Posts Tagged Julia Gillard

A “Sorry” Variation (Sincere Regrets)

Nov 2

Posted by Ross Sharp in Politics, Society | 1 Comment

Groupthink is proud to announce a brand new set of lyrics with a local and contemporary flavour set to the tune of Tex Williams’ “Some, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette)” …

“SORRY, SORRY, SORRY (SINCERE REGRETS)”

Now we’re a country with a heart of gold,
Or at least that’s what we’re taught and told,
The kinda place that’s the envy of the world.

But there’s some things that ain’t too thrillin’
Like “The X Factor” or seam gas drillin’,
That when I hear about, do make my toes fair curl.

We’re very sorry for Pauline Hanson,
She can’t wash a car and she’s shit at dancin’,
She ain’t much superior to anyone.

Sorry for whinin’ and fallin’ to our knees-
Whoops! Here’s a boat from Indonese!
Run for the hills and don’t forget the guns!

(CHORUS)
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sincere regrets,
Sorry for all the things we’ve done, and the things we ain’t done yet.
We’re so sorry it makes us cry,
Sorry that our planes don’t fuckin’ fly,
Sorry for the floods and the levy and the flies and the sharks and the pests.

Alan Jones is sorry for his choice of language,
I wish he were the meat in a gay leper sandwich,
Alan Joyce is sorry he’s brung The Troubles.

We’re sorry ‘bout the price of bananas,
And Coles and Woolies fuckin’ over the farmers,
But I still shop there, ‘cause the other places cost me double! (Sorry)

We’re sorry about Andrew Bolt’s pity,
The sook could be heard from city to city,
But old Andy, he ain’t sorry ‘bout much at all.

“My freedom of speech is under threat!”,
And, “Ordinary folk can’t place a bet!”,
“These Muslims and ni**ers gonna rape and kill us all!”

We’re sorry for climate change,
No doubt these scientists are all insane!
You can predict the climate from the entrails of a chicken!

And we’re sorry for Katter and Barnaby Joyce,
Add Angry Anderson and you’re spoilt for choice
For candidates with the brainpower of a kitten!

And we’re bloody sorry for Julia Gillard,
And for Kevin Rudd, whom she doth spill’ed,
Poor dear went off his Iced Vo-Vo’s for a month.

But we’re mortified by Tony Abbott,
In his budgie smugglers with his budgie’s scabbard,
I’m sorry, but I’m about to lose my lunch!

Tags: Alan Jones, Alan Joyce, Andrew Bolt, Angry Anderson, Barnaby Joyce, Bob Katter, Julia Gillard, qantas, sorry, Tony Abbott

The imagined, but very real, leadership crisis

Sep 4

Posted by Spock... in Media, Politics | 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about the leadership crisis that the media has entirely manufactured. I am sure that it goes without saying for most of you that the media are not mere observers, gathers and reporters of news in our political space. They act in the space perhaps even more than the politicians. The media defines the terms of our political debates and the context those debates take place. No one else in the political space has the power to manufacture reality like the media does.

Not to labour the point, but I think The Age today illustrated my point beautifully.

Gillard firm as MPs waver

MPs waver? So Labor MPs have expressed doubt about Gillard’s leadership? A challenger is counting their numbers? Anything?

No. Nothing of the sort.

That’s not to say Labor MPs aren’t feeling a touch of dispair. They have been getting nowhere in opinions polls, and the two biggest media stories of the week are how the government is incompetent (High Court ruling) or just plain stuffed (Craig Thompson). This despite the Parliamentary Budget Officer bill being introduced to parliament.

SOME of Julia Gillard’s own MPs have declared she is stuck ”spinning her wheels” and predicted an election rout ”in varying degrees of diabolical”, as Labor’s internal despair spills out into public view.

That’s not leadership speculation. That’s not MPs wavering on leadership. That’s a feeling that has been expressed for months. They’re not getting anywhere in the public’s mind, and it’s frustrating the hell out off them.

The Age then reports that the ALP is feeding information to the opposition on the Craig Thompson affair, but then The Age tells us that “Both sides agree the leaks do not appear to be motivated by a desire to damage Ms Gillard”. So not wavering on leadership then.

And this is where the story enters self-perpetuation mode,

Both sides agree the leaks do not appear to be motivated by a desire to damage Ms Gillard; but the Thomson affair, along with the High Court’s ruling last week against the Malaysian refugee swap deal, has intensified speculation about Ms Gillard’s future as Prime Minister.

Speculation from where? The media. But that doesn’t matter, by this point the idea of media speculation is so entrenched that they don’t need to justify it, they just need to say it. The Age is reporting on the media’s own speculation.

The only reason that Gillard has even commented on matters of leadership (or anyone has commented on it, for that matter) is because the media has asked about it.

Then the article come crashing to a close almost contradicting the first half of the article,

Sources across the party insist there is no imminent move against her, citing a prevailing view that she should be given time to pass carbon price laws and sort out Labor’s stoush over gay marriage.

Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr insisted the party was not considering a change of leader. ”I know they’re not. There’s no basis for leadership speculation,” he said

Bob Carr is probably right, or at least he was. There wasn’t any basis for leadership speculation. The point I am labouring here is that the media may have been imagining all of this leadership speculation, but the media has the power to imagine it into reality. Leadership speculation is very real now even though it wasn’t before.

Tags: ALP, Julia Gillard, leadership, shit journalism, The Age

The dog from Up

Sep 3

Posted by Spock... in Media, Politics | 2 Comments

There has been lots of great stuff written in recent weeks (and months) about why political journalism in this country is broken. Some innovative analysis and solutions have been offered, and many bloggers and ranters on the internet have different takes on why it’s broken, how it’s broken and what can be done to fix it. But everyone seems to agree that it’s broken, that much is clear.

Our media has a painfully short attention span. This is not a problem that exclusively ours either. During the current Republican presidential primaries, Jon Stewart described the US media as the dog from Up. The American media was bored with the current crop of Republican candidates so they started speculating about Rick Perry entering the race. He did, and the next day the media started speculating about Paul Ryan entering the race.

“Mum, can I have a Paul Ryan?”

“I JUST GOT YOU A RICK PERRY. AND YOU ALREADY BROKE YOUR MICHELE BACHMANN.”

This week the Australian media got bored. Bored of Julia Gillard, now they want a new Labor leader to defame (seeing as this one won’t let them).

All week, Gillard’s leadership has been “under threat”. From who? Doesn’t matter. The media is now is self-perpetuating-story mode. The media is reporting on the media’s speculation about the media comments that Gillard’s leadership in now under fire.

And that is the narrative. It doesn’t matter if the story doesn’t really have anything to do with leadership, the media applies their new narrative to it anyway.

This, for example:

“Left jab forces Gillard to defend her leadership”

Julia Gillard’s leadership is being further damaged as Labor’s Left faction demands she drop all plans for offshore processing of asylum-seekers.

The Left’s revolt follows the disastrous outcome for the Government from the High Court’s refusal to allow the proposed people swap with Malaysia.

As the row over Prime Minister Gillard’s judgment continued, the faction insisted cabinet return to Labor Party policy that excludes sending boat people to another country to process their claims for refugee status.

But Ms Gillard is defying her critics within the Government, vowing to remain in her post until the election in two years.

The story has nothing to do with leadership. Nothing. The left faction of the ALP wants a change in policy, not leadership. So how did we suddenly make the jump to “But Ms. Gillard is defying her critics within the Government, vowing to remain in her post until the election in two years”? A policy dispute is not a leadership dispute. But of course, the press gallery has spent all week building this narrative, so any story about the government will now be framed with questions of leadership.

All this leadership talk seems to be based on is some remarks by former Labor minister Graham Richardson and an unnamed Labor sources who said Gillard has “lost authority”. Hardly enough to justify the current media frame which has dominated every story about the government this week.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the entire party is in disarray and demanding a new leader immediately.

After a week of apparent leadership troubles the media is now free to speculate on who would replace Gillard. Even Andrew Bolt has his suggestions (I’m sure that the ALP will be returning his calls soon). Combet, Shorten, the Rudd revival, even Peter Beattie was being thrown around as if the media is so bored with the current options they need to inject leaders that aren’t even in Parliament into the debate.

The cross-benchers get in on the speculative action too, as the media turned to them to justify their narrative when the Labor party wouldn’t. Lenore Taylor wrote:

Mutterings about leadership change within the Labor Party usually end with the assertion that the three crossbench independents did their deals with Julia Gillard and would bring down the government should anyone move to depose her.

For so long we wanted to fantasise about a new Labor leader, but the independents wouldn’t let us.

But the independents themselves say that’s not necessarily true. The three independents are still backing the government, and the Prime Minister, but at least two don’t rule out supporting a Labor administration led by someone different.

See! See! We were right! The ALP could change their leadership!

As an aside, I will say my love for Tony Windsor grows each and every day.

“I don’t think I can conceive of a situation where I would impose Tony Abbott on the Australian people – they might choose him and if they do then that’s their choice, but I would never impose such a person. I have severe doubts about him as an alternative prime minister, always have had, but he’s compounded that in my mind by his absolute negativity and dog whistling. He’s encouraged that nasty edge with the Tea Party talkback people and it’s quite dangerous in my view. He’s making extraordinary claims in the climate debate … he’s denigrated Parliament with a deliberate strategy to make it look dysfunctional when the reality is it is not.”

Of course, I don’t think it is only Tony Abbott who is giving the impression that Parliament is dysfunctional. He is aided in no small way by the media, who have been more than willing to report on the alternate reality that is Abbott’s version of Parliament.

Rather than reporting on the policy, or even the substance of the High Court’s ruling (you had to go looking pretty hard to find out on what grounds the policy was deemed unlawful) the media has turned this week into a week of leadership speculation. A circus.

Much has been written about the Sideshow since Tanner released his excellent book back in May, but nothing seems to have changed in the way the Australian media reports politics.

And it’s hard to see it getting better.

Tags: ALP, journalism, Julia Gillard, leadership, shit journalism, Tony Windsor

Get your government hands off my carbons

Aug 16

Posted by cosmicjester in Politics, Science | 5 Comments

Today the irate and outrage gathered in Canberra to protest against the impending end of Australian life as we know it! Otherwise known as the Carbon Tax.

Talkback radio listeners the nation over gathered to hear the voices of noted intellectuals such as Angry Anderson and Pauline Hanson.

Among the more interesting signs at the rally is this curious offering.

I’m not even vaguely sure what it means, yet he does look rather impressed with his efforts so it must mean something. Seriously, anyone know what on earth he is on about?

Then there was this elaborate creation.

Under a list of disasters to have happened under JuLIAR Gillard are both the NSW and QLD floods. So somehow now Gillard is to blame for anything bad that happens under her Prime Ministership, even if they are natural disasters that she would have no chance of stopping unless she somehow attained godlike powers. Japanese Tsunami, GILLARD’S FAULT. London riots, GILLARD’S FAULT. Transformers 3 GILLARD AGAIN. Van Halen pulling out of Soundwave Revolution GILLARD HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?

Then this curious individual who was treated like a messiah by the crowd.

Mr Abbott helped to the podium Victorian truck driver Troy ‘Grover’ Logan, who walked for eight days and 368km from Albury on the NSW-Victorian border to attend the rally.

Why did he walk? Who knows.

Mr Logan’s wife Angie said her husband’s campaign had cost him his job, with his trucking company having sacked him for his absence.

Bosses generally don’t like it when you don’t turn up for work. Who knew!

Tags: batshit crazy, carbon tax, Julia Gillard

Brown people: expensive

May 9

Posted by Spock... in Immigration, Society | 2 Comments

The Herald Sun is being outraged at brown people again:

Taxpayers to shoulder Julia Gillard’s ‘Malaysian Solution’

Taxpayers will fork out more than $50,000 for every refugee the Federal Government plans to bring to Australia from Malaysia under its new plan to stop illegal boat arrivals.

But they will have to pay more than $90,000 for every asylum seeker the Government now rejects.

I’m already have one cost cutting suggestion…

Sue Bolton from the Refugee Action Collective has another,

The costs of processing asylum seekers could be reduced, Ms Bolton said, by allowing some low-risk applicants to live within the community while they are assessed rather than mandatory detention.

So let’s say 5000 asylum seekers arrive by boat, 90% are accepted so 500 are found not to be refugees. Using the Herald Sun numbers if we just let to 500 found not to be refugees stay in Australia anyway, I just saved the Australian government $20,000,000. I imagine another several million could be saved by allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while being processed too.

Economic management!

Of course Scott Morrison was available for comment,

“Labor’s open borders and rolling detention crisis is consuming staff and resources at an insatiable rate, with taxpayers forced to write a blank cheque to underwrite the Government’s failure,” said Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison.

This was, and never will be, about money, Scott. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did I am sure the deepest, darkest circle of it would be reserved for you.

And Gillard is spending money to stop Asylum Seekers coming to Australia! (Outrage, etc…)

Australia is using Prime Minister Julia Gillard to spearhead an international advertising blitz with the slogan “don’t do it”, telling people smugglers and passengers in Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan about its new plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, where there are 93,000 people already in the queue.

The PM’s warning – “the truth is if you spend your money, you get on a boat, you risk your life, you don’t get to stay, you go to Malaysia, and you go to the back of the queue” – has been translated into Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Arabic and Bahasa Indonesian, and already broadcast.

As fellow Groupthink-er, Brides said on Twitter this morning,

s_bridges
Looked for the back of the immigration queue down the back of the couch. Found 20 cents and a crust of toast.
9/05/11 11:01 AM

And don’t forget the poll:

YES/NO

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ILLEGAL REFUGEE, YOU FUCKING IGNORANT AND/OR DISINGENUOUS ARSEHATS!

In Herald Sun, Julia Gillard just can’t win. She spends money to stop Asylum seekers coming and she is criticized. She spends money on allowing them to come, she gets criticized.

This isn’t about money, it was never about money. If it was about money Tony’s plans to drag boats back to wherever they came from would have caused more outrage than anything. This is just the Herald Sun using not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia to play dirty politics.

And all the while the public debate in Australia forgets that there are real people, with real lives and genuine fears for their life fleeing to Australia in the hope of a new life.

This is a fight the ALP can’t win. Torn between their progressive base and the conservative votes they need to win seats in NSW and Queensland. No matter how “tough” they talk on “illegal immigration”, Tony Abbott can (and does) talk tougher. No matter what crazy, expensive and inhuman scheme Gillard concocts to discourage asylum seekers traveling to Australia via boat, the News Ltd tabloids find a negative way to frame it as being too soft on Asylum seekers, or too expensive to the tax payer.

With the terms of the debate being set by Tony Abbott and the News Ltd outrage machine, Gillard doesn’t stand a chance.

But the alternative is to present a vision which cuts through the agenda driven ‘journalism’ of News Ltd, which seeks to inspire and educate. N0t to just cater your policies to the lowest common denominator of Australian society, but to present a compelling and persuasive vision that can win the hearts and minds of voters.

And I gave up on Australian politics providing anything like that a long time ago.

Tags: asylum seekers, Herald Sun, Julia Gillard, refugees, Tony Abbott

The break-up

Apr 14

Posted by Ross Sharp in Media, Politics | 15 Comments

The federal government announces a policy. The opposition says the policy is bad, will ruin us all and we’ll be worse off than Haiti by lunchtime next Tuesday.

An increasingly partisan media chime in with a “Yay” or a “Ya-boo sucks” courtesy of a hyperactively rabid clutch of so-called “opinion” writers (my, there’s a talent – having an “opinion” – the world reels in awe), for whom “gotcha” moments and the barely-there policy brain farts of political pissants spell weeks and weeks of dramatic copy.

This is the current standard of what passes for political debate and discussion in this country. It’s the equivalent of saying “Your mother wears army boots and your dog smells”, but that’s about as good as it gets.

Now we have both government and opposition attempting to convince us all that there are vast zombie hordes of deliberately unemployed welfare cheats out there ripping hard-earned dollars straight from our poor little wallets, sentencing all of us “decent, hard-workin’ Aussie families” to a lifetime of deprivation and penury, while they, the unemployed, live life to the hilt with nary a care in the world.

The intellectual and ideological vapidity of the cliché-ridden mediocrities who now purport to represent us is such that, after 34 years of casting a vote in every state and federal election since I became eligible to do so, I will not be casting another.

I’ll turn up to get my name crossed off but, as far as the major parties are concerned, if this is the best the both of you have to offer, you know what you can do with your ballot paper from here on in.

After which, you can all just fuck off and die, the whole goddamn lot of you.*

*The author would like to apologise for the total absence of humour in this post. The author is in a snit.

Tags: I don't like you and I don't like your dog, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott

The ideal Julia

Mar 17

Posted by Scott Bridges in Environment, Politics | 8 Comments

More of this, thanks, Julia:

Greenhouse gas levels are one-third higher than before the Industrial Revolution, and higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. As a result, global temperatures have risen 0.7 degrees celsius over the past century and continue to rise. The last decade was the world’s hottest on record, warmer than the 1990s which were in turn warmer than the 1980s. In fact, globally 2010 was the equal warmest year on record, tied with 2005 and 1998. 2010 is the thirty-fourth consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th Century average. In Australia, average temperatures have risen almost one degree since 1910,and each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the one before.

That warming is real. Its consequences are real. And it will change our lives in real and practical ways. More extreme bushfire conditions and droughts. Falling crop yields. Loss of species. Increased cyclone intensity. More days of extreme heat. Coastal flooding as sea levels rise. Bleaching of our coral reefs. And a substantial decline in alpine snow cover. Indeed, Professor Garnaut’s latest report indicates that the need to act is greater than ever. And the scientific consensus is stronger than ever.

Given these realities, I ask who I’d rather have on my side: Alan Jones, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt. Or the CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science, the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA, the US National Atmospheric Administration, and every reputable climate scientist in the world.

(My bold)

Continue to call out the trolls. Continue to do it loudly and publicly.

Tags: Calling out the trolls, climate change, Julia Gillard

I am a politician

Feb 25

Posted by Ross Sharp in Media, Politics | 6 Comments

Julia Gillard has L!I!E!D! to the people of this great nation!

A CONSPIRACY is afoot!

We are betrayed! The people are revolting!

Millions will suffer in infernal penury as a consequence, the remainder of their wretched lives to be spent sucking rancid spots of special sauce from the discarded wrappers of Happy Meal cheeseburgers, and Alan Jones is appalled, appalled, to have been kept waiting for an interview with this Lying Red SCUM QUEEN a whole TEN MINUTES after it was scheduled and, by God in Heaven and Christ on the cross and all that is holy on this earth and on the blessedly fluffy hereafter, we cannot have that, no, we cannot!

What does she mean when she says one thing at one point in time and something completely different at another? What does it mean when this Vacuous and Vicious Vile Vomitous Vixen has the audacity to even think she may match wits with the magnificent specimen of manly man that is the marvellous Mr. Jones and keep him waiting?

It means this …

“I am a politician.

“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will lie to you, I will steal from you, I will profess to giving a damn about you, even though I don’t actually give a flying fuck if you all die of cancer, I will dissemble and connive, I will make shit up and you will believe it, I will engage in all manner of scare campaigns to appeal to the basest natures of those type of squealing fuckwits who listen to commercial radio and think “A Current Affair” is a reliable source of news, I will think you are dumb enough to fall for simple-minded three or four word slogans because you always have before, and that is because a vast number of those people that we, as politicians, represent, whether as a local member, opposition leader or government leader from any political party, a vast number of our constituents are simple-minded retards with barely a brain cell in their cranium, let alone a tooth in their stupid heads.

“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will profess to care for the underprivileged, the frail of mind and body, the sick, the dying and the diseased, and I will be seen attending events on their behalf and I will speak with compassion and empathy and offer, on behalf of myself and my fellow travellers, our utmost sympathy and understanding to them, even though, in private, we, all of us, regardless of political party or ideology, we’d rather they were all taken out the back of a woodshed somewhere and shot through their useless fucking heads.

“Like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, I will try not to be too obvious about any of this, and you out there, the great unwashed masses of unthinking tuckshop-armed bogans and bowlegged boofheads in faded beer and b.o. branded t-shirts whose entire lives amount to little more than flitting from one childish, paralysing fear to another in screeching outraged hysteria because you all have the attention span of a bowl of fucking goldfish and there’s someone moved in down the street who has a deeply suspicious tan, you stupid cunts whom I have to pretend to be one with, to suck on your fucking sausage sandwiches at some crappy fete in some flyblown bumfuck town every goddamn election cycle, you stupid cunts come election time, you’ll vote for whoever the fuck promises to line your pockets with a little gold, no matter how little or how much, because you think it’s all about you, don’t you?

“Well, it isn’t.

“Because I am a politician, and like every politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, it’s all about me, it’s all about us, whatever name we choose to brand ourselves with, so fuck you with the sharp end of a stick, thank you very much.

“But what I won’t do, what I definitely will not do, like that other guy, and the ones who preceded him, like this guy, is kowtow to that fat cunt with a voice like a middle-aged castrato gargling sand who goes by the name of Alan fucking Jones and who thinks he’s the centre of the known and unknown fucking universe. Fuck him and fuck the gonorrhoeal donkey he rode in on.

“Because I am a politician, and like every other politician on this earth, regardless of political party or ideology, sometimes even we have limits to the things we’re expected to do in the course of carrying out our work.

“So you can take that sausage sandwich and suck the living fuck out it for all I care, darling.”

Tags: 2GB, Alan chucks a hissy, Alan Jones, Australian politics, carbon tax, great big new tax, Julia Gillard, Ooh you're awful Julia, talkback radio

A Day of Nontroversies

Feb 9

Posted by cosmicjester in Media, Politics, Social etiquette | 4 Comments

In Canberra yesterday, the opposition leader proposed cuts in expenditure as a suggestion instead of the contentious flood levy. The proposed cut that got the most attention was the scrapping of aid to Indonesia to build schools, started by the Howard government. It showed a stark and clear difference between the government and the opposition, and in my opinion highlighted Tony Abbott’s short term populism.

But if you only played normal attention to the mainstream media yesterday there were only two stories. Gillard crying in Parliament, and Abbott saying “shit happens” in Afghanistan. The first started a flurry of half-baked analysis as to whether the tears were genuine or it was a deliberate strategy. The latter was pretty much one of the worst examples of gutter journalism and showed that the only one being disrespectful about Jared McKinney’s death was Mark Riley of 7 news.

It got me thinking of Monday’s Qanda where Graham Richardson noted how Julia Gillard and politicians in general are much more controlled, scripted, safe and thus less genuine than they were 20 years ago during the Hawke government. And really, this is why they are. The “shit happens” nontroversy ended up backfiring and now Mark Riley is the one facing the criticism. But had it happened slightly differently and it did look like Abbott was disrespectful then those two words could have ended Abbott’s leadership.

We complain that they are wooden, but when every tiny mistake is analysed, when saying the wrong thing gets more criticism than their party’s policies is it any wonder they are so risk averse, scripted and boring when they speak in public? Ultimately I think we should make our decision on our politicians by their policies and what they do in government, not if they cry or not or if they say a swear word on camera.

Tags: channel 7, Julia Gillard, mark riley, wankers

Gillard, Abbott, Brown. OH WHY

Feb 3

Posted by cosmicjester in Politics, Social etiquette | 19 Comments

There is a common view that Australia is an over-governed country and it’s usually the state government that critics point to as an unnecessary tier. It’s doubtful that there are many people in Queensland with that view now. Throughout the continuous snafus that mother nature kept hurling at us, the Premier and the government has done a stellar job of keeping the public informed and managing the situation. And this is from an unpopular Premier that just a few months ago was expected to be destroyed at the next election if her own party didnt knife her first.

Compare this with the performances of the Federal leaders and I don’t think anyone would be thinking that we would be better off if Canberra was calling all the shots during the drama.

Yesterday Julia Gillard was the invisible woman. Tourists must have presumed that Anna Bligh was this nations leader if they compared the performances between the two. Whilst Anna Bligh gave hourly, informative press conferences, Gillard only popped in once that I saw and just spoke some generalities and cliches about mateship. Over-prepared and with all the sincerity of a hallmark greeting card. There was nothing particularly wrong with her performance but she lacks the empathy and common touch that Kevin Rudd and John Howard used to connect with the public during previous national tragedies. She comes off as more of an auditor in chief as she pushes her cuts and flood levy to rebuild Queensland rather than something higher that a national leader should be.

But Julia comes off pretty well compared to the woeful performance of Tony Abbott over the last few weeks. The problem with Abbott is that he is an attack dog who can’t take off his partisan hat no matter what the occasion. Tony has fine form, back when Kevin Rudd got the Labor leadership Abbott thought he would have a go at Rudd over the conflicting reports over just how long childhood Rudd spent in a car after his family was kicked off his farm. During the floods, before the peak hit Abbott thought it was a good idea to use the floods to have a go at the NBN and then after that launch a full scale assault on the flood levy. I’m not suggesting that a natural disaster means the opposition should automatically support everything the government does in response to the disaster, but Tony has clearly been more interested in using the disaster to trash the government than supporting the rebuilding and recovery.

Instead of doing the right thing and urging his supporters to give generously to the Premiers flood appeal, he pushed the line that you may as well not bother with charity as the government is gonna tax you anyway. And whilst North Queensland was bracing itself for the worst yesterday, Tony thought it a good time to ask for donations. Donations not for Queensland but for his campaign to stop a levy designed to rebuild Queensland. His entire performance can be summed up as more ass than class.

And then there is the Greens. Since Black Saturday their standard reaction to natural disasters is to try and link it to climate change. First Bob Brown comes out after being quiet during the floods and makes a spurious link between the floods and coal mining. And then yesterday Christine Milne links the cyclone to climate change. Its fair enough to say their is a link between the natural disasters and climate change, but it looks unsympathetic when that is the only thing you talk about. People who have lost everything and have seen their towns destroyed are more interested in the here and now, the rebuilding and relief rather than arguments about how much effect climate change may have on these natural disasters. It makes the Greens look like one trick ponies who aren’t all that interested in the day to day troubles of flood and cyclone victims.

They say we get the politicians we deserve, but I don’t see what we did to deserve these woeful leaders.

Tags: Bob Brown, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott