"Tough, fearsomely intelligent, loyal, fast on her feet… a woman possessed of a withering wit"
Fenella Souter’s feature in the Good Weekend shows that Julia Gillard can be both entertaining and ferocious. Would she like a senior ministry? "I’d cheerfully kill several hundred people to get that opportunity".
Gillard’s musings on politics make it look like a kind of warfare. For example, her comments on Greens leader Bob Brown:.
"My view is that the Greens are a another 1 political party," she says, the notoriously flat-voweled Kath & Kim voice growing harsher still, the green eyes narrowing and flashing. "They don’t warrant special rules. Bob Brown is pretty much the most calculating politician in Canberra. He’s not an archangel of moral force. He’s a bloke who wakes up every day and says, ‘How can I chisel a bit of political advantage today?’ And he goes out and does it."
Gillard is not just talking about politics here – she’s practicing it. She’s targeting the Greens’ center of gravity – the perception that they are above politics. Brown’s political career depends on the perception that he is not the kind of politician that Gillard is. The key selling point is that people think Greens will stand up for what they believe in rather than chasing votes or cutting deals. By practicing politics in this way the Greens threaten to reduce Labor’s vote by peeling off people who want Labor to take a stand on moral issues like asylum seekers and the war in Iraq. Gillard figures that if she can drag Brown down from the moral high ground and into the open then Labor can take him out.
Politics has always been the continuation of war by other means. As in warfare, the idea is to deny the enemy the resources he depends on. Political donations, voting systems, preference deals, and personal reputations are all sources of support and can be attacked. Why talk to the electorate about refugees or forest policy when there are much more efficient weapons available?
- rival[↩]
More cod art criticism. I actually think this picture is improved by Julia’s mug. Now I am really worried about myself.
to give her due credit she is the best parliamentary performer in the house amongst a lot of over-rated ones such as Cozzy.
The black mark against her was the Medicare gold policy.
not that it was bad or costly but she didn’t get to the beauty of the polict until after the election showing she needs more time.
In time I think she will go far. Uncannily she is both from the Left within the ALP, and yet possessed of a pragmatism that resonates with a lot of everyday folk out there.
In blunt terms, she seems the type of woman who many red-blooded blokes would not think twice about voting for.
whoa baby. that Xena can tie me up any day of the week:)
Troppo is the home of all things Gilly! She’ll be leader yet… nice work, Don!
The article was yet another in a long line of disgraces, centering on her bloody curtains and decor for most of it. Men do not get treated in this totally assinine way.
Speaking as a book and language snob, I have to say that it’s actually “asinine’, Flutes.
Having said that , yes the stuff about her domestic life was pretty asinine. When it comes to male and female pollies, there does seem to a bit a of double standard about who’d look good in a black leather catsuit.
And I agree with the ‘pragmatism’ comment as well. Remember she cut quite few of her political teeth as John Brumby’s chief of staff, who’s not noted for a bleeding heart.
Incidentally more than one person has remarked that there seems to be a certain frisson between Jules and her opposite number, Mac Daddy Tony. ’bout time we had a little URST to spice up our parliamentary democracy.
Bastard! Now I’ve got this mental image of Beazley in a black leather catsuit.
And now so do I. Sorta like a S&M zeppelin.
Lets just hope that there aren’t any adopted children skeletons in Julia’s closet. I don’t think her political career would survive the revelation the way Tony Abbott’s did. Not that Tony did anything wrong. But a woman politician giving up a baby born outside wedlock wouldn’t last long once it became known. The standards for female politicians are quite different. Why are female politicians such a threat that the merest hint of something ‘untoward’ can be the end of their careers?