Tim Malone.id.au

What a day. “Momentous” is the word people are using to describe it, which is apt given it means ‘significant’ and ‘important’. The holder of the highest office in our land (at least, that with any real power) changed – seemingly overnight. It wasn’t until most of us got into bed last night that the news was becoming real, and it’s entirely probable that many returned home from work today knowing nothing, went to watch the 6pm news, and discovered we had already had a new prime minister for the last 6 hours.

The events of the momentous day were evident everywhere. One of my bosses, who gets a headache when he hears anything of politics, said today that not only would he ‘allow’ us to talk about the leadership change, but that we ‘must’ talk about it. I spent the first part of the morning watching Twitter – and Twitter only – on my iPhone in order to feed updated information to one of my other bosses – Clayton Bjelan – who anchors the weekday morning shift on LightFM. And when I got home and watched the news, my housemates joined in for the first half of the bulletin (which is unusual).

With each new person I saw today, the first thing said was something to do with the leadership spill – that is, after the first pause while both of us had to work out how to start the conversation without asking the painfully obvious “So, did you hear what happened to Rudd?”

The change of a prime minister is huge, so of course it has to be talked about by political tragics and phobics alike. But the way it happened was an even bigger event. Here’s some of my thoughts.

Today’s machinations have ultimately cheapened the office of Prime Minister

That’s a direct quote from a tweet posted by comedian Daniel Burt tonight. It echos my flabbergasted thoughts exactly, which is why I retweeted it and am quoting it again now. I used to look at the office of Prime Minister as one affording respect, and requiring some sort of longevity. But now, it’s just another political job that can be held by one person one day, and someone else the next (much like an opposition leader).

I don’t know if I could now ever see it the same as I saw it growing up, with the role filled – for a very long time – by John Howard.

Social media is a news breaker

I probably say this too much, but social media (especially Twitter) was amazing throughout this whole episode. Twitter broke last night’s news to me, and kept me updated throughout the day, particularly when I had to be in a meeting during all three of the leader’s press conferences (Rudd, Gillard, and Abbott).

Given that prominent journalists also tweet regularly (I mainly follow Latika Bourke & Malcolm Farnsworth), Twitter breaks news (and takes you right to the source) before any other media can (even with live TV, it’s only a couple of seconds behind AND provides live commentary too).

Oh, and today’s newspapers were out of date and useless by about 9:15am.

24 hours is a long time in politics

Forget ‘a week’. Like I said, if you didn’t watch the news after 6:30pm last night, 24 hours was a very long time for you today.

I find the political definition of loyalty chilling

That, was tweeted by Simon Thomsen tonight. And again, it echoes what I couldn’t have said any better myself. This morning, one news report said that Wayne Swan’s loyalty was with Kevin Rudd, but that he’d now moved his loyalty to Julia Gillard. Uh-huh. Some loyalty.

The time of adjustment and the stages of grief

Once I had a look at pm.gov.au and saw the maintenance page, that was when it home to me. We just changed prime ministers. Again. For just the 3rd time in my living memory (and 4th since I was born). And with that comes an adjustment time – of learning to associate the title ‘prime minister’ with the new person, and of learning to respect – and respond to the leadership of – the person in the role.

And today I found myself going through some of the stages of grief. Even though I really didn’t like Kevin Rudd at first, I did really warm to him as a person. Despite disagreeing with probably a majority of his policies, I still had a respect for him and especially for his leadership capability, and for his down-to-earth nature on the rare moments that he allowed it to show through the usual Ruddbott. I liked him. I looked up to him. Today, I was in disbelief, denial, and anger, and am now probably just edging closer to some sort of acceptance.

I had to stop and reflect quietly after glimpsing Kevin Rudd sitting on the backbench in Question Time this afternoon.

I like Julia Gillard even less than I first liked Kevin Rudd

Which, as I said, wasn’t much at all – at first. Seeing Julia Gillard on the 7:30 Report tonight just sickened me. She failed to answer most of Kerry O’Brien’s questions – granted, they were provocative, but they were what we all wanted to know the answer to – and she just turned on the new Gillard robot.

I wasn’t impressed. At a time like this, we want to know the new woman-in-charge is going to be honest with us. She’s our Prime Minister, after all.

And I don’t think I trust her. I find it hard to believe she’s in the job to help people, as she likes to quote.

But I do believe that Rudd’s first concern was for the country, and the stable governance of it, rather than for himself.

I think I’m in the bargaining stage of grief now – bargaining on Rudd’s behalf. If only he had said one or two things differently a few days ago – if only.