Politics is full of opportunism, and this is an opportunistic and crafty move as ever. The Labor power brokers know that Rudd is dead in the water, what with his obsession with emissions trading and carbon capture... his blue-arse-fly tearing around, mistaking movement for action... his failure to rein in Conroys fascist control of the Internet... and his style of micro-managing and failure to delegate.
Julia is a pretty ruthless operator, I reckon, and she has a lawyers smooth tongue, and also has a pretty good handle on negotiating ability.
However, she would appear to fall down in the economic/business credentials area.
As many mates have commented, you wouldn't let the average pollie run your corner shop, selling sweets to the kids from the school next door - they'd go broke, such is their lack of basic business sense.
The Labor mob have pretty craftily figured that a woman PM is a sure fire winner to garner a lot of the female vote. Anyone who garners a large portion of the female vote is on a winner.
My money is on Julia rolling Abbott (just), at an election to be held within a VERY short space of time, before Julia makes any serious mistakes, and before the "new broom" gloss is worn off.
The problem is, that Abbott and the Libs can't produce a very satisfactory alternative vision for a lot of people. Costello warned about Abbotts inability to even understand basic economics, such as jotting your income and expenditure down on a notepad, and balancing it at the bottom. How Abbott would get even a basic grasp on the economics of an entire countrys economy, is the $64 question.