When love goes sour, putting an ocean or two between you and your ex can prove quite beneficial. Sure you might pine, you might ache, you might yearn ceaselessly, but averted are all those unpleasant bump-into-one-anothers on a pimple-and-bad-hair day. Those oceans are every bit as necessary in politics.

Whichever way we describe Rudd’s departure, a break-up occurred. A once putatively harmonious dyad was shattered. And like the ex who got to keep all the good CDs and all the least-annoying friends, Julia got that in the Lodge. Love is unfair, politics is unfair but Rudd was turfed and now he has to go.

Speculation this week centered on the role Rudd should have in what’s left of Labor's train wreck. The answer is simple: no role. The only role he can have in a campaign built around an (admittedly weak) slogan about moving forward is the role of distraction. He is an unrelenting reminder about a very recent and very ugly past. Each time he’s on camera we’re reminded about who he used to be. About what happened to him.We look at Rudd and think about all the awful that has gone before, about treachery, about distrust. We think about politics in the ugliest sense of the word.  And we don’t think policy.

Rudd needs to go away. Like a gangrene limb he needs to be amputated. Before he poisons the whole.

Dr Lauren Rosewarne
07 August 2010