The Australian electorate is a
mystery. We are surely the luckiest country on earth, that country with the
greatest capacity to give, yet remain so selfish it beggars belief. The
what-about-me attitude of the vast majority staggers me. Most of the PM’s
interlocutors ask questions about their self-interest.
But Gillard is gutsy and
gritty. For an hour on the ABC last tonight she graciously answers some tough
questions, even when they come in threes. She never once mentions the
opposition leader either by name or title. She doesn’t use the most bitterly
obstructive opposition in Australian political history as an excuse. She is funny
on occasion.
The tweeters’ crawl-bar runs
about ten to one in her favour, when it might be expected to be the other way
round.
Gillard has been through bad
patches—‘the real Julia’, the last election campaign. Nonetheless, the
alternative prime minister is less popular than she is. And the other alternative
prime minister, the one in her own party, the one she has twice seen off, is
clearly an unhinged and narcissistic sociopath. Yet he remains the choice of
the broader electorate.
Here already are three reasons
why I don’t get the Australian electorate. Rudd is clearly an unsuitable prime
minister, ineffective when he had the job, but is the popular choice. The electorate
hates Gillard who has done what Rudd could not—get our biggest polluters to pay
for their emissions, put a resource rent tax on greedy miners, and keep us
afloat through the aftershocks of the GFC.
She is a big-picture leader
like Keating and a complete contrast to the pea-hearted Howard. And if she gets
up next year when the real poll takes place, she’ll have pulled off the
greatest victory in our electoral history. Am I crazy to think she might. Go
girl!
Rock on.
No comments:
Post a Comment