Horse 1095 - The Right Hon Julia Gillard PM

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/24/2935500.htm
Julia Gillard has been elected unopposed to the Labor leadership, seizing power in a bloodless Parliament House coup after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided not to contest this morning's leadership ballot.

Wow... just wow.

The Labor right obviously has thought that Rudd wouldn't take Labor through to the next election, so they've dumped him.

I'm not sure if Rudd saw this coming but perhaps the party was beginning to see him as a "lame duck" sort of Prime Minister, after not being able to pass legislation like the ETS and now the Mining Super Profits Tax through the Senate (though given that the Senate is hostile, can he really be blamed for that?)

What does this say about the state of Australian politics? We've have a few State Premiers get the chop whilst in power, the Federal Opposition has changed leaders twice since the last election (thrice if you include Howard being elected out of his seat) and now this.
What sort of confidence can you have in any of the leaders that we have if they're chopping and changing at will? Mind you the reverse is also true, the other extreme is a case like Menzies who was PM for 14 years in his second tilt at the job.

I've also noticed a freaky sort of co-incidence. Margaret Thatcher, Helen Clark and now Julia Gillard all being the first female Prime Ministers of their respective countries are all redheads. What does that say, if anything?

I think that we might expect to hear rather pointed rhetoric over the next few days. Also expect to see caricatures of Gillard as Elizabeth I. As for new politics and a new direction? I don't think that will even move even 1° from the course that it's already heading on.