Gillard gov ends, Rudd reborn

''I simply do not have it in my nature to stand idly by and to allow an Abbott government to come to power in this country by default,' Read more

It had to happen.

Australia's first female Prime Minister, after 3 years in office, has been booted out as leader of the Labor party. She will not contest her safe seat and will retire from politics.

Kevin Rudd has been returned as leader, again taking the Prime Ministership 3 years after he was extracted from office. He now has a very short time to prepare for the coming federal election against Abbott. The Sept date for the election is now in doubt as Rudd can, as Prime Minister, call the election when he sees fit and the best chance for the party.

The reasons behind the switch to Rudd, the machinations of the Labor party, and all the goings on in Canberra that led up to this will no doubt be gone over with a fine tooth comb in coming weeks and months. However a big difference I can see immediately is that Kevin Rudd is now a proponent of marriage equality, after he wrote a rather long winded but well thought out opinion piece on why he changed his mind. That in itself is far more representative of Australians than the Gillard position of being against it.

Doubts remain about the Rudd leadership. Last time he got chucked out was pretty much because he was an arrogant prick that nobody could work with. Already a few of the Labor front bench ministers who supported Gillard have quit the front bench. Rudd will now have a major front bench reshuffle on his hands.

Can Rudd win? Given enough time he'd clobber Abbott into the political dirt. Rudd is extremely intelligent and could run circles around that clown Abbott. But he's got very little time now and whether he can take this election remains to be seen. If he can capture the people's imagination as he did in 2007 then I think he's in with a long shot, a very long shot. The Labor party has been trailing the opposition for years.