Government comprised "extremists, not unlike One Nation".
In politics, words are weapons — and those were daggers in Ms Gillard's heart.
Whether or not this play was designed only to destabilise Ms Gillard is unclear because there are several agendas running here concurrently.
However, those who have been plotting her demise all year jumped on it so quickly that it suggests the Greens' recent intransigence on asylum seeker policy is the chosen Trojan Horse to bring down Ms Gillard.
Confirmation of that is the prominent role Kevin Rudd's principal backer, Joel Fitzgibbon, has played in this affair with his consistent attacks on the Greens drawing attention to Ms Gillard's agreement with them.
As the Chief Government Whip, Mr Fitzgibbon has the job of keeping a fractious backbench in line, but he felt free to say in response to Mr Dastyari's comments that the hung Parliament "looks like chaos to people" and reflected badly on the Gillard Government.
"It's about time Labor sat up and realised that (the Greens) are growing their primary vote off these unrealistic policies at the expense of the Labor Party," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
It comes after an article he wrote for Rupert Murdoch's the Daily Telegraph in which he accused Ms Gillard's partners of treacherous double-dealings with the Opposition during the asylum seeker debate two weeks ago.
"It's obvious that by attempting to secretly do a deal with the Opposition, they were keeping open two possible courses of action: to deliver on a compromise with the Liberals so they could walk away looking like the responsible conciliator, or to dig in and claim they can't wear offshore processing in any of its forms as a matter of principle," the Chief Whip wrote.
It's taken an incredibly long time for the penny to drop that the woman the Canberra press gallery fawn over as a great negotiator needlessly tied herself to the Greens in an agreement to secure a vote she can never count on.
That agreement was seen as allowing Ms Gillard to form a government, but in effect it is all upside for the Greens.
It cost the Prime Minister her credibility over the carbon tax and led to the widespread belief the Government is being led around by the nose by a party that a procession of Labor MPs now choose to portray as "loonies".
While this attack on the Greens started in the NSW Right, it has quickly spread to the Left.
"Hopefully we can move from a position where we are reliant on people that are intransigent and immature," faction boss Senator Doug Cameron said yesterday.
And Labor is now in no doubt what the Greens think of them — even though the minor party intends to stand by its agreement — with its leaders saying their partners stood for nothing.
"I think this is a crisis in the Labor Party and it certainly undermines confidence in the Prime Minister," Greens leader Christine Milne told reporters yesterday.
Two days earlier, Senator Milne accused Mr Rudd's wife Therese Rein of attempting to destabilise the Prime Minister after giving a weekend newspaper interview in which she would not rule out her husband returning to the Labor leadership if it would serve the "national good".
Senator Milne obviously knows what is going on. Mr Rudd is said to be trying to build bridges with those Cabinet ministers who castigated him during February's abortive challenge, notably Victorian Stephen Conroy.
The days of Ms Gillard's agreement and the Greens' influence on Labor are numbered.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario