Rudd going now is stupid

Leaving aside former Attorney General Nicola Roxon’s highly-charged and emotional attack on her one-time boss, Kevin Rudd, as a bastard, her view that he should quit Parliament at once for the good of the Labor Party is downright stupid.

Roxon is not alone in this opinion – a number of Labor Parliamentarians have said Rudd should go without, it seems, paying any attention to the likely outcome of such a move  

Rudd retained his seat in Griffith by a slender margin at the election. The fact he was Prime Minister and constantly in the national spotlight probably got him over the line. Should he resign now Labor would face a by-election before the end of the year with an unknown candidate and while the Abbott Government was still in its honeymoon period.

In other words, Griffith would likely be lost, adding to the conservative majority in Parliament and providing yet another highly-publicised body blow to a disheartened party struggling to get back on track with its new leader.

 I believe Rudd will go just as soon as he sorts out a job for himself at the United Nations or some other international agency, but far better it be somewhere into the New Year, say in April or May, when the Coalition has had time to make a few mistakes and get itself offside with the electorate.

A by-election then could have just the opposite effect than one held in the next few weeks – a strong Labor win would bring new energy to the membership and credence to the view that it can bounce back to make a real contest of the election in 2016.  

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen was being polite when he reacted to Roxon’s outburst by saying all former Labor leaders deserved respect.

Instead he and new leader Bill Shorten should tell the Rudd Must Go faction to zip their lips and leave it to the former Prime Minister to decide when he departs the scene.