So I glanced at the opinion page of the old, reliable Murdoch-owned Herald Sun today and there was another story where a commentator claims that Julia Gillard is unfairly accusing Tony Abbott of being sexist and 'playing the gender card.' This time it was former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett writing the article and this was EVEN WORSE than the Andrew Bolt article that I recently commented on.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/gender-war-just-another-julia-gillard-flop/story-fni0ffsx-1226669710095
As today was also June 26th, 2013, the day that Julia was replaced by Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party I was considering cancelling my plan to do this blog as this specific issue is unlikely to come up again.
I changed my mind because I decided the issue is not to do with Julia Gillard. It's to do with embarrassing old white men like Jeff Kennett who THINK they're qualified to talk about these things, when they're not, and who desperately need to STOP TALKING until they get some empathy and some logic.
Anyway, here's the Jeff Kennett article.
SOON after the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, I was asked by a journalist about my recollections of her period in office.
I said that while some disagreed with her policies, the reality was that everyone knew the direction she was taking her government and what she was trying to achieve. There was a degree of consistency and certainty.
Then I was asked to name other leaders I respected. I named the former prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I consider myself fortunate to have met Thatcher and Gandhi.
Jeff there are millions of bigots who do exactly what you're doing here. I'm not a bigot I have a (fill in the blank) friend/person who I admire. This proves nothing. I've heard it a zillion times before.
Ronald Reagan was a good leader with extraordinary communication skills and Bill Clinton was as intellectually capable a leader as anyone.
I was surprised later, when considering my answer, that I had nominated three women as outstanding leaders. But all had or have qualities I admire: a clear agenda, the consistency in what they believed in and the courage to withstand opposition and deliver.
But my selection was not based on gender. Merkel, Thatcher and Gandhi are, or were, talented politicians who achieved their leadership positions based on merit. None to my knowledge asked for or was given special treatment because of their gender. Which makes the current political play by our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, so appalling.
... How is that an argument? Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Angela Merkel were good politicians and therefore Julia Gillard has nothing to complain about... WHAT? Thank you for that charming non-sequitor but could you kindly make some kind of coherent sense?
Public trust started to evaporate when Gillard broke her promise "that there will be no carbon tax in any government I lead". That led to a re-evaluation of the way in which she stole office from Kevin Rudd.
Wow... I was drinking cider while blogging on my laptop and I just spat cider all over my computer screen in shock after reading that colossal pile of shit!
EVERYTHING that you just described, opposition leader Tony Abbott did exactly the same only much, much worse and got away with it and yet you use this as evidence AGAINST sexism.
The carbon tax had no significant negative impact. Unless a person makes over $150,000 per year they don't have to pay anything so the only thing that you can possibly fault about the carbon tax is the lack of consistency or flip-flopping that could be used to describe it.
But there have been MASSIVE flip-flops from Tony Abbott and there haven't been nearly the same amount of focus on that in the media.
For example here's what he said about paid maternity leave in 2002.
'Compulsory paid maternity leave. Over this government's dead body frankly. It just won't happen.'
Recently he came out with a more generous paid maternity leave plan than Labor.
Here's what he said about climate change.
“I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more, why not ask electricity consumers to pay more and then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you've paid.”
Yet when Labor suggests a tax that only effects the people making more than $150,000 per year he's outraged. Meanwhile HE was going to tax Joe everyman motorists? Why does Tony Abbott hate the middle class so much that he wants to destroy them with a big new tax?
Furthermore, that's the EXACT SAME ISSUE that you're upset about Julia Gillard for and Tony Abbott also flip-flopped on it!
Abbott propensity for flip-flopping is so severe than in 2010 on the 7:30 report with Kerry O'Brien he plainly admitted that what he says when he hasn't been given a script to read off should not be taken seriously. Here's the quote...
“I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared scripted remark. Which is why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.”
Yet the objective, unbiased, non-sexist reason for the media's desire to put Julia's head on pike is that SHE can't be trusted? If flip-flopping is such a big issue how come there wasn't 50 times as much suspicion of Tony Abbott's comments? And you have the nerve to say she was demanding special treatment? Fuck you Kennett, you arse-hole!
The other part of the reason you give for Julia Gillard being untrustworthy is that she 'stole office from Kevin Rudd.'
Right. Because Tony Abbott would never steal the leadership away from Malcolm Turnbull... Oh wait... YES HE DID!!! You know how many times I heard about him criticized for doing that? Once. On QandA on Monday night in 2012. You know how many times I heard people bringing Julia's character into question for removing Kevin Rudd? Constantly. Whenever I turned on the TV or the radio for about two years after it happened. I couldn't escape it even though I wasn't following Australian politics particularly closely. I couldn't believe nobody EVER pointed out that Tony Abbott had done the exact same thing within the Liberal party. I had to keep mentioning to people to make sure I wasn't cracking up. I kept asking people if it was me that was missing something. It wasn't. There was a huge, HUGE double standard.
Tony Abbott was so brazen and so confident that he'd never be called on his hypocrisy for pushing this line that Julia knifed Kevin, that he dramatically told the media on ABC24 that 'Julia Gillard and the Labor party assassinated Kevin Rudd in the dead of night.' Rather than asking 'does that mean you assassinated Malcolm Turnbull in the dead of night?', the media immediately cut away to something else, leaving that blindingly hypocritical statement unchallenged.
So THIS is supposed to prove that the media WASN'T sexist? How does it prove that? How? What the bloody hell are you talking about you stupid, biased buffoon?!
Since then, the community has been witness to a range of policy failures, political misjudgments and public brawling at ministerial level to a degree we have never witnessed before.
Policy failure and political misjudgments so severe that you're not going to mention them. And public brawling at a level never witnesses before. Politics was NEVER messy until Julia Gillard came along. Did anyone else notice that? No politician was ever mean-spirited until Julia Gillard arrived. She infected a bunch of good-natured, sweet-hearted choir boys with her evil wicked witch potions!
Just my observation, but I don't think Labor instigates most of the public brawling.
The loss of confidence in the Prime Minister and her Government has been self-inflicted. The public is not to blame, nor the media.
You assert that without evidence. I will now dismiss it.
So, in an act of desperation, the Prime Minister launched a gender attack on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, an attack that has failed dismally, as this week's Newspoll illustrated so graphically.
When the first attack occurred in Parliament in October and Gillard accused Abbott of being a misogynist, I thought it was incorrect and grossly unfair.
Maybe you should have googled 'Tony Abbott quotes.' Here are some of what he's on record as saying on
http://abbottisms.com/quote/27
“While I think men and women are equal, they are also different and I think it's inevitable and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy and an enormous number of women simply doing housework.” - 1979 radio interview.
“I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.” January 27, 2010. The Australian Woman's Weekly
“Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au
“What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.” February 8th 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
“Abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au
''I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [for cervical cancer], maybe that's because I'm a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won't be.” November 9th 2006, The Australian
“I believe that there is a vast moral gulf which separates modern Australia from Nazi Germany. But can we be so sure that, under pressure over time, we will not slide down the same slippery slope. We only have to look at the abortion situation in this country.” October 16th 1995 Australian Parliament: Hansard
“It would be folly to expect that women would ever approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, their abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.” - 1979 - Four Corners.
“Gillard won't lie down and die.” May 29th 2012 Herald Sun.
“Every day the Prime Minister stands in this parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this parliament and another day of shame for a government which should have already died of shame.” October 9th 2012, Australian Parliament: Hansard.
“The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au
Praising his daughter's virginity and repeated condemnation of abortion . Boy, Abbott sure does love controlling women's bodies for them - but I'm sure that's for completely altruistic non-misogynistic reasons.
Ask yourself - Is this the face of a sexist man?
It was cowardly and not the act of a leader let alone a prime minister. Not something a Thatcher, Gandhi or Merkel ever resorted to.
Yeh, I got it! You're repeatedly insisting that you're not sexist. Don't protest too hard now!
But as Newspoll has shown, the community's reaction was to mark down the Prime Minister's authority even further.
Doesn't that tend to happen with political attacks generally? Political attacks bring down your opponent but they also bring you down, right?
Abbott is not only a husband of three daughters who, with his wife, Margaret, form a very normal family unit, but he has no issue working with women. Julie Bishop is his deputy leader and his chief-of-staff is Peta Credlin, a very competent political operator.
That... proves... NOTHING!... You... IMBECILE! What did you think he was going to do? Reject his wife and children for having vaginas and never speak to them again? Or stand up in the middle of parliament and demand all women in the Liberal party be immediately thrown out? You sound like someone who doesn't have the slightest, faintest, vaguest idea how prejudice works. Just because someone has a prejudice it doesn't mean that they've completely lost their senses and can't function civilly at all you fucking retard!
This is actually very telling. This is you saying that unless sexism is so extreme that the sexist just can't help spitting hatred even at the expense of wrecking their own life, then you don't see it. And you don't care.
Gillard's attack was personal and deliberate. She thought she was playing to the Australian public but, as it has turned out, she was playing to a very small group of people, most of whom were her own supporters. And she confirmed she was not a leader of substance.
Abbott deserves credit for not returning the personal attacks delivered by the Prime Minister.
Her return to this area of attack - Abbott's relationship with women and the issue of abortion - was another attempt to divide the community.
Prove it dickhead!
It was another act of personal and political desperation that has simply alienated even more Australians.
Gillard was elected to govern all Australians but instead seems intent on dividing the country she is privileged to lead.
Someone described Jill Meagher's murderer, Adrian Bayley, as a misogynist.
I agree that is a correct use of the word. But Abbott is not a misogynist, and to describe him so is a disgrace that speaks more of Gillard's insecurities and failures.
You agree that a murderer is a misogynist. Are you not merciful? Is that what Abbott would have to do before you gave a shit?
Australians deserve a political leader they can trust, a leader who does not seek to divide the nation and who does not resort to gender attacks.
She should step down, but her replacement should not be another flawed character such as Kevin Rudd.
The public has a right and expectation to pass judgment on one of the darkest periods of political leadership this country has ever been subjected to.
Yeh it's right up there with the stolen generation and the White Australia Policy! How dare she actually call him what he is! I can't believe she would call him a hateful fuck! He's just acting like a hateful fuck! Why can't he act like a hateful fuck without being called a hateful fuck? It's sooooo unfair! Waaaah!
Australia's next prime minister should be selected by the public, not the factions of the ALP.
I admire the standards set by Thatcher, Gandhi and Merkel.
Really? You admire Thatcher, Gandhi and Merkel? You should have said something because I had nooooooooooo idea. In fact I was about to conclude that you ARE a sexist based on the sickeningly biased substance of this article you just wrote, but now I know that there are three females that you like I'm all turned around on that assumption. Boy, what a dolt I was for EVER suspecting you! Uh-Duh! Herp! Derp! Derp!
May such standards soon return to Australian politics.
Have a good day.
Okay, thanks for your ignorant tripe, fuckhead!
