Politics channels the Twilight Zone

Ok, show's over, I don't want to add to the pessimism surrounding Julia Gillard here but there's been one final sign which shows for sure that Kevin Rudd is going to be Prime Minister again. This morning he went on Fairfax radio and told listeners that he was more likely to captain the Brisbane Broncos than come back as PM.

I know it's a lifetime away but if you cast your memories way back to 2010, Julia spookily enough said very similar things, albeit with an AFL tinge, just before she became PM in that unforgettable overnight coup. So that's it. Game over, man, game over. This is the final sign of a pending Labor armageddon.

Before Kevin's fall, there were many colourful Julia linescoming out of constant media tussles over the leadership issue. In one interview, where she promised she wouldn't be leader before the 2010 election, she said that the interviewer may as well have asked her if she was "anticipating a trip to Mars". In another she said she was more likely to do a Jessica Watsonand sail around the world, or that she'd sooner be expecting a call from Steven Spielberg before a leadership ballot.

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It seems somehow we've gotten trapped in a loop. Someone has accidentally torn a hole in the political time-space continuum, allowing us to go round and round in ever more depressing circles. There a few signs of this, including the above-mentioned, weirdly similar leadership denials. The other patterns are more obvious, part one is that carbon pricing is on the agenda, part two is a PM slumps in the polls with a rival who's gaining popularity and then part three, they get the boot. We've got part one and part two already lined up in the chamber, someone just needs to pull the trigger and we'll have part three.

As Mary Jo Fisher said recently in parliament, in all of this carbon mess we seem to be dancing the Hokey Pokey and doing the Time Warp all over again. Even Pauline Hanson is getting back into politics and so the broken record goes.

What Julia needs is something to break the cycle, switch gears. If Kevin says that he'd sooner go to Mars than be PM again, we know it's really the end of Labor's world. Tony Abbott and the shock jocks need to settle down, have a juice box and a nap. And the moons need to be aligned so that we're not condemned to replay this.

Otherwise Kevin becomes a dead cert to be PM again, and then maybe he'll bring back an ETS, we'll have a poll dive, and Julia will come back. Maybe this is the Groundhog Day of Australian politics and we're just doomed to repeat and repeat this terrible mess until someone does something right, something different. What else do we do? Time to hold on while we go ever further down the rabbit hole.

Bella Counihan works at the Canberra press gallery and writes for the National Times.

Welcome to the conspiracy theory superhighway

Did you know that Julia Gillard has been accused of treason, making her ineligible for office? That John Howard told Muslims to get out of Australia? Oh, and Lady Gaga is actually a medium of mind control for the Illuminati. Yeah, I read it all on the internet, so it must be true.

The internet is an absolute gold mine for conspiracy theories. But in political terms, it can become a platform to promote misinformation and inflated rhetoric, which could be a problem for the notion of democracy. On forums, blogs and comments on news sites, there are now ever more ways to share the fear you have with your fellow couch-bound worriers.

One man has been on an internet crusade to expose a conspiracy of state and federal
government, along the way accusing Julia Gillard of treason. Brian Shaw, who stood as an independent candidate for the Altona state byelection (Gillard's own home turf), alleges "the Government of Western Australia, without referendum process, removed the State of Western Australia from the Crown of the United Kingdom" and therefore "committed treason". What that quite means is hard to figure out, but constitutional expert George Williams, a professor at the University of NSW, told the National Times that he is unaware of any such removal.

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Shaw brought a few cases against a wide range of political figures including all members of the WA government and Julia Gillard for this believed breach. He goes on to argue that under Section 44 of the Constitution anyone ''attainted of treason'', which by his definition means accused of treason, is therefore unable to run for any position in parliament, which means Gillard's is ineligible for office.

Professor Williams explains, however, that "attainted" means convicted. He told the National Times "an allegation would not be enough. You would actually have to have a ruling", adding that Shaw's argument has "no foundation." Shaw has since been ruled to be a vexatious litigant but his theory is still onYouTube, his website and on other blogs and forums arguing the conspiracy.

YouTube has also propagated various other accusations against Julia Gillard, that she is
a dangerous communist, that she belongs to a reptilian racethat controls the world and also she is a part of the ''New World Order''.

Kevin Rudd too, had many conspiracy theories floating around in the online ether. During his prime ministership he too was part of a conspiracy with the New World Order, and another to make Australia a Nazi state.

In America, of course the problem is much more widespread and particularly prevalent since President Barack Obama's administration. There are so many conspiracy theories around the President that there's an entire website devoted to cataloguing them. His religion, his birth certificate, you name it, there's an Obama conspiracy attached to it.

The internet is increasingly how people can consume the kind of news they want and seek the revelations that they feel the mainstream media isn't telling them. Tea Party forums consistently reproduce the same false anti-Muslim speech, variously attributed to John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. The speech was in fact originally an editorial in an American newspaper, which ranted against Muslim migration to that country. But, as ABC's Michael Brissenden explains, even though this is a clear fabrication which only a modicum of googling or research would disqualify, members of the Tea Party continue to believe it.

So what does this all point to? Is the media failing us? Is political discussion so unsatisfactory that people have to believe in something beyond the norm? Or is it the fault of that wild and chaotic internet, which has no checks and balances?

There's no conspiracy here, simply that people will always look for meaning in random events, linking things together that are not actually related by logic or evidence. That the time and effort to actually verify things accurately is too time-consuming and most are willing to believe what their friends say over an unknown ''expert'' or news source. Distrust in authority, trying to be an individual in a sea of convention, these are all factors. The online world simply gives people an ability to communicate these fears, passions and beliefs with each other.

Bella Counihan works at the Canberra press gallery and writes for the National Times.

Lady Gillard must confront climate change

Aren't things getting dramatic in federal politics? Suddenly every policy issue is a bomb about to go off with no one knowing who it will destroy — a leader, a party, a government.

A carbon tax is now back on the agenda — despite the PM explicitly promising that there wouldn't be one — and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been running the hyperbole at high volume since the announcement. This was a ''betrayal'', there would be a ''people's revolt'' — all a bit OTT. But he may have had something when, last week in Parliament, he compared Julia Gillard to Lady Macbeth.

If you remember your year 12 English, Macbeth is the story of regicide. Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to kill the king so that he can succeed him. But then she is consumed with guilt and dies mysteriously. Like all great Shakespearean drama, the tragedy is foretold long before the end of the first act and we are left to watch the whole mess play out.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard during question time last Thursday, the day she announced the government's proposed carbon pricing deal. Photo: Andrew Meares
It's not just the broken promise that will haunt Lady Gillard. Her earlier decision to convince Kevin Rudd to slay his emissions trading scheme — a move that led to him losing the top job — will come back to plague her too.
Climate change is here to stay as a political issue. With the blood of climate change policy on her hands, Gillard will have to confront the issue head on, admit missteps or she will be forever trying to prevent the issue from dominating the agenda. To switch plays here, there may never be a story of more woe, than this of Julia and her Kevin . . . and, ahem, carbon pricing.

A positive sign is that Gillard seems to already be taking great pains to admit her mistakes. After tip-toeing around the word ''tax'', she finally said she was ''happy'' to use the word. Initially unwilling to admit that she had broken a promise, Gillard said the hung parliament meant changed circumstances and then that carbon pricing had always been on the table. But she finally said ''yep, it was me, I did it''. This is a promising start but would have helped more had it been earlier.

As in the Scottish play, it is the corrupting power of ambition that threatens Lady Gillard in this potential Labor tragedy. She may want to succeed so much that admitting to mistakes will be difficult. So she will never really get to grips with what haunts the government. The same issues — high ambition and rhetoric, but going about it in the wrong way — also screwed up Rudd.

Watching the doomed characters in Macbeth, you often wonder about the hypotheticals. If Lady Macbeth had not convinced her husband to kill the king then, as an esteemed kinsman, he would have been rewarded. Eventually, they may have been king and queen anyway, with no murder to haunt them.

Similarly, if Gillard (along with others) had not convinced Rudd to slay the ETS, the polls wouldn't have been as terrible. Rudd wouldn't have got the chop and he may have survived, with Gillard to have logically succeeded him in time. By then climate wouldn't have been a problem for the government. But if the issue dominates the next national vote (whether it be a referendum or a general election), Gillard may, like Lady Macbeth, have created her own undoing.

We have no weird sisters and witches to predict the future here. We do have polling and we will soon see what the public reaction is to a carbon tax. A slight majority might support the policy — as with the flood levy. This would be a small ray of hope for the PM.

But, as Shakespeare wrote, ''what's done cannot be undone''. Gillard will have to confront the mistakes of the past, and screw her courage to the sticking place if she's to go on to win the next election.

Bella Counihan works at the Canberra press gallery and writes for The National Times.