Senator John Faulkner exempted Labor parliamentary leaders from specific criticism during his recent Neville Wran Lecture, but he certainly didn't help Julia Gillard by once again focusing media attention on Labor's membership weaknesses.
It gave Kevin Rudd the opportunity to repeat his own diagnosis of Labor's internal problems and for union leader Paul Howes, who had helped bring him down 12 months ago, to attack Rudd as a hypocrite who was a major part of the problem.
All of this was predictable. But it did nothing to settle Labor's problems at the federal level; rather it only contributed to further gloom about Labor's prospects.
In fact, whatever Gillard's take on the many valid points about greater membership participation that Faulkner made they are not primarily her responsibility and there is little she herself can do about them anyway. Past party leaders, like Gough Whitlam, have tackled such issues from Opposition with nothing to lose. Recent Opposition leaders, like Simon Crean, expended energy on internal reform for little benefit in terms of his leadership.
Faulkner's lecture came just before Gillard's first anniversary as prime minister at a time when the media are floating the possibility that she will go the way of Rudd. It has reached the stage that the Independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, are being questioned about a change of Labor PM.
The media are not indulging in their own fantasies, but feeding off rumours circulating around Parliament House and gossip from within the party. The message is that Gillard has until Christmas to improve the party's low standing in the polls or she may be replaced by Rudd or someone else.
That scenario is a classic example of failing to learn from your mistakes. Whatever the wisdom of Rudd's demise, the manner of its happening was rejected emphatically by the electorate. It will hang over Gillard for a very long time.
Surely the strategy of changing the leader to save the party would not be employed again by Labor's inner circle, especially those from NSW who are serial offenders in this regard. To do so would reinforce the claims of the Opposition, that it's just the undemocratic way that Labor does business.
Not only is blaming and then changing the leader a bad idea in principle, but such discussion at the moment is seriously premature. We are not yet 12 months into the term of this government. Only from August 2012, after two years, should