Due to time constraints, I didn't really say all I wanted to say last night - hence a third post in two days.
So, Julia. Our first female prime minister. There seem to be a some people out there, women and men, who seem to feel that in itself this a positive omen for her ability to lead the country, and distinguish herself from Rudd and his never ending waves of spin, lies, backflips and quite clearly, terrible people skills. (Cue brief tangent) One could ask just how deluded in his position on Wednesday night to pointedly and directly attack the very people who ultimately have control of his party - the factions, in particular the union based ones. Once the Australian Workers' Union had had enough of him, he was screwed.
It is vital to Gillard's success that she be seen to act and work differently to Rudd. No long-winded, ridiculous speeches that, with cursory examination, prove to be saying and promising nothing. No undue breaking of promises, election related or otherwise. I say undue because breaking promises is something all politicians end up doing at some point. What I mean is that she must not be seen to lack conviction, to be devoid of any sort of guiding ideology. Because the problem with Rudd was that it slowly became clear that these things were what he lacked.
Someone told me today that Howard was playing just as badly in the polls as Rudd was and yet he survived to win the next election. Now, lots of people don't like Howard, in fact some seem to say 'the Howard era' in the same tone as you would say 'the bad old days', which seems ridiculous considering the majority of the Australian public consistently voted him for 11 years. But the point is, Howard managed to carry on because despite implementing sometimes unpopular policies (the GST, for example), he was nonetheless convinced of their worth to the country. In other words, he had conviction. He had a strong belief in his own policies, regardless of how the opinion numbers stood and that won him both respect and votes. Without that, Rudd was always going to be dead in the water. How can you possibly run a country when, despite constantly speaking to the contrary, you obviously don't have strong enough beliefs on any issues to push it through even when the public don't like it?
PM Jules must not be like that. Luckily for her, she's not. Her strong beliefs are rather well documented. She'll never have the vague non-opinions of Rudd. I can respect that in her. But for her to lead our country, unelected or not, is something I find somewhat disturbing. Because she is so fundamentally different from Rudd, I fear that the many people who refused to vote for Rudd may vote for her. I mentioned this in my previous post, but she is just as responsible for all of the Rudd government's failings as Rudd himself.
Think about it for a second. We all know that Rudd was a bit of a jetsetter. I don't have numbers, but he was out of the country a lot during his truncated term. And I mean a lot. Normally, a deputy doesn't have to step up that often. But Gillard was in that position every time Rudd went off the shake hands with Obama or other similiarly pointless exercises. The Education Revolution is a shambles, and that was and remains her baby and her folly. With the wrong buildings forced on schools at extortion level prices, it's pretty clear that there was some serious mismanagement at the top level of that project. And as Minister for Education, the buck stops with her. The insulation fiasco, the shelved emissions trading scheme and all the stuff-ups, the currently glowingly portrayed Julia Gillard had a hand in them all. Never mind that we saw Rudd with Swan more often that we saw him Gillard. She was still part of that inner circle that set those debacles up at high speed with no regard for checks and balances to prevents rorts, and in the case of the insulation scheme, deaths. All because both Rudd and Gillard wanted their government to be seen to be doing something.
But something people don't talk about with regard to Gillard is the national curriculum. I believe you can check it out online somewhere, but what concerns me is that what snippets I have heard about it, (it's comparatively boring and doesn't have the wow factor of burning insulation, so the media has largely left it undiscussed) suggests that despite the idea of having standardised teaching across Australia being quite a good one, there is a somewhat serious problem. It seems to have been set up as vehicle for thinly disguised Labor rhetoric. Now, I'm not saying that it should be Liberal rhetoric instead, quite the contrary. The next generation of voters must not receive teaching with an inbuilt bias of any kind. Children only gain an ability to form true opinions as they get older. It's one thing for their parents to instill in them one kind of political leaning, it's quite another to have a government move to do the same. It's too much like vote-gathering some 10 or so years in advance of these kids being old enough to vote. And who is at the helm of that project? Why, our education minister turned prime minister, of course.
My point is that Gillard is no better than Rudd, except that where he lacked the conviction and indeed the ability to make tough policy decisions, Gillard will push it through and the results will likely be just as disastrous as the existing governmental embarrassments.
Now, there is one person I haven't mentioned in all this: Tony Abbott. I'll do an in-depth discussion of him and why he's not the dinosaur/chauvinist/conservative/monster some people in the media and the public perceive him as the next time post, I think. I may change it up a bit. But Abbott versus Gillard is an interesting proposition. In a way, they are both quite typical representatives of some of the stronger elements of their respective party ideologies. In this time of political shock, it's hard to say who'll come out on top. This will become clearer over the next weeks and months, but I don't think that Labor's position is necessarily better with Gillard instead of Rudd. It may even be worse, particularly as if people do pick up that she really is just another captain at the helm of the same leaking boat, they'll more than likely jump aboard the Abbott Express. And regardless of where Greens preferences get directed in the next election, that means that the good ship Labor is heading for the rocks.
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