Hi all,
Some of you might be interested in this -it's from an interview Steve Gibbons, former Federal member for Bendigo, gave to Crikey.
(And his opinion of KRudd isn't a million miles from my own)
Cheers,
David
Which of your Labor colleagues did you rate highly?
The standouts were Greg Combet, Peter Garrett, Stephen Smith, Jason Clare, Chris Bowen, Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong, Jenny Macklin and Tony Burke. Most of those except for Smith, Garrett and Combet are still in Parliament. They will be missed terribly. I know people had a view about Garrett. I know the guy, I know the background around the pink batts issue, he played an exemplary role in all of that yet he wore it [the
criticism]. He was a very effective minister, especially a minister for schools, and worked very hard. Smith and Combet were both potential prime ministers in my view. And we know why the three of them are now not in the Parliament.
Rudd's a piece of filth. I notice that some idiot leaked to The Age couple of weeks ago that they reckoned Rudd was responsible for saving 10 to 15 seats. I say fucking frogshit, Rudd was responsible for losing 19 seats. That's the reality. Three years of destabilisation -- and blatant destabilisation at that. And what pissed me off, the other day Laurie Oakes was interviewed on Neil Mitchell and he tried to pass that off as the norm. Peacock undermined Howard, Howard undermined Peacock, Hawke was undermined by Keating, all this sort of shit. But they all did that with one eye on the main game. And that was their party staying in power. This piece of crap couldn't give a fuck about
that.
