The latest batch of the several hundred leaked US diplomatic cables concerning Australia, provided by WikiLeaks to the Fairfax company's Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, provide further extraordinary evidence of Washington's direct involvement in the anti-democratic coup against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last June.

Key coup plotters in the Labor Party and trade unions-including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes-secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership. As early as June 2008, the American ambassador identified Julia Gillard as the "front-runner" to replace Rudd.

In October 2009, ie: eight months before Gillard was installed in unprecedented circumstances, Mark Arbib informed American officials of emerging leadership tensions. The Australian people, on the other hand, were kept entirely in the dark about any differences between the prime minister and his colleagues until after Rudd was ousted.

Gillard was described, some two years before the coup, by US diplomatic officials as the "rising star" within the Labor government. They made various enquiries into Gillard's foreign policy sympathies, receiving assurances from government sources that her origins in the party's "left" faction had no policy significance whatsoever.

Arbib told the embassy that Gillard was "one of the most pragmatic politicians in the ALP"; Victorian senator David Feeney added that "there is no longer any intellectual integrity in the factions" and that "there is no major policy issue on which he, a Right factional leader, differs from Gillard". When embassy officials checked on Gillard with Paul Howes, Australian Workers Union boss and subsequent anti-Rudd coup plotter, observing that "ALP politicians from the Left, no matter how capable, do not become party leader," he responded immediately: "but she votes with the Right'."

WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Secret Ties Between Rudd Coup Plotters And US Embassy

Mark Arbib has attempted to 'laugh-off' the Wikileaks cables, pretending that his engagement with the Americans was just so much innocent social chit-chat. If this was the case, why was it deemed necessary that his conversations had to be 'protected'?

However, the bigger issue here is not the conspiratorial, immoral & unethical behaviour of Arbib & his cardre of Labor traitors, but rather the fact that the US has, once again, been caught interfering in our domestic politics .... no prizes for guessing what Gough Whitlam would have to say about all this .... how sad that the once proud Australian Labor Party has been reduced to this state .... & how sad for our country to see, with our own eyes, how clearly our politicians have betrayed us, reducing us to the status of just another American vassal state.

At this moment in time, I wish I was a New Zealander: at least they had the balls to tell the Americans to fuck-off.

Laurie Oakes is right: we have pygmies for politicians .... Quislings all.

Christ I'm angry ..... Ernest would be positively catatonic!