Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week we have seen the first public signs of the internal battles going on in the background within the Rudd government. An explosive article by James Massola and Chris Johnson appeared in the Canberra Times last Saturday that has flashed a spotlight on the backroom dealings of this government. The article outlines in very careful detail just how advanced the plans are for a transition from the current Prime Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister. The plans are particularly being developed by the dominant right-wing faction of the Labor Party. The article makes plain that senior figures on that side of the House have had enough of being bullied by this Prime Minister or, as some Labor members are describing it, being ‘keneallyed’ by him. These Labor members want to move the leadership sooner rather than later to the more agreeable Deputy Prime Minister.

Following the Canberra Times article, the story was given additional lift yesterday morning when the well-known supporter of the Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Corangamite, spoke on the doors of his desire for the Deputy Prime Minister to become the Prime Minister. You can start to see the chess pieces being strategically moved around the building. The assumption is that this will occur post the next election and certainly that is where the smart money is right now. One punter has decided to put $2½ thousand with Centrebet that it will happen sooner.

The Prime Minister is so nervous that, thanks to the work of Simon Benson from the Daily Telegraph, we know that key factional players were summoned to his office on Monday night for crisis talks. What is interesting is the pace at which Labor members are keenly positioning for the Gillard prime ministership.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy would be okay in a Gillard administration. For instance, who will be her deputy? My mail has it that the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the member for Charlton, is busily positioning himself to be the front-runner. Minister Combet has been dubbed the Mr Fix-it of the government, but information provided to me suggests that fixing things is a speciality. In recent days I have been contacted by a couple of the minister’s Labor colleagues who are not what you would describe as supporters of the minister. They point to several examples of where the minister has been able to deftly move ‘political roadblocks’, as they describe them, without too much difficulty. For instance, they point out how easily the minister was able to gain a very safe Labor seat against the wishes of the local branches  although the seat is approximately 2,000 kilometres from where he lives. They point to the fact that the preselection contest was made significantly easier when the sitting member faced serious accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct. These allegations appeared on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph in an article titled ‘Rudd MP asked driver for sex’. In what has been described to me as a ‘miracle in timing’, the article appeared in the week that the then ACTU chief nominated for the seat.

Labor sources also suggest very strong links between interest in the Defence portfolio and the circumstances around the resignation of the then Minister for Defence. These discussions followed a story in the Daily Telegraph on Monday reporting on last week’s caucus meeting where the minister reportedly stole the thunder of the Prime Minister. The article says:

Kevin Rudd was ‘white-hot’ with anger. His new Mr Fix-it ,Greg Combet, had stolen his thunder.

The Benson story goes into some detail of how the minister stole, or took, 45 minutes of the Prime Minister’s time and quotes the minister as saying, ‘I could get used to this.’ The story also reports the minister as saying to the Prime Minister:

If any of your staffers come near my office, I’ll throw them out myself.

This is pretty strong stuff to say to a Prime Minister and it is remarkable that a private discussion between the two of them was leaked verbatim. It is something to be noted. According to my Labor sources, this minister will stop at nothing to achieve what some would describe as his destiny. Whatever the case, we know that the volcano building inside the Labor government is going to explode sooner rather than later and the bodies will be strewn around this place for some time to come.