Some links that survey some of the more interesting discussions on the removal of Kevin Rudd from his role as PM and what it says about politics and the democratic process in Australia:
Mark Banisch on the role of the media cycle raises issues that go back at least partly to the impact of technology.
Larvatus Prodeo carried some interesting blog discussions including:
An early assessment of Kevin Rudd, and Links on the spill will take you to a range of other discussions.
Jeff Sparrow on The personalisation of Politics attempts a wider cultural take on the events.
The Piping Shrike offered a reading through an account of the hollowing out of the political process and what political parties do and don't stand for.
Showing posts with label Kevin Rudd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kevin Rudd. Show all posts
Monday, 28 June 2010
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Kevin Rudd and Tibet
Anyone who had assumed that Kevin Rudd was a cautious technocratic politician despite his article proclaiming his admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer might now be given some pause for thought by the following news story on the ABC website.
Senior Chinese Government officials have publicly attacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over his comments on Tibet.
In Washington, Mr Rudd said it was clear that human rights abuses were being committed in Tibet, and today he repeated those claims during a speech at a university in Beijing. Mr Rudd says he will not be backing away from his plan to raise his concerns with the Chinese leadership.
"It's important, as I said in my speech earlier today, to have a relationship that is capable of handling a disagreement and putting views in a straight-forward fashion," he said.
"That's what I said I'd be doing in my remarks earlier today, and that's what I will be doing. I stand by the comments I made earlier on this matter."
He has also supported Australians' right to turn their back on the Olympic flame.
"You know one thing about Australia [is], it's a robust democracy. We live in a free country - people can express their point of view in any manner that they choose," he said.
...
In a speech earlier today to Beijing University students, Mr Rudd said he did not support a boycott of the Olympics, but he risked increasing Beijing's ire by talking about other human rights issues and controversies.
"There are still many problems in China. Problems of poverty, problems of uneven development, problems of pollution. Problems of broader human rights," he said.
"It is important to recognise that China's change is having a great impact, not just on China, but also the world."
Mr Rudd described China's social transformation as "unprecedented in human history", but warned his audience that its rise was causing anxiety overseas.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/09/2212467.htm
There is something appropriate in the fact that this speech was given on 9 April, the date on which Dietrich Bonhoeffer is remembered in the Anglican calendar of saints and martyrs.
Senior Chinese Government officials have publicly attacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over his comments on Tibet.
In Washington, Mr Rudd said it was clear that human rights abuses were being committed in Tibet, and today he repeated those claims during a speech at a university in Beijing. Mr Rudd says he will not be backing away from his plan to raise his concerns with the Chinese leadership.
"It's important, as I said in my speech earlier today, to have a relationship that is capable of handling a disagreement and putting views in a straight-forward fashion," he said.
"That's what I said I'd be doing in my remarks earlier today, and that's what I will be doing. I stand by the comments I made earlier on this matter."
He has also supported Australians' right to turn their back on the Olympic flame.
"You know one thing about Australia [is], it's a robust democracy. We live in a free country - people can express their point of view in any manner that they choose," he said.
...
In a speech earlier today to Beijing University students, Mr Rudd said he did not support a boycott of the Olympics, but he risked increasing Beijing's ire by talking about other human rights issues and controversies.
"There are still many problems in China. Problems of poverty, problems of uneven development, problems of pollution. Problems of broader human rights," he said.
"It is important to recognise that China's change is having a great impact, not just on China, but also the world."
Mr Rudd described China's social transformation as "unprecedented in human history", but warned his audience that its rise was causing anxiety overseas.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/09/2212467.htm
There is something appropriate in the fact that this speech was given on 9 April, the date on which Dietrich Bonhoeffer is remembered in the Anglican calendar of saints and martyrs.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Kevin Rudd, Christian faith and the 2007 Federal election
Apparently, the Christian vote played a decisive role in Kevin Rudd's election victory last year. Pentecostal and evangelical Christians proved to be the all-important swinging voters in a string of key seats, many of them in Queensland.
At least that's the finding in research on the 2007 election, carried out by John Black, a former Labor Senator for Queensland, who runs a research and marketing company called Australian Development Strategies.
The religious factor wasn't so much a general swing across the whole of the electorate, it showed up in key electorates that Labor needed to win, and did win. In fact religious identity, specifically Pentecostals and Lutherans remained significant in the analysis of significant factors in swings to the Australian Labor Party in Queensland.
The attraction to Kevin Rudd and the vote for the Labor Party may not have been based simply on Rudd's personal appeal to the conservative religious voter, but about what's been going on theologically in those religious communities.
There are shifts and differentiation within those communities that simply arent picked in sweeping comments that align conservative Christianity with "Religious right" politics.
Religious commentator and ABC broadcaster John Cleary participating in the discussion on the Religion Report observed that the Religious Right had opened faith communities up to re-engagement with civil society over the past twenty years. However, now that those evangelical communities and Pentecostal communities are re-engaged with civil society, they are moving to a wider agenda becoming actively involved for example with Micah Challenge and the Make Poverty History Campaign. Theologically they have been recovering their evangelical heritage that goes back to the progressivism of the 19th century.
Kevin Rudd has made the link directly in appealing to a whole younger generation in these churches, being very influenced over the last 20 years by evangelists like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis on the Christian Left in the United States. In Rudd's essay, published in The Monthly in October 2006 on faith in politics, in the first three paragraphs of that essay, largely devoted to Dietrich Bonhoeffer he quotes Jim Wallis, the author of 'God's Politics', the bestseller in evangelical churches over the last two years appealing to a whole generation of young people in those evangelical churches.
I reckon this analysis over eggs the pudding a bit, but there is no doubt that both Black and Cleary are on to something that I have picked up in my own discussions with friends cnnected to the Pentecostal community.
For the full transcript of the discussion see The Religion Report - 19 March 2008 - The Christian vote in Australian federal politics
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2194469.htm
At least that's the finding in research on the 2007 election, carried out by John Black, a former Labor Senator for Queensland, who runs a research and marketing company called Australian Development Strategies.
The religious factor wasn't so much a general swing across the whole of the electorate, it showed up in key electorates that Labor needed to win, and did win. In fact religious identity, specifically Pentecostals and Lutherans remained significant in the analysis of significant factors in swings to the Australian Labor Party in Queensland.
The attraction to Kevin Rudd and the vote for the Labor Party may not have been based simply on Rudd's personal appeal to the conservative religious voter, but about what's been going on theologically in those religious communities.
There are shifts and differentiation within those communities that simply arent picked in sweeping comments that align conservative Christianity with "Religious right" politics.
Religious commentator and ABC broadcaster John Cleary participating in the discussion on the Religion Report observed that the Religious Right had opened faith communities up to re-engagement with civil society over the past twenty years. However, now that those evangelical communities and Pentecostal communities are re-engaged with civil society, they are moving to a wider agenda becoming actively involved for example with Micah Challenge and the Make Poverty History Campaign. Theologically they have been recovering their evangelical heritage that goes back to the progressivism of the 19th century.
Kevin Rudd has made the link directly in appealing to a whole younger generation in these churches, being very influenced over the last 20 years by evangelists like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis on the Christian Left in the United States. In Rudd's essay, published in The Monthly in October 2006 on faith in politics, in the first three paragraphs of that essay, largely devoted to Dietrich Bonhoeffer he quotes Jim Wallis, the author of 'God's Politics', the bestseller in evangelical churches over the last two years appealing to a whole generation of young people in those evangelical churches.
I reckon this analysis over eggs the pudding a bit, but there is no doubt that both Black and Cleary are on to something that I have picked up in my own discussions with friends cnnected to the Pentecostal community.
For the full transcript of the discussion see The Religion Report - 19 March 2008 - The Christian vote in Australian federal politics
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2194469.htm
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Witnessing a moment of history for more than just Australia
Cross posted from Ekklesia
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6754
A festival atmosphere was evident on the lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Thousands of people celebrated outside in the wake of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations. That much was evident from the television broadcast and the reports from friends and family who made it to Parliament House and its immediate vicinity.
Aboriginal flags flew and Indigenous performers performed for the crowds, many of whom had travelled to the city from right across the country especially for the occasion. Crowds in the Great Hall and on the lawns outside Parliament wept, cheered and clapped after Mr Rudd said "sorry", in scenes that were repeated at gatherings across the country.
People jumped and whooped with the emotion of the occasion in celebrating a moment that many of them, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, believed would not come within their lifetime.
The celebration was only briefly interrupted by a strong negative response to the Opposition leader who in his speech in reply to that of the Prime Minister strayed into an ill-timed and insensitive defense of the previous Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.
Within the parliamentary chamber, the opening of the business of Parliament with the Lord’s Prayer, while it functions as a remnant of Christendom which some would want want to question, seemed on this occasion to be strangely, if momentarily appropriate. In the light of the first item of business …“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth .. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us…” It definitely caught the mood of the moment.
The recital of the words of apology by Mr Rudd took on an almost liturgical force. His speech in support of the motion was by turns emotionally direct in its recital of stories and experiences of people who had lived through the experience of separation from their family and community, and morally clear and intellectually clinical in the justification for the apology.
Kevin Rudd spoke in a register that made clear his personal engagement with his appeal to a shared humanity across a deep cultural and historical divide but also one that gave expression to his role and responsibility as the Prime Minister to speak on behalf of the Australian community and to give moral leadership in clearing the space for future action by speaking the truth about the past.
While it was a speech that drew on a presumed shared moral framework and language, the rhetoric was shaped by moments of almost unconscious biblical resonance and was powered by moral convictions deeply rooted in the Prime Minister’s faith commitments
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6754
A festival atmosphere was evident on the lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Thousands of people celebrated outside in the wake of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations. That much was evident from the television broadcast and the reports from friends and family who made it to Parliament House and its immediate vicinity.
Aboriginal flags flew and Indigenous performers performed for the crowds, many of whom had travelled to the city from right across the country especially for the occasion. Crowds in the Great Hall and on the lawns outside Parliament wept, cheered and clapped after Mr Rudd said "sorry", in scenes that were repeated at gatherings across the country.
People jumped and whooped with the emotion of the occasion in celebrating a moment that many of them, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, believed would not come within their lifetime.
The celebration was only briefly interrupted by a strong negative response to the Opposition leader who in his speech in reply to that of the Prime Minister strayed into an ill-timed and insensitive defense of the previous Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.
Within the parliamentary chamber, the opening of the business of Parliament with the Lord’s Prayer, while it functions as a remnant of Christendom which some would want want to question, seemed on this occasion to be strangely, if momentarily appropriate. In the light of the first item of business …“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth .. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us…” It definitely caught the mood of the moment.
The recital of the words of apology by Mr Rudd took on an almost liturgical force. His speech in support of the motion was by turns emotionally direct in its recital of stories and experiences of people who had lived through the experience of separation from their family and community, and morally clear and intellectually clinical in the justification for the apology.
Kevin Rudd spoke in a register that made clear his personal engagement with his appeal to a shared humanity across a deep cultural and historical divide but also one that gave expression to his role and responsibility as the Prime Minister to speak on behalf of the Australian community and to give moral leadership in clearing the space for future action by speaking the truth about the past.
While it was a speech that drew on a presumed shared moral framework and language, the rhetoric was shaped by moments of almost unconscious biblical resonance and was powered by moral convictions deeply rooted in the Prime Minister’s faith commitments
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Change and Leadership
Harvard leadership professor Ronald Heifetz has identified two major approaches to change: technical fixes and adaptive change. In her fine book, Leadership Can Be Taught, Sharon Daloz Parks describes Heifetz' distinction between the two.
Leaders who change through technical fixes believe that problems can be solved "with knowledge and procedures already in hand." Technical leaders emphasize expertise, education, and experience as key to resolving difficult issues. They also think that solutions to problems already exist. Leaders must employ solid techniques or processes to make things right. In this model, a technical-fix politician would try to convince voters of his or her competence, management skill, and problem-solving track record.
In contrast, adaptive change-type leaders believe that complex problems "require new learning, innovation, and new patterns." In this mode, "leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to address adaptive challenges." According to this leadership theory adaptive problems are "swamp issues," complex problems involving multiple levels of difficulty that elude regular routines and established platforms. According to Parks, adaptive leaders "call for changes of heart and mind—the transformation of long-standing habits and deeply held assumptions and values."Tuesday, January 08, 2008The Times They Are A-Changin (by Diana Butler Bass) (God's Politics - Jim Wallis Blog)
So how does Kevin Rudd fit in this typology?A technical fixer with perhaps something of the adaptive mode trying to sneal out into the public domain?
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