Bill Shorten urged to end ALP paralysis

BY:SID MAHER AND DENNIS SHANAHAN From:The Australian February 20, 2013 12:00AM

BILL Shorten is being urged to break the government's leadership impasse as Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan face mounting pressure to reveal how they can salvage Labor from its dire position.

Labor MPs are increasing pressure on the Workplace Relations Minister and key factional powerbroker to act "in the best interests of the party" at a time when all polling suggests Labor faces annihilation at the election.

With the supporters of Kevin Rudd making it clear he is not preparing a leadership challenge in next month's parliamentary sitting and could "wait until June" before deciding whether he would come back as leader, despondent Labor MPs are increasingly desperate for a political "circuit-breaker" to revive the party's fortunes.

Key Labor MPs say the "external momentum has changed" towards Mr Rudd as MPs realise they would lose their seats based on current polling, prompting calls for Mr Shorten to take action.

The former AWU secretary, who continues to defend the Prime Minister, played a key role in the axing of Mr Rudd in 2010 and is considered a key supporter of Ms Gillard and the Treasurer.

While senior ministers including Mr Shorten yesterday rallied around Ms Gillard, Labor MPs said a growing number of caucus members were questioning how Ms Gillard and Mr Swan planned to lift Labor's stocks.

The image of a government in turmoil was exacerbated yesterday when Greens leader Christine Milne ended the alliance between Labor and the minor party, drawn up after the 2010 election, that has helped keep the government in power. Although the Greens remain committed to defeating the Coalition, the decision and Senator Milne's scathing comments about Labor pitched the two former allies into open warfare.

The latest leadership speculation came after the publication on Monday of a disastrous Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers that put the government's primary vote at 30 per cent and Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister over Ms Gillard.

The Regional Affairs Minister, Simon Crean, who yesterday joined Mr Shorten and Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese in backing Ms Gillard's leadership, agreed with Labor colleagues looking for a circuit- breaker to end the instability. "I think the circuit-breaker is getting focused, unified, on-message and talking about the initiatives that we have in place," he said.

Mr Crean said he still believed Labor and Ms Gillard could win the election "but what we've got to be arguing about is the state of the economy, not the narrow frame of the surplus". Mr Crean's comments follow criticism that Labor had failed to capitalise on the nation's relatively strong economy, with Mr Swan performing poorly in parliament last week after the abandonment of the promise to deliver a 2012-13 budget surplus and the failure of the mining tax to meet revenue forecasts.

In a speech to the AWU national conference on the Gold Coast yesterday, Mr Swan defended Ms Gillard as the "toughest warrior for Labor values in our history".

He defended the government's economic record, saying Labor had saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and small businesses during the global financial crisis.

Mr Swan conceded that mining tax revenues had been "lower than Treasury expected, with global uncertainty causing a spectacular drop in commodity prices in the second part of last year", but he said the minerals resource rent tax was a big, long-term economic reform similar to floating the dollar, bringing down the tariff wall and introducing workers' superannuation - and those reforms had not been judged after just six months.

"So yep, last week was a pretty tough week but I didn't get into politics to make the easy decisions and I won't be taking a backwards step now," he said. "I don't apologise for one second for trying to get a fair share for the Australian people for the resources they own 100 per cent."

Mr Swan yesterday accused the Coalition of importing Tea Party-style tactics from the US, drawing an insistence from the Opposition Leader that Coalition initiatives would have "an Australian accent".

"Putting lipstick on a pitbull doesn't make a blue heeler," Mr Swan countered.

Mr Shorten is a key factional ally of Mr Swan - both men come from the powerful AWU grouping and the Queensland branch of the union, in particular, remains implacably opposed to a return to the leadership by Mr Rudd.

However, the latest polling has fanned fears Labor could spend several terms in opposition and some argue that electoral wipeouts in the Queensland and NSW state elections have denied the party the infrastructure to make the quick electoral recovery it achieved in 1996.

Published polling has raised fears within Labor that the Coalition could win control of the Senate.

Rudd supporters have argued that the former prime minister's public popularity gives the party the chance of winning and a leadership change would bring a new authority, which would dampen instability.

Mr Shorten yesterday pleaded for unity, calling on MPs to be "true to ourselves'.

"I believe Julia Gillard is a tough leader for tough times," he told the AWU conference. "I think every Labor MP understands the value of unity and I know from my conversations with plenty of people we're united in terms of supporting Julia Gillard as leader."

In a later interview, he said: "I'm not even contemplating any debate about our internal line-up. I support ... Julia Gillard." Asked what role Mr Rudd should play in the election campaign, Mr Shorten said he believed Mr Rudd "has something to contribute to the Labor campaign".

"Obviously he wants to get re-elected in his electorate but he has something to contribute more broadly, just like many members of the Labor team," he said.

Mr Albanese, who backed Mr Rudd in the leadership challenge in February last year, said yesterday all Labor MPs were behind the Prime Minister, but he rejected suggestions that Mr Rudd was destabilising the government.