While Abbott is busy on his bike, Kevin Rudd has found a new opponent in the 2010 election race: Victorian Premier John Brumby, who is continuing to resist the PM’s plans for a Big Government takeover of public health.

Yesterday, he threw perhaps the dirtiest blow in the fight so far, comparing Rudd to former Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen for “holding the states to ransom”. Ouch.

Writing in The Oz today, Brumby says he won’t budge, claiming that:

… patients want the big decisions on health made closer to home, rather than in Canberra.

But in yesterday’s Crikey Daily Mail, Bernard Keane labelled Brumby’s attitude as simply “parochial”, arguing he has been riding on the coat-tails of former Premier Steve Bracks’ far more visionary health policies, and his equally small-town attitudes to water and coal have taken the state backwards.

So is Brumby really sticking up for the his state’s best interests, or just being a stick-in-the-mud? And could Rudd’s biggest bruises in this election year come not from the pugilistic Abbot, but from one of his own Labor Party comrades?

Here’s how the nation’s pundits are calling it:

The Australian

Paul Kelly: Brumby Dare Rudd’s biggest challenge

This is a decisive moment for Labor Party attitudes towards federalism.

Ken Baxter: Bloated bureaucracies bad for health

Giving the task to the federal Department of Health will not be a solution as it has not run a public hospital since 1970.

Adam Cresswell: Blueprint devil in lack of details

… the government has sown confusion with its blizzard of releases. It has also missed an opportunity to sell its reforms as a coherent solution.

Glenn Milne: No constitutional need for Dr Rudd’s referendum

… this is a populist and superfluous policy.

The Age

Editorial: Health plan gets the spin treatment

While Mr Brumby rightly seeks the best deal for Victoria, it would be foolhardy to stand alone against that mandate.

John Deeble: Health benefit lost in smoke and mirrors

The facts are clear and Victorian Premier John Brumby is right. There is nothing in the plan that would improve hospital care or access to it

Sydney Morning Herald

Lenore Taylor: This sickness could be catching

[NSW is] a system held together with sticky tape and IOUs

Herald Sun

Steve Price: We’re living in states of inefficiency

We still run Australia as if it is 1910, not 2010, shying away from centralising health, education and transport because remote states and even not-so-remote states don’t trust Canberra to do a good enough job.