Senator John Faulkner exempted Labor parliamentary leaders from specific criticism during his recent Neville Wran Lecture, but he certainly didn't help Julia Gillard by once again focusing media attention on Labor's membership weaknesses.
It gave Kevin Rudd the opportunity to repeat his own diagnosis of Labor's internal problems and for union leader Paul Howes, who had helped bring him down 12 months ago, to attack Rudd as a hypocrite who was a major part of the problem.
All of this was predictable. But it did nothing to settle Labor's problems at the federal level; rather it only contributed to further gloom about Labor's prospects.
In fact, whatever Gillard's take on the many valid points about greater membership participation that Faulkner made they are not primarily her responsibility and there is little she herself can do about them anyway. Past party leaders, like Gough Whitlam, have tackled such issues from Opposition with nothing to lose. Recent Opposition leaders, like Simon Crean, expended energy on internal reform for little benefit in terms of his leadership.
Faulkner's lecture came just before Gillard's first anniversary as prime minister at a time when the media are floating the possibility that she will go the way of Rudd. It has reached the stage that the Independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, are being questioned about a change of Labor PM.
The media are not indulging in their own fantasies, but feeding off rumours circulating around Parliament House and gossip from within the party. The message is that Gillard has until Christmas to improve the party's low standing in the polls or she may be replaced by Rudd or someone else.
That scenario is a classic example of failing to learn from your mistakes. Whatever the wisdom of Rudd's demise, the manner of its happening was rejected emphatically by the electorate. It will hang over Gillard for a very long time.
Surely the strategy of changing the leader to save the party would not be employed again by Labor's inner circle, especially those from NSW who are serial offenders in this regard. To do so would reinforce the claims of the Opposition, that it's just the undemocratic way that Labor does business.
Not only is blaming and then changing the leader a bad idea in principle, but such discussion at the moment is seriously premature. We are not yet 12 months into the term of this government. Only from August 2012, after two years, should Gillard be judged on her government's record. Urgency to act is no excuse as the Government appears likely to serve its full term, unless it pulls the plug itself.
There are much more important issues than leadership for Labor to be thinking about. The first is to deliver on some policies and the second is to plan how it will conduct itself under Labor-Green control of the Senate.
Uncertainty of purpose in government is even worse than having an unpopular leader or delivering unpopular outcomes. The greatest weakness of this government is its failure to make final decisions about those issues that Gillard addressed when she first took office. Issues like the carbon tax and the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees especially have dragged on for far too long.
Even if the ultimate decisions are initially unpopular Gillard Labor needs to make them quickly and then try to explain them to the community and to defend them against critics on both the Right and the Left. Uncertainty is killing the government with open-minded middle-of-the-road voters.
Labor shouldn't fall once again for the apparent 'easy fix' of changing the leader, when it has more important problems to address.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and a columnist with The Canberra Times.