MEDIA commentators hauled out their weightiest adjectives to capture the significance of Kevin Rudd’s fall and Julia Gillard’s rise to replace him as prime minister. “Historic” and “momentous” were given solid workouts to mark the emergence of Australia’s first female prime minister.

But the events of last week were also historic and momentous for reasons that received less media attention. First, the speed and ruthlessness with which Rudd was dispatched marked an historic change in federal Labor’s attitude to its parliamentary leader; second, the rise of Gillard marked Labor’s return to conventional consultative cabinet government; third, and perhaps most significantly, the events showed the limits of…

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