Gillard never should have agreed to get rid of Rudd before the 2010 election. She should have let him contest the election and then challenge him after that if they'd lost. That whole business reflected really badly on the Labor Party as a whole, because it exposed how empty and power-hungry they were: they cared much more about winning than about the future of the country, or even of their party. Surely they could see it wasn't a very forward-thinking choice to make? Just about the only people who came out of that looking good were the two country Independents.

That business with the campaign ad for the Coalition is shocking, but the fact that it was on ninemsn doesn't surprise me at all. Channel Nine isn't exactly a bastion of left-leaning media.

As I was saying to catpuccino below, I'm not really following the Australian media at all, but I believe what you're saying. Again, I think this is happening for reasons I've outlined to catpuccino, mainly the fact that a lot of political journalists feel like they are part of the story, making things happen, rather than observers.

I think Australia can be tolerant, but only to a point. People may be in favour of same-sex marriage, but they (general 'they', not everyone, obviously) want their authority figures to be older, wealthy, straight, white men. I've always suspected that part of the reason why Rudd succeeded in coming to power in the first place was that he was (superficially) as close to being Howard as possible while still being in the Labor Party.