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Today is a great day not only in Australian history, but also in world history. It marks the day when people of character and sensibility pushed back against an overwrought and pointless green agenda, and pushed back in a big way. They’ve had enough, and they’ve scraped the Krudd off their shoes and are moving forward. Tony Abbot has won the Australian election in a landslide, and vows to abolish the carbon tax as a first order of business. Abbott has declared Australia is “once more open for business” in claiming victory in Saturday’s election. It is a huge blow...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsoYPGRNxoo

KEVIN Rudd has been sworn in as the nation's 28th Prime Minister, alongside Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and new Treasurer Chris Bowen. Governor-General Quentin Bryce confirmed the Labor caucus' decision last night to reinstall Mr Rudd in the post it removed him from just over three years ago. Mr Rudd’s wife Therese Rein, daughter Jessica and granddaughter Josephine were at Government House for the ceremony. Mr Albanese’s wife, former NSW deputy premier Carmel Tebutt, accompanied her husband. Mr Rudd will make a statement to parliament at noon, asserting his authority as Prime Minister and challenging Tony Abbott to bring...

Kevin Rudd has been elected unopposed, according to reports.

JULIA Gillard has called for a Labor leadership ballot to be held at 7pm tonight. ''Anyone who believes they should be Labor leader should put themselves forward for this ballot,'' the Prime Minister said. She said anyone who entered the ballot should commit, in the interests of the party, to resigning from parliament if they lost. The move forces the Rudd camp to bring forward their preferred timetable for a challenge. They had hoped to engineer a special caucus meeting tomorrow and a challenge on Friday. “I am asking my political party to endorse me as a leader and Prime...

KEVIN Rudd will challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership tomorrow morning. A petition for a ballot circulated among Labor MPs is believed to now have the required numbers for a spill of the PM.

JULIA Gillard says her position as Labor leader has been emphatically confirmed after Kevin Rudd failed to nominate against her in a leadership spill. The Prime Minister stared down the prospect of a challenge by Mr Rudd, which failed to eventuate when it became clear he did not have the numbers. Ms Gillard said she was grateful to her colleagues for their continuing support of her as Labor leader, and accepted it with humility and resolve. “Today the leadership of our political party, the Labor Party, has been settled and settled in the most conclusive fashion possible. “This whole business...

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard surprised voters on Wednesday by announcing that national elections will be held September 14, in a country where governments have traditionally given the opposition little more than a month’s notice to keep a strategic advantage. September 14, 2013, falls on Yom Kippur, leading former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull to post on Twitter that he was “deeply disappointed that Julia Gillard chose to hold the election on Yom Kippur — the most solemn and sacred day of the Jewish year.”

During an official visit to India to improve relations and trade between the two nations, Julia Gillard caught the heel of her shoe in a lawn and fell, but was unhurt. The PM has been attracting the admiration of Indians, particularly women, for her anti-sexism speech in Parliament.

Last week, two same-sex marriage bills were firmly rejected. As a result, campaigning journalists feel confused, even wounded. Or at least they’re pretending to be upset right now. Why isn’t their atheist prime minister on their side? Left-wing gay activists are fuming too. After all, they believe Gillard should be for “marriage equality” in relation to monogamy (but not polygamy for some outré reason). Why isn’t their progressive prime minister on their side? In response , political editor Ross Peake of The Canberra Times wrote, “Her detractors wonder how this works for an atheist living in a de facto relationship....

KEVIN Rudd has resigned as foreign minister. Mr Rudd called an extraordinary media conference in Washington DC just after 1am local time, just hours after Cabinet minister Greg Combet declared "enough is enough" today as he and other top supporters of Julia Gillard called for an end to the ongoing leadership speculation. The frustration within the ministry has made it more likely the Prime Minister will act when Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who is currently in Washington, returns to Australia on Sunday morning.

Cheek-to-cheek and hand-in-hand as they met on a wind-swept airport runway, they only had eyes for each other. And if Australia's prime minister Julia Gillard was half-hearted when she welcomed the Queen to her country last month, she certainly did not hold back with Barack Obama. The pair exchanged a warm embrace on the tarmac at Canberra airport as the president flew in for a whirlwind visit before heading on to Indonesia. They later held a joint press conference in which they unveiled plans to deepen the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific, with 2,500 U.S. marines operating out of...

The ceremony at Honolulu's picturesque Punchbowl Cemetery was Ms Gillard's first official engagement of her trip for the APEC leaders' summit. Just a few kilometres from the site of the infamous Pearl Harbor attack of World War 2, Ms Gillard was given a 19-gun salute as she arrived at the cemetery. She told the crowd of veterans and their families it was a great privilege to be with them. "In this beautiful and hallowed American place where so many of America's own lie in graves which they found too soon you would be well entitled to say: They died for...

LABOR may have finally bounced off rock bottom but Australia's oldest political party and its leader are still facing a historic loss of public confidence and electoral failure. A three-point rise in the Newspoll primary vote for the ALP has avoided the unthinkable for the Gillard government of going to 25 per cent or below to have less support than the combined vote for the Greens and various odds and sods, but the broader view of this survey of public opinion about Labor - as well as the personal standing of Julia Gillard - is devastating. The electorate has not...

JULIA, resign. (When I drafted this column a month ago, friends in the ALP begged me not to run it. Not because of any profound dispute with the content but because "it might make things worse". Now, things couldn't be worse.) Resign, Julia. Resign yourself to the fact you've failed. Resign yourself to the fact nothing you do has a desirable political effect. Resign yourself to the fact that no matter what you say, nobody listens. Resign yourself to the certainty that you're leading your party to electoral slaughter. You are about to elect Tony Abbott. Resign. You led the...

The silence of one man is killing the Gillard Government. The public can only watch in despair at the latest political episode of a ridiculous soap opera. Craig Thomson stands accused of misusing funds in his previous life as a union official. His credit cards and mobile phone were used to pay for prostitutes and bankroll his election campaign. Normally you can't shut politicians up, especially if they perceive someone has done wrong by them. But apart from saying he denies the allegations against him and someone else spent the money, Thomson says nothing else. He has not taken the...

JULIA Gillard admits Australia is a long way from consensus on climate change - and says the debate may become ever tougher for Labor - as new polling reveals her behind Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister for the first time. ..... Ms Gillard said today the polling was a result of her plan to put a price on carbon, and that while it was a tough reform "it may get even tougher, before it gets easier". “I believe that once carbon pricing is in place people will see how the system works and the benefits of it,” the Prime...

Australian PM Gets Up Close to N.Korea Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson visit a building in the truce village of Panmunjom on Sunday as a North Korean soldier looks on. Gillard is visiting South Korea from April 23-25 to mark the 60th anniversary of Australia's troop dispatch to the Korean War and the 50th anniversary of the start of Korea's diplomatic relations with Australia. /Newsis

MORE of the "real" Julia Gillard is now displayed, with the Prime Minister offering her fullest exposition for rejecting both euthanasia and same-sex marriage. Ms Gillard, in fact, is not the social progressive many Labor backers and politicians have wrongly assumed. On the contrary, she has deep roots as a cultural conservative and traditionalist. This is obvious across a range of issues - her belief in personal responsibility, rejection of the option of state-sanctioned killing, support for biblical and cultural dimensions of the Western canon and the belief that social heritage should keep marriage to an institution between a man...

JULIA Gillard came to talk about education and Australia's place in the world, but for Barack Obama and a class of high school history students, Vegemite was the main topic of interest. Hosting the Prime Minister on a visit to the Wakefield High School, in Virginia, the most-powerful man in the world had a clear message about Vegemite - the sandwich filling that is part of the average Australian childhood. Vegemite was, Mr Obama declared, "horrible". "It's like a quasi-vegetable by-product paste that you smear all over your toast," Mr Obama told the students after one asked Mr Gillard to...