Ugh.
If there was one single reason we're having to suffer a Tony Abbott government, it would be because the ALP managed to lose so much ground in 2 terms that nothing was going to get them back into government for a third term - not even a looming Tony Abbott Coalition Government. I don't know how to couch it any other way. Julia Gillard said a good government had lost its way but my memory of it was that she made sure it lost its way and picked her moment to do the Brutus. Everything else is blithe commentary. That includes all the good things Julia Gillard was supposed to have done as Prime Minister, and how well she navigated the hung Parliament and all else.
It just didn't matter then, it matters even less now - the disaster has befallen truly and squarely.
However the jury of history comes in to pronounce its verdict on the Rudd-Gillard government years, one thing that is already certain is that they fucked it up so bad, it brought on the unthinkable. And one year on from that fateful election, all of Australia is still living under the dreaded lobotomised ignorant cynical corporatist Abbott Government. That's all thanks to the ALP for coughing up their lead. Did they choke? Did they lose their minds? Did they decide to martyr themselves on their self-image? All I know is that between the lot of them, they screwed things up solidly, wilfully and painfully - and it's not going to get unscrewed any time soon.
With all of that in mind, I have to say, it really doesn't help for Julia Gillard to bob up and say things like this:
"If anything, the reputation I have from that night is one of political brutality," she says. "Actually, in the moment I was hesitant, a conversation went too long, I certainly fed [Mr Rudd] hope. I shouldn't have done that."
"I know a lot now about what it feels like to lose the prime ministership, so I expected him to feel very, very battered and bruised," she says. "Obviously I was wrong about that."
The former prime minister, whose memoirs are due to be launched this week, also laments her infamous comment during the 2010 election campaign that it was "time for me to make sure that the real Julia is well and truly on display". The remark opened Ms Gillard up to ridicule from the Coalition and raised questions about her political strategy.
"I put my hand up for that 100 per cent," she says. "That's my fault, you know, sort of dumb, dumb error, rookie error maybe. I mean, I wasn't a rookie in politics, I was a rookie at being prime minister."You get the feeling she is trying to mount an argument that it was tactical things that got out of hand. Except I can't really recall the grand strategy bit in her prime ministership. I don't mean to dump on her legacy and achievement more than is necessary, but it has to be said the current jackasses are doing their utmost to unwind a good deal of it, and some of that ground will be lost forever. So it comes back to asking, just where exactly did she think the centre sat in all of this?
When I recently moved my blog back over, I had the opportunity to read a number of entries from those years and it brought back the sense of quiet desperation that the ALP was simply losing the game by kicking own goals. Except it wasn't a game, and we weren't punters, we were citizens watching in horror.
Quite frankly, it wasn't the tactical things that let her and her government down. It was the inability to do things as a political party in government, as a political party in government should - in other words straight up competence as politicians, and the absence thereof - that let them down. Today, we live with the ongoing misery and inanity and banality-of-evil that is the Abbott Government. It is terrible, it is awful, it is humiliating, it is embarrassing. But it needs to be said loudly and clearly, that Julia Gillard and her ALP government by dint of their deeds were instrumental in bringing about this horror.
So Ms. Gillard, I know you were summoned back into the public eye by the stupid Royal Commission, but please go back to wherever you were hiding and shut the fuck up until at least the Abbott Prime Minister-ship is well and truly over.
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