Australian prime minister defeats challenge from Kevin Rudd
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard defeated Kevin Rudd, her predecessor and former foreign minister, in a Labor Party leadership ballot held earlier today. Gillard was backed by 71 of her parliamentary colleagues, against 31 who voted for Rudd. Far from overcoming the crisis wracking the government, the leadership ballot has resolved none of the key policy issues underlying the vitriolic infighting within the Labor Party. Gillard declared that “we will move forward as a united team.” No one in her party, however, or in the political and media establishment as a whole, believes that the bitter divisions opened up by the rancorous public debate over the Labor leadership—unprecedented in post-war Australian politics—will be patched up.
Peter Symonds: Australian government torn apart by US-China tensions - The underlying causes of the conflict are not to be found, primarily, in the sphere of domestic politics. Both Rudd and Gillard are committed to the austerity agenda demanded by finance capital and are pitching themselves to big business as the best instrument for implementing the required assault on the working class. Rather, the fracturing of the Labor Party is bound up with powerful geo-political rivalries centred on the Obama administration’s growing confrontation with China. The Australian ruling class has been swept into this maelstrom, confronted point blank with the longstanding dilemma posed by its heavy economic dependence on China, on the one hand, and its geo-strategic reliance on its military alliance with the United States, on the other.