Christopher Pearson, former chairman Rudd, Tony Abbott, and heaps of idle speculation and bile ...

(Above: ah memories).

So the word from the Oxford alumni dinner held Thursday night is that former chairman Rudd looked and sounded anything other than a man seeking the ALP leadership, and so the Prime Ministership.

Chatham House Rule applies, but there seems no harm in noting that the former Chairman, after offering up some engaging personal insights into China, then turned to weighty matters of world politics with a grand (and dull) flourish. Confronted by an ill-prepared George Negus, any talk of leadership speculation was quickly hosed down ...

The consensus was that the former chairman didn't look or sound like a man ready to seize the poisoned chalice and run against Tony Abbott and risk possible defeat, so much as a man ready to strut the world stage, the antipodean pond being too small for his vaulting ambition and giant ego ...

Observers determined Rudd would be more at home on the international stage indulging in special missions of the Tony Blair kind, and if not a special envoy, then why surely the top job should be his.

Ah memories. Was it only in 2010 that The Australian, commentariat commentators like Christopher Pearson and anyone else hanging around in the pack (Rudd 'in line for UN climate job') were indulging in idle speculation - on the flimsiest evidence - that the former Chairman would soon be running the black helicopter program for the UN, with world government shortly to follow?

It was on everybody's lips, including the Bolter and Gary Johns, and naturally Christopher Pearson sent it up the flagpole in No danger of ALP being left rudderless.

Back in February this year, Pearson was advising Gillard to avoid the tears, act as a latter-day Boadicea and summon all the steel needed to stare down her colleagues and manage the difficult by-election Rudd's departure is likely to create.

Yep, back then the Ruddster was living on borrowed time, the clock was ticking, time was running out, and Rudd knew he had a mere 18 months to find a UN job, because so many Labor MPs couldn't stand the sight of him, and there was a reason for his busyness as Foreign Minister:

How much of all this busyness is in the service of the national interest, as opposed to furthering his own post-political career, is hard to judge.

Well in the middle of the current bout of leadership speculation, the pond, on the flimsiest of evidence, proposes that it's time for the Rudd for UN leadership campaign to return. (United Nations wants Kevin, Rudd offered job).

It makes as much evidence-based sense as reading Christopher Pearson for any political insight - who will ever forget his immortal piece Rudd a cafeteria Christian, wherein he noted that orthodox Christianity's starting theological point is the Incarnation, God in human flesh.

Yes, cannibalism is as good a starting point for any theology ... as opposed to vulgar notions of redemption and eternity in paradise.

Well this week Pearson is once again off like a rabbit down the hole, indulging in idle speculation for which he will never have any hard evidence, nor will he be called upon to provide any.

You can read the flimsy line of argument in 'Decision and delivery' week turns into a right mess, in which Pearson proposes that Gillard and her colleagues could have seized on Sophie Mirabella's expulsion from the house to quickly pass the bill on the Malaysian solution:

When the Liberals' Sophie Mirabella ignored warnings and was suspended from the service of the house for 24 hours by the deputy Speaker on Tuesday night, it looked as though Gillard's tactical victory was in sight and her judgment was about to be vindicated.

Uh huh. So let's get this right.

To make a political point about the cynical behaviour of Tony Abbott, it seems in Pearson's world Gillard should have indulged in a short-sighted, mean-spirited tactical victory of the most cynical kind, and shortly to be defeated in the Senate in any case.

Well he might have written speeches for John Howard, but thank the absent lord Pearson's not a Labor party whip.

The minions of Murdoch would have lashed Gillard and crew up hill and down dale for seizing on Mirabella's absence. The pond could write the headlines while asleep at the wheel. Perversion of parliamentary democracy. The last cynical step in a right mess. And so on and so forth ...

But this idle speculation is only the foundation for another, even bigger idle speculation. It seems the real reason that Gillard didn't seize on Mirabella's unexpected absence - may there be many more of them Mr. Slipper - is because there would have been disaffected members crossing the floor - a single judicious abstention would have done the trick - and so the bill would have been defeated in any case.

There is of course no way this idle speculation can be proven, or could have been proven, except by an actual vote.

It's just another idle speculation in an ongoing stream of them throughout the years, whereby Pearson explains the minds of Labor party MPs without actually being an insider with any connection to what's going on inside the Labor party (that requires years of training which makes the theological hair splitters studying to be Jesuits look like rank amateurs).

It would have been vastly simpler if Pearson had simply written I can't stand the Labor party or that vixen Julia Gillard, or perhaps just quoted Tony Abbott saying the same.

Oh wait, he does.

Yep, that's how he ends his column this week:

No wonder that before the debate was adjourned on Thursday Abbott described the government as "shabby, miserable, divided and directionless" and the prime minister as "so desperate to cling to power she is prepared to limp on without the policy that only two days ago she said was absolutely vital to secure the borders of this nation".

Well he would say that wouldn't he, in much the same way as some might think Abbott shabby, miserable, negative and unprincipled.

But Pearson, being his ever so 'umble megaphone, is content to repeat Abbott's thoughts as if they were gospel, without ever pausing to ask how Abbott might now deal with the matter of the borders should he ascend to power.

If we can pause to think of policy for a moment amidst all the idle speculation ....

Because you see the Nauru solution is no longer the certainty it once was, and it too might require legislation, and likely as not Abbott, should he get the nod at the next election, will be confronted by an upper house controlled by the Greens.

He'll then be forced into negotiations with the Labor party should he wish to reach a conclusion on policies he himself has said are absolutely vital to secure the borders of the nation. Even in the world of politics where six months is long enough to get and lose a top job at the UN, there'll be long term residual bitterness about negotiations when it comes to the Labor party ...

And it will be the very same place Abbott find himself when it comes to climate change and the carbon tax, for all his talk of blood oaths, which explains his desperate talk of avoiding implementation and now sees him determined to wreck the Australian economy as a way of achieving power (Tony Abbott tells firms: don't buy carbon permits).

Uh huh. Well the pond proposes that people don't pay their income tax and their company tax ...

Meanwhile, all the signs are, in his rabid rush to power, that Abbott will become the worst Prime Minister in Australia since Malcolm Fraser's own rabid rush to power way back when (which has since seen Fraser try to absolve his sins by turning more leftist than the average Labor party politician) ... and that includes the hapless Gillard.

His posturing and cavorting is likely to do real damage to the Australian economy, and for what end? How did Pearson put it?

How much of all this busyness and negativity is in the service of the national interest, as opposed to furthering his own political career, is hard to judge.

Yep, is it ninety or ninety nine per cent?

A man of such insistent shrill negativity, and backed by wretches like Christopher Pearson with their idle speculations of the most common fishmonger gossip kind ...

Is there any chance Abbott would settle for a job at the United Nations? Not likely, because no one at the UN would want him ... there's enough negativity in the world without his special antipodean brand ...

Meanwhile, you can read a more balanced perspective than that provided by Pearson in Laurie Oakes' Tony Abbott enters promise land:

Mr Abbott should not be able to get away with the argument that something as important as border protection is the Government's problem and the Opposition has no responsibility.

He should not be let off the hook over how he would roll back something as big and complex as the carbon price scheme. It is an easy promise to make, but hugely difficult to keep without great upheaval.

But he will, especially if that rather large megaphone Pearson has his way ...

(Below: more Kudelka here).