That Bruce Hawker book

One of the problems with the plethora of Labor insider books is that you don't want to line the pocket of the author, but you know you need to read them.

The Rudd Rebellion is such a book.  I haven't finished it, and I might never do so.  But the start of the book up to the first few weeks of the Rudd return teach the reader two things.

The first is that Rudd Mark II was still entirely a creation of focus groups and market research.  Not only in the planning of the execution, but in the positioning of the new brand.

The second is that team Rudd's reform of party rules was motivated by this research, by the need to develop a response to research that the public wouldn't vote Labor because the party would still replace him.  

So people who get excited about party reform need to put that bit in the bin called irrelevant.