DIVISIVE Prime Minister Julia Gillard has quickly responded to renewed leadership rumblings by trying to provoke gender tensions over abortion; her “outrage” over an LNP dinner showcases her utter hypocrisy and contempt for principle. Is she, simply, not a fit person to sit in Parliament?
The Prime Minister appears determined to plumb new depths of indecency today, with her leadership under attack and a few extra months of her Prime Ministerial salary under threat — to say nothing of the difference to the taxpayer-funded, post-Parliamentary pension she’ll collect that an involuntary demotion would make.
I stand by the assessment published in this column yesterday, in which I advocated — for a raft of reasons — Gillard being permitted to lead the ALP into this year’s election.
Even so, Gillard is doing herself no favours.
The extraordinary outburst from the Prime Minister yesterday, suggesting that women in politics would be “marginalised” by “the Coalition’s men in blue ties” if Tony Abbott wins the September election is not just offensive in its own right, but it symbolises everything wrong with Gillard as a leader and as a parliamentary figure.
Women, according to Gillard, would be “banished from the centre of Australia’s political life” under a government led by Tony Abbott.
Abortion, she claimed, would be a “political plaything” under an Abbott government, which is probably news to the state governments under whose responsibility the issue falls.
And — in a jab at the Coalition leadership, ignoring the patently obvious fact that deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop is a woman — Gillard stated that “…a Prime Minister, a man with a blue tie… goes on holiday to be replaced by a man in a blue tie, a Treasurer who delivers a budget wearing a blue tie.”
Gillard was speaking at the launch of Labor’s Women for Gillard campaign in Sydney, but even with an audience hostile to the Liberals and opposed to Tony Abbott, someone in her position — aware the remarks would be reported — should have been more circumspect.
Her assertion that “the Labor Party is the party of the many not the few, that means we’re the party of women” flies in the face of electoral reality, given there is ample evidence to show the Coalition traditionally polls far better among women than does the ALP.
Yet even if her point was correct, Gillard herself is probably doing more to set the cause of women in this country back than any male could.
She is a major embarrassment to women across the country with her anti-male crusade.
And she is a joke to many people, men and women, who are no longer prepared to take anything she says at face value, let alone be prepared to listen to her at all.
It’s probably no shock that Kevin Rudd appeared on the hustings today, decked out in a blue tie; Gillard can expect to see a sea of blue ties around the necks of opposition MPs when Parliament resumes next week, too.
And in a measure of just how much ridicule Gillard is exposing herself to, Sydney radio host Ben Fordham was giving 20 blue ties away on his program this afternoon — in conjunction with a sponsor, TiesNCuffs, who are running a special of “25% off Blue Ties.”
But Gillard is blissfully ignorant of — or couldn’t care about — the joke she has made of herself.
As things stand, there is no driving issue surrounding abortion in the wider community (or in state politics in any jurisdiction, where the issue properly sits) to mandate or justify putting abortion forward as an election issue.
Thus, it’s simply another instance of this divisive, confrontational Prime Minister seeking to stoke tensions and fears around socially explosive issues to detract from her own political problems.
It’s pretty low, but then this is not a Prime Minister who will be remembered for any decency or refined sense when it comes to her dealings with people generally.
It comes as an outrage erupted today over a menu used at an LNP fundraiser in March for Liberal candidate Mal Brough, which featured an inappropriate description of Gillard.
The menu — which was produced and published without awareness or sanction from Brough — is clearly tasteless, offensive, and on one level Gillard is entitled to be insulted.
The Fairfax press is reporting this evening that the owner of the restaurant that hosted the function has claimed responsibility and stated — emphatically — that the menu was not distributed to guests on the night. It doesn’t make it right, of course, but it shows Gillard in an equally ridiculous light as her “Blue Ties” and abortion comments have done.
Even so, it seems odd the menu has only surfaced today: three months after the event.
A cynic might note, too, that at the time of the function, Gillard was busily fawning all over Sydney shock jock Kyle Sandilands: hardly a propitious time to let rip with a noisy protest about sexism or misogyny.
One wonders how long the PM’s office has been holding onto the thing waiting to use it, despite Gillard’s protestations she only became aware of it today.
But calls by Gillard for Brough to be disendorsed are hysterical, disproportionate, and unwarranted.
And they raise another inconvenient, uncomfortable truth about Gillard and her behaviour.
Not only was her “misogyny” speech a defence of former Speaker and general grub Peter Slipper — ironically, whose Liberal endorsement Brough has taken — but it failed to enunciate a syllable of criticism of Slipper’s sexist, misogynistic utterances.
(For those who were in hiding at the time, check this out).
Gillard is clearly unperturbed at descriptions of female genitalia as “salty c***s in brine” when the circumstances suit her own political self-interest, but when a description such as “small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box” is used — and there isn’t a butt to cover or a point to be scored (or a “misogyny” stunt to be sprung) — well, that’s simply an outrage.
It’s not even the fact that one personally describes Gillard, and the other was a general statement; like her slavering, fawning appearances alongside Sandilands, the simple fact is that Gillard is no defender of the very standards she viciously purports to uphold.
When it suits her to, that is.
And did anyone ever hear Julia Gillard utter a syllable of complaint over this at the time?
What an absolute hypocrite. Is it any wonder nobody cares what she has to say.
Former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally got it right this evening; she has said on Twitter “Blue ties, menus…here’s the real scandal in today’s news…” before going on to post a link to an article about childhood poverty and the effects of reduced welfare payments — legislated by Gillard’s government — to single mothers.
All of this raises the question: is Julia Gillard even a fit and proper person to sit in federal Parliament?
The Prime Minister appears oblivious to the fact that she is not the head of a student political front, or that she does not preside over some juvenile game of “do unto others before they do unto you:” she is the Prime Minister of Australia, and she is in charge of the government of the country, not an adolescent debating society.
After a while — when the time to dismiss things as mistakes and errors of judgement has passed — it becomes necessary to look at the Prime Minister’s words, the issues that underpin them, and her conduct in office, and to ask that simple question.
Is she fit to hold a seat in Parliament? Is she a fit and proper person to be Prime Minister?
The answer — if her utterances merit the judgement — suggests not.
It is the answer of voters at the ballot box, however, that will be most telling.
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