By Tony Wright
Julia Gillard would be advised to go to the people as soon as possible. She cannot afford to appear to be standing still in the age of obsolescence.
IF YOUR microwave - or just about any other electrical appliance - has blown up recently, it's a fair bet you didn't bother having it repaired. Easier, quicker and mostly cheaper to junk it and buy a new one.
It's the age of obsolescence. Mobile phone gone haywire? Get a new one. TV? Same thing.
We don't stick with things and try to fix them up any more. Don't need to - there's always a new model.
Today's Australians are not like their parents or grandparents, who lived through a depression and emerged with an obsession for saving things: balls of string, food containers, odd bits and pieces of this and that for a rainy day, or to use again and again. If something in the house or shed went on the blink, they simply fixed it, or called in a handyman who could do so. They persevered with what they had, resorting to purchasing new models only when the old standby was clean worn out, unable to be revived.
No more. Out with the old, in with the new, faster and faster. It infects society from the divorce courts all the way to politics.
The age of obsolescence came to mind as the Labor government ditched prime minister Kevin Rudd in the blink of an eye last week. He had been the shiniest, most popular leader Labor has had for ages and, amazingly, he had managed to stay that way for more than two years. But when his popularity went on the fritz?
Toss him, get a new model.
It's been happening with dizzying and increasing frequency.
A few weeks ago, the press gallery threw its annual midwinter ball. The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader gave speeches, which is the ritual. At the past three balls, the audience couldn't help but note, the opposition leader's speech has been presented by three different leaders: Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and now Tony Abbott. At least Kevin Rudd got to speak each year.
The leader of the Greens, Bob Brown, doesn't get an opportunity to appear on stage at these events. Maybe he should, if only in the interests of continuity. Brown came to Parliament in 1996 and has been recognised as leader ever since. Perhaps that's the meaning of conservation.
In those years as leader, de facto and official (because the Greens were a loose-knit bunch for quite some time, Brown's official elevation to the leadership did not occur until 2005), he has seen no fewer than 10 Labor and Liberal leaders in Canberra.
Ten! In 14 years. And that doesn't include four National Party leaders (Tim Fischer, John Anderson, Mark Vaile and Warren Truss) and Democrats (now extinct) Cheryl Kernot, Meg Lees, Natasha Stott Despoja, Andrew Bartlett and Lyn Allison.
There are far more ex-leaders of major federal parties alive in Australia than at any other time in the nation's history.
A colleague suggested the other day that it had reached the point where The Lodge - which is currently vacant following Julia Gillard's decision not to move in unless Labor wins the election - could be put to use as a therapy centre for grief-stricken former leaders.
John Howard, you might imagine, having lost not only government but his own seat of Bennelong and now the chance to run world cricket - could bond with the massively shocked Kevin Rudd, the first prime minister to be denied a single full term at the top.
Malcolm Turnbull, who knows a bit about grief, wrote only the other day that someone should give Kevin a hug. Mark Latham and John Hewson could explore the depths of bitterness together. Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser could advise on how they turned enmity into friendship. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating would probably need to be kept apart.
It's worth revisiting the years of churn if only to remind ourselves of the fleeting period granted to most of the disappointed in the new century.
For the first five of those years since 1996, there was stability on both sides of the dispatch box. John Howard on one side, Kim Beazley on the other. Howard kept on keeping on, but after the 2001 election, Labor cracked.
In the next 8½ years, the two major parties would pin their hopes on a succession of eight leaders. An average of a bit over a year for each of them, if we are to include the latest incumbents, Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard, and count Beazley twice. Talk about obsolescence! The postwar Italian parliament could hardly compete.
Beazley couldn't win an election, Labor decided. He was thrown over for Simon Crean in November 2001.
But bad polls and an inability to persuade anyone to listen had a cruel destiny awaiting Crean, who was given the heave-ho only two years later - the first Labor leader denied the chance to try his arm at an election.
By November 2003, it was time for the Mark Latham experiment. He got his election, lost to Howard and was gone in a spectacular huff by January 2005. One year and two months. It seems longer.
Panicked, Labor went back to Beazley. He didn't last another two years. By December 2006, it was Kevin Rudd's turn, just in time to transmogrify into the mightily victorious Kevin07.
It was Rudd's dizzying success and the Coalition's utter disarray in the vacuum left by Howard that led to the succession of Liberal tossaways: Nelson, Turnbull and … oh, hold on, Abbott's still there.
Much of Kevin07's great fortune was to be granted his chance at the very time Howard had run out of steam. We might express surprise at the rapid turnover of leaders, but there also comes a time when a commander clocks up too many years and requires replacement.
Menzies knew it; Bob Hawke and John Howard didn't. But they were all obsolete because of the ravages of time, not simply newspaper polls and panicky colleagues.
And now Rudd has been added to the list of goods deemed easier to be tossed aside than fixed, even if he was hardly out of the box.
Julia Gillard might be well advised to go to an election as soon as possible, before her gloss wears off. Leadership has become as expendable as a microwave in the age of obsolescence.
Tony Wright is national affairs editor.