'Rudd should ...', 'Gillard should ...' And so the national conversation drones on, constantly crossing the divide between moral imperatives and self-interested political plotting. Things are now so messy, you wonder whether there is any point in trying to sieve the short term political interests of the players from the moral imperatives of good policy and sound administration in the national interest.
It's not as if this level of intrigue, back-stabbing and character assassination is anything new in Australian tussles for the top job in politics. Think only of Hawke and Keating. They sealed a pact in November 1988 secretly agreeing to a seamless transfer of the leadership baton down the track. Their fellow ministers and caucus members were not privy to it; and we the public were completely oblivious.
Keating announced a challenge to Hawke in May 1991, having voiced his discontent with Hawke in December 1990 when he delivered a speech which Hawke described as 'treacherous'. In January 1991, Hawke and Keating had a three hour meeting seeking a way through the impasse. Each was immovable. The deal was off.
At the first ballot on 3 June 1991, Keating lost by 44 votes to 66 votes. He went to the back bench insisting that he had only one shot in the locker. No one believed him. He and his backers worked feverishly in the next six months, waiting for Hawke and his substitute treasurer to make mistakes. Keating was not there to help. He just waited in the wings. He then won his second challenge on 20 December 1991 by 56 votes to 51.
In the lead up, the media gave him a dream run. What's different about Gillard and Rudd? Gillard is more unpopular than Hawke ever was. Rudd is more popular than Keating was in the lead up to his first challenge. And Rudd's already had one go in the top job.
From day one, Keating wanted to knock off Hawke so that he could be prime minister. Rudd has not declared a challenge. Whether or not that is simply the result of personal calculations about caucus popularity does not matter. If he were to challenge, like Keating he would probably lose the first round and he would have no option but go to the backbench.
Then to do what? Spend the next six months undermining Gillard as Keating did Hawke? Rudd might not think that is a morally appropriate course of action. He might think it would cause long term damage to the Party. Or he might figure that he would never have the numbers in caucus no matter how terminal the Government's position in the polls.
The Labor Party is under siege from left and right.
The Greens are stealing their idealistic young voter base on issues as diverse as same sex marriage and a green future. The Liberals, despite depleted front bench talent since the Howard days, are promising economic management and development without the world's heftiest carbon tax which on its own will neither decrease global emissions nor provide greener technology. The tax obviously provides a disincentive for the manufacturing sector except in those instances where government subsidies are maintained.
If Rudd was not so popular and if Gillard was not so unpopular, the Gillard backers would have been more content to leave Rudd strutting the world stage. No doubt he, like many leaders before him, could be more of a team player. But how do you play in a team which belatedly admits that they conducted confidential polling unfavourable to the leader without telling him, and whose staffers saw fit to prepare a victory speech well before acknowledgement that the challenge was on?
Rudd is up against a team which is so well oiled in keeping the whiff of intrigue from its leader that Harry Jenkins can be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and Peter Slipper bought off without the leader having to know anything until the deal is done.
It's in this context that one must view this week's unprecedented attack by Simon Crean on Rudd's integrity and fitness for Cabinet office. The mission this last week was to kill off Rudd.
Having resigned as Foreign Minister, Rudd should only challenge if he intends to do a Keating, retiring to the back bench with the firm resolve of coming back for a second challenge before the next election. If he does not desire that, there would be no point in his challenging. He should enjoy the Keating largesse of the back bench, waiting to see if he is drafted by a party which is on the way to electoral oblivion.
Though some of Rudd's colleagues called for his sacking this past week, Crean, a key Gillard backer, was the only minister who committed a sacking offence with his demonstrated public breach of cabinet solidarity.
If Rudd decides not to challenge, it may be because he thinks he will never have the numbers in caucus before any election. It might also be because he judges that six months disruption of the party with him on the back bench as a lightning rod conductor for public sympathy would be more than a party led by a desperately unpopular Gillard could bear, thereby paving the way for an Abbott Government, the annihilation of Labor and increased fortunes for the Greens.
Of course those caucus members and staffers who leak swearing videos of Rudd refuse to believe that he could act other than in his own self interest because that is all they ever do, wanting to cling to power and privilege at any cost. Whatever might be said of Rudd's motives against Gillard, consider what Peter Hartcher, who went on to become Keating's journalistic confidante, said of Keating on the eve of his first challenge in June 1991:
For Paul Keating, the point of today's leadership vote is not to win the prime ministership. It is to break the legs of Bob Hawke's administration. If the Labor Party can be persuaded that Mr Hawke is lame, then it becomes inevitable Mr Keating will eventually win in a second challenge. How many votes does Mr Keating need to cripple Mr Hawke?
Back then the received wisdom was that Keating needed 40 votes in a caucus of 110. In a caucus of 103, how many would Rudd need to declare 'Game on' from the back bench?
Everyone knows Gillard is lame. But like the Monty Python figure she will fight for as long as she has a torso, regardless of how many limbs she has lost. Some say, 'Rudd should challenge!' Others say he should retire gracefully to the back bench then leave parliament at the next election. There is not necessarily any 'should' to this assessment. It may be just a matter of his personal choice, ambition and political calculation.
Then again, Rudd may decide what he should do in the light of his party's long term interest and what he assesses as the national interest. It's this that make politics such a dirty business as well as a noble profession.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is professor of law at the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University and adjunct professor at the College of Law and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University.