Julia Gillard . . . one in five Australians who can’t stand the PM are nonetheless voting Labor. Photo: Andrew MearesJohn Black
Despite being mentored for the top job at the Australian Workers Union by current president Bill Ludwig, poor old Bruce is apparently flipping burgers somewhere on the NSW coast, while our Julia (another Ludwig protegee) is plumbing new depths of unpopularity in Newspoll.
Following the mail-out of 2 billion bucks to pro ALP voters and the adoption of a Howard Lite policy on asylum seekers, the ALP primary vote has crept up to 35 per cent, with the Labor vote after preferences rising to 47 per cent. At the same time Gillard’s satisfaction rating has fallen to 27 per cent.
What this means is that one in five Australians who can’t stand Julia are nonetheless voting Labor.
It also means that swapping Gillard for former PM Kevin Rudd would catapult Labor well over the 50 per cent threshold and pressure the Coalition to come up with some explanations about how they intend to run the country.
This explains why Rudd is now at $2 on Centrebet to be prime minister at the next election, while Gillard is at $2.70.
For those being granted an audience with Kevin this week, he has returned to his normal cherubic self, with just a hint of former Napoleonic grandeur – like the little general during his first exile on Elba. Poor old Bruce Wilson, on the other hand, is looking more like Napoleon during his second exile on St Helena.
I first ran across Bruce in 1989 when he teamed up with Bill Ludwig to run on a joint ticket – for Bruce as AWU national secretary and Bill as AWU national president. The bloke opposing Bruce for the top job at the AWU was an old friend of mine and former employer at the AWU, Errol Hodder. I used to run his campaigns.
I still have their joint how-to-vote ticket and it’s a special. Among other things it promises no more Senate spots for former AWU officials – but this apparently applied only to me and not to Bill’s son, Joseph. It also promised no more luxury homes for union officials – which, as it turns out, didn’t include those allegedly purchased by AWU officials with secret slush funds.
Errol and your faithful scribe delivered a bloc Queensland vote against Wilson, which meant Bruce would soon be out of a job. Well, he would have been, but his old mate Bill Ludwig and his allies on the AWU executive appointed him to a succession of grace and favour jobs to keep him in employment. During his travels performing these jobs, he came across a young industrial lawyer called Julia Gillard.
It was the last of these jobs – head of a new national construction branch – that gave Bruce Wilson the national platform to approach building firms, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I’ve been reading a bit of this history lately and, by and large, I agree with our Prime Minister. She has, at times, appalling judgment when it comes to men. She also seems to have run her own home renovations with the same degree of competence she applied to spending billions of dollars on stimulus payments. But setting up a fund for union officials to contest elections is not, of itself, wrong.
Union officials come under challenges from time to time from all manner of political nut jobs and if they want to deduct a small weekly amount from their after-tax salary to fund a combined campaign then there’s nothing wrong with that. The problems start if these funds become mixed with money intended for union members. They are compounded if the person in charge of the account “borrows” the money to earn a little capital gain between elections. If the money disappears, it certainly warrants a royal commission.
I think our Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, would agree with these sentiments. At least I thought he did when he visited my home in Queensland to promote the anti-Ludwig ticket in 1996.
During this campaign, the local anti-Ludwig candidate was offered support from another factional slush fund if he promised to go easy on two rather prominent federal MPs. He rejected the offer and lost.
Ancient history indeed.
John Black is a former Labor senator.
