Those familiar with The Simpsons will have seen an episode in which Marge gets a job at Homer's work. Homer advises her before she starts there to blame anything that goes wrong on a foreign employee named Tibor – and, sure enough, as the episode progresses there are plenty of times that he is blamed, despite very little actually being his fault.
Exit American popular culture and enter Australian politics. Kevin Rudd has been ignominiously dumped as leader of the Labor party and also, therefore, as Prime Minister. The Labor party has had a number of policies that were unsuccessful or unpopular – and often both – for which all of its caucus, and in particular all of its Cabinet, were at least partially responsible. There was the home insulation scheme, there was the school building scheme and there was the confusion about the mining super tax, to name just a few.
Labor is cleansing itself of the Rudd years, and to do that Rudd had to be the one to go. To judge from their treatment of him, they are holding him entirely responsible for the collective decision making: he was not moved to a high-ranking cabinet post, as would befit someone of his experience and skills, but instead is back to being a lowly backbencher.
To judge from the Australian people's response, they accept this version of history, at least in the short term. As soon as he was dumped, Labor surged ahead in the polls and Julia Gillard's personal popularity increased significantly as well. The Rudd Government had become very unpopular, and even though Rudd himself was but one member of that government, as its most visible member it seems that he is the only one being held responsible. In that sense, Labor has probably timed his departure very well: by the time the people realise otherwise, the election may have been and gone. It also doesn't allow Tony Abbott much time to adjust his style of debate. Normally five weeks is not anything like long enough for the people to come to a political realisation, but with the spotlight on in the next few weeks my guess is that a few who wouldn't otherwise have done so making the connection.
Things have not started at all well for Julia Gillard, however. Within just a few days of starting in the new role, she tried to foist Australia's boat people onto its nearest, but poorest, neighbours, East Timor. That Australia has maltreated East Timor in the past, notably in respect to the latter's oil reserves, will have escaped the attention of many Australians. So will that that country is far poorer than Australia, and therefore less able to set up and maintain such a centre. What will not have escaped their attention, though, is that East Timor clearly had no idea that this was being suggested. It took over a day of querying before Gillard clarified that, in fact, she meant only that East Timor was only one of several possibilities.
The pundits are predicting a narrow Labor victory, but I'm not so sure. They will be helped by some re-drawn electoral boundaries – no fewer than five Coalition seats would have been won by Labor at the last election if they had had the current boundaries – and historical precedent – no party since World War II has failed to win a second term – but still need only a very small swing against them to lose the election. There is dissatisfaction, and Tony Abbott seems more likely to be the leader who people hate to love – whom nobody will support while speaking to pollsters or even friends, but whom many will vote for nonetheless. As Kevin Rudd found out the hard way, people actually vote for a party and not a Prime Minister, but the leader is almost as important as the person standing for the local seat.