Lenore Taylor on Kevin Rudd - National Times

Lenore Taylor

Lenore Taylor is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. She is a Walkley Award winner, a winner of the Paul Lyneham Award for excellence in press gallery journalism and a former foreign correspondent, based in London. She co-authored a book, "Shitstorm" on the Rudd government's response to the global economic crisis. She has covered federal politics for more than 20 years.

Analysis

Labor's political dysfunction reaches new heights

Lenore Taylor After this debacle, with an election just six months away, the Rudd ''camp'' must surely be folding their tents. But only after another extraordinary spectacle of Labor self-harm.

Media tread fine line when tribes go to war

Lenore Taylor It was yet another week when politicians and the media appeared consumed with talking to, and about, each other.

Lenore Taylor

Teams lining up early for a Coalition victory

Lenore Taylor The wildness sweeping Australian politics is fuelled by the fact that all the players now appear not just to be expecting a Coalition victory, but to be factoring it in as a certainty and...

Lenore Taylor

Time ticking for embattled Labor

Lenore Taylor Prime Minister Julia Gillard has three weeks to try to regain control of the political agenda.

Lenore Taylor

Something has to give - sooner or later

Lenore Taylor Julia Gillard has three weeks to try to regain control of the political agenda as previously strong supporters contemplate the desperate threat to both the Labor Party and the union movement posed by...

Lenore Taylor

More to budgets than DNA

Lenore Taylor Perhaps all the analysis of Julia Gillard's motivation for naming the election date has over-complicated things.

Lenore Taylor

Political death roll promises all bets off for major parties

Lenore Taylor Being very much at the ''are we there yet?'' end of this year's long and gruelling political journey, it's getting harder to laugh at the more extreme doses of daily advice we get from followers on...

Labor has choked on a surplus of promises

Lenore Taylor Economists, government advisors and backbenchers have known for some time that, with growth slowing and revenue falling, keeping Labor's promise to return the budget to a skinny $1.

Lenore Taylor

Swan eats crow - and not a day too soon

Lenore Taylor ECONOMICALLY he was doing the right thing. Politically he was eating crow. Which is why it took Wayne Swan so long to do it.

Lenore Taylor

Politicians never learn, and so they keep on promising

Lenore Taylor I f politicians learn one thing from this sorry Parliament it must surely be not to make promises they can't keep.

Lenore Taylor

Longing for grown ups to cut out the silliness

Lenore Taylor Tony Abbott has access to more focus-group polling than I do, and he's clearly doing something right because he still looks like romping home at the next election.

Lenore Taylor

Alarm over spectre of young, lost generation

Lenore Taylor In the tumble of news this week a report raising a very big question slipped by with almost no fuss.

Lenore Taylor

Voter enthusiasm now well and truly curbed

Lenore Taylor After two bitter years, Australia's political tug of war appears to have reached that frozen moment when the teams have struggled back to almost even pegging and no one is sure which way the...

Lenore Taylor

Class is in session, and a maths test is coming up

Lenore Taylor When the heads of the Catholic and independent school systems in NSW left a private meeting with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, the Education Minister, Peter Garrett, and a posse of NSW...

Tanner denies fanning leadership row as he closes political chapter

Lenore Taylor LINDSAY TANNER says his book criticising the Labor Party and the poll-driven ''panic'' that led to the coup against Kevin Rudd was not designed to help provoke another leadership change.

Lenore Taylor

Labor in need of shelter as bad weather closes in

Lenore Taylor Julia Gillard was playing the audience perfectly at the press gallery's midwinter ball on Wednesday night, commiserating with journalists at both News Ltd and Fairfax as the media industry goes...

Lenore Taylor

Unions go neutral as poll hopes dry up

Lenore Taylor IN THE showdown in February with the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard had almost unanimous support from MPs who owe their position to the union movement.

Comments 140

Lenore Taylor

Abbott needs magic to pull surplus out of a hat

Lenore Taylor The rest of the world started 2012 transfixed by the unfolding euro zone debt crisis. In Australia, we started with some confusion about whether the last global financial crisis happened at all.

Lenore Taylor

Punch and Judy show that's destroying Labor

Lenore Taylor Labor's legitimacy crisis with the voting public is now infecting the party itself. Those backing Gillard and those backing Rudd don't just run down the rival candidate as being an inferior choice...