The Wedge, Brilliantly Applied

You have to hand it to Kevin Rudd. He's brilliantly wedged the government on the issue of States' rights.

Not so long ago (say, the beginning of this year) no Labor opposition in its right mind would have threatened to transfer a state responsibility to the Commonwealth. Especially one as sensitive as Public Hospitals. To announce such an intention would have been political suicide.

Hard to believe that "States Rights" was once a conservative holy grail.

You could feel the government's frustration as they held back from attacking Rudd after his announcement. That they couldn't is solely due to Howard's latest reelection strategy of attacking the states on just about any populist issue he can think of.

So now we have both parties lining up to kick states' heads!

My natural instinct is that this would be unpopular with the electorate. My instincts are obviously wrong. No party makes this sort of statement without the backup of opinion polling.

Howard has stated his frustration, and Rudd is spinning it as a virtue, that all State governments are Labor. The interesting thing is, if Rudd does get in it's likely that some of those Labor governments, voted in partly as a check against the Feds, will fall to the conservatives.

Rudd's going to have a hard time getting consensus from a mixed bag of state governments.

I wonder how the conservative historians will view Howard when a Labor Federal government uses Howard's newly utilised powers against newly elected Conservative states?

I reckon Kev won't be too concerned as he lays the boot in.