Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF

Kevin Rudd has declared he will challenge Australia’s prime minister Julia Gillard as leader of the Labor party on Monday, saying he wants to “finish the job” he began before she ousted him. Mr Rudd, dumped as leader in 2010, attacked Ms Gillard as treacherous and untrustworthy and insisted she would not be able to win the next election. Mr Rudd attacked Ms Gillard’s political record, saying she urged him to dump his carbon pricing scheme as prime minister – a move that is credited as initiating his decline. –Jonathan Pearlman, The Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2012

KEVIN RUDD commissioned advice on ”repositioning” his ill-fated climate change policy, including scrapping it, two months before he dumped it, leaked documents show. Mr Rudd yesterday placed the blame squarely on Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan for forcing him to drop the policy but the Herald has obtained a departmental briefing commissioned by Mr Rudd showing he began the process that led to the policy being deferred indefinitely. –Phillip Coorey, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 2012

The bloodletting inside the Labor Party is nothing short of animalistic. This week, many of the parliamentarians of the federal ALP have cast aside any semblance of unity and torn at each other in unrestrained frenzy. Australian Labor makes the US Republicans look almost charitable to each other by comparison. Labor, at its lowest standing in the public eye in the 40-year history of the Nielsen poll, does not seem well-placed to afford the luxury. — Peter Hartcher and Phillip Coorey, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 2012

Labor’S chances of salvaging anything from the current leadership debacle are receding as fast as you can say “disunity is death”. This is not garden-variety disunity, it is a full-scale nuclear war that, almost uniquely, is taking place within the party of government. It is as crazy as the military acronym suggests – MAD, or “mutually assured destruction”. –Mark Kenny, Adelaide Advertiser, 25 February 2012

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