It's a weird day when you wake up and the Prime Minister of the day is replaced by the ruling party. In a clear case of panic, the ALP faction chiefs went and did what they did best, which is politic-for-politic's-sake and rolled their own Prime Minister and replaced him with a much more amenable figure for their own rank and file.
I guess I'm not a very politically insightful person because I can't get over the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd, let alone comprehend the alleged benefits of installing a PM like Julia Gillard. You could say that so far, to date, I am mostly immune and unmoved by her supposed charms. She comes over like a shrill party apparatchik. While you can't hold ambition against a politician, Gillard's brand of ambition seems more in line with that of a Soviet Komissar than say, Margaret Thatcher's sweeping grandeur. This may be good on the ideology stakes for some but it is uninspiring in the extreme.
However, going back to Kevin Rudd, I want to say a few things now that it is time to say, the king is dead, long live the king. I held three counts against Kevin Rudd, and in chronological order they were: his commenting on the Bill Henson case; the shelving of the ETS instead of talking to the Greens; and his equivocation on such things as why we were in Afghanistan or why we had to reform the tax system. Those are very minor quibbles against the big, big big thing he did, of spending big to stave off the recession when the GFC hit. He was decisive and uncompromising. It was admirable.
What I don't get is how the Australian electorate that got bailed out in a big way by Kevin Rudd have essentially forgotten how effective the man was at the time of greatest need. He was there, and he did what he had to do, and Australia as a whole was a great beneficiary of his leadership. So now that the same man says 'Super Profits Tax', the billionaire miners quibble and it turns into a massive drop in his standings at the poll. In this instance you have to blame the stupidity of the people polled, not the Prime Minister who can't communicate the whys of the tax reform. It's the same man who staved off the global "shitstorm" of the GFC for Australia. You'd think the electorate would stop and listen closely to what the man had to say.
It's all said and done now, but what all this leads me to think is that the Australian electorate on the whole, taken as an aggregate is like a spoiled child with fantasies about who they really are. Whatever the polled electorate thinks they're kidding themselves. While I wasn't the biggest fan of Kevin Rudd, I'm even less enamoured of his successor, so all of this strikes me as a very big joke.
I dare say in the light of latter day analysis, history will be kind to Kevin Rudd. If you could separate the man from the office, you might not be impressed with the man. Yet as the man in the office, he was formidable.
Should I Be In Awe?
The ALP panic move brought about the change that installed Julia Gillard. So we now have Australia's first female PM but she is unelected. Is this a good thing or a bad thing for feminism? Here's something that was in the SMH.
"The important thing is really for Australian girls growing up in this society, I think if there's one girl who looks at the TV screen over the next few days and says 'Gee I might like to do that in the future', well that's a good thing," she told reporters.
But it's bigger than just an inspirational role. Having a woman running the country will continue to challenge our collective notions of what it means to be Australian, to be a leader, to be a woman.
This country, where our concepts of identity, heroism and even friendship have for so long been wrapped up in male stereotypes and male pursuits, is now being led by a woman who has eschewed marriage and children, and climbed a steady and determined path to the top of a party and a parliament traditionally dominated by blokes.
Now, if Barack Obama, the United States' first black president, does get around to visiting Australia in the next few months, he will be greeted by Gillard, our first female leader.
Milestones like a first black president or first female prime minister are never simply fluke events, or just brought about by a hard-working or charismatic individual. They're the culmination of years of hard work from all those that paved or pushed the way through.
And so it goes. For my money, I am more reminded of the Premierships of Joan Kirner, Dr. Carmen Lawrence, Anna Bligh and dare I say, Kristina Kenneally. Sort of the froth the ALP throw up in order to distract the jaded electorate from the real problems going on. I guess we'll get to vote for Julia Gillard soon enough, but I am feeling very anti-Labor about all these shenanigans. I'm intending to vote for anybody but the major parties in both the state and federal elections this year. It's a vow I'm keeping.
Am I the disaffected? No, I am the severely disenfranchised and none of these assholes are helping to bring me back to the mainstream. And I'm not the one that's stopped thinking or stopped following what's going on. We've gone from 'Rudd versus Turnbull' to 'Gillard versus Abbott' in a matter of 7 months. There is no way you're going to convince me our polity isn't stupid and fucked up.
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