This will become known as the week that Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard began her ascent on The Lodge.
It started with an inadvertent, but calculated, remark by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that one day Gillard would make a very good PM.
That was the anointment of his successor.
It sent Gillard on a media blitz, handing out billions of dollars for education infrastructure. She was in Queensland with Premier Anna Bligh and then in NSW with Premier Nathan Rees giving away cheques to build brand new assembly halls at schools where classes are held in demountables and there’s no heating or air-conditioning.
As if to reinforce her credentials, she appeared on Sky News to be interviewed by political editor David Speers and then on the ABC’s 7.30 Report last night by Kerry O’Brien.
She told Speers that oh, shucks, it was humbling to think that one’s name was being mentioned as a future PM but this wasn’t about her it was for the little girls sitting in their classrooms who might be dreaming that one day they might aspire to be prime minister. Sick bags all round.
Mercifully, as the studio lights dimmed the Speers interview concluded with a handshake. It could have been worse. There was such a frisson of togetherness during the encounter that viewers might have expected them to embrace.
Simultaneously, Gillard has been conducting a major political makeover. She made her name as the workers’ friend in the battle against John Howard’s WorkChoices and she led the charge in parliament to have the anti-union laws dumped.
It was a point of difference between her and the ever-so-conservative PM. But the “new” Gillard has switched camps: Adelaide’s La Passionaria is now safely with the business lobby and “on message” with the PM in a tough line against the construction workers’ union and others.
And last but not least, she has decided to disavow her past as a friend of Palestine and make a trip to Israel where she will be given a five-star induction to the peace-loving people of plucky little Israel.
Her visit received an official blessing in yesterday’s Crikey from Melbourne Ports Labor MP and unofficial Member for Tel Aviv, Michael Danby, who keeps the ALP fastened to a pro-Zionist policy.
If you join all the dots there is only one conclusion to be made: Gillard is readying herself for the top job, and that means Kevin has other plans for his future.
Certainly, the boys are unusually active. A five-man committee of the ALP’s national committee has been established to oversee the pre-selection of candidates for the forthcoming election.
The committee comprises all the usual factional suspects — Anthony Albanese and Mark Arbib (NSW), Mark Butler and Bill Shorten (Victoria) and Bill Ludwig (Queensland).
This means a makeover of the federal ALP is on the cards as well.
What a load of nonsense. Fanciful dreaming by a writer who is too lazy to get off his ample rear end and do some leg work to get a real story. You’ve been swallowing the equally stupid line being dished up by the Abbotts, Turnbulls, Pynes, Hockeys and mates over the last 2 weeks. If you are going to bore us with navel gazing at least pick a subject that has a smidgen of truth and fact in it. Frankly the standards we pay for here are becoming too silly. Wakey wakey dumb dumbs, there are real topics out there, not the womans day type rubbish Mr Mitchell has dished up. Ms Gillard must be roaring with laughter, you silly man.
Sorry Alex, but I cannot let your little dig at Danby go without pouring a bucket of swine flu over you. If Michael Danby, by dint of his religion, is the “unofficial member for Tel Aviv”, then does that make Julia Irwin the unofficial member for Gaza? Or Penny Wong the unofficial member for Lesbos? Or Albo the unofficial member for branch stacking (that was an ironic joke…) or Abbott the unofficial member for the Vatican?
If you go to Israel to meet with Israeli’s AND Palestinians, then you’re pro-their right wing government – but if you don’t go and see for yourself, then you’re victim of some lobby group. Get your argument right, boy-o…
One minute Gillard has the brains etc to be PM, next minute she’s apparently being brainwashed by Mossad. I’ve been on one of these trips and there’s absolutely no brainwashing … although I do covet Scarlet Johannson, nice Jewish girl …. drool….
To Walter Slurry,
Michael Danby is not named “unofficial member for Tel Aviv” by the dint of his religion but by the amount of work, over long period of time, he does in advocating the interests of the Israeli government. Julia Gillard’s trip to Israel is being paid for and organized by a lobby group, so it comes under the same criticism that was meted out to trips by Kevin Rudd and Joe Fitzgibbon to China.
My first read off the index actually, and quite satisfied with the read. You don’t specifically mention the speech to the ALP Victorian conference about ‘violent unionists’, in slow methodical highly deliberate form.
Nor the speechifying in favour of McDonalds corporate outreach into mathematics tutorial provision (I make play of this regarding the common trait of red hair with Ronald at: http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/blog/index.blog/1893296/fat-merchant-ronald-stalks-grounds-of-rozelle-public-school-in-2006/
Indeed she is practising the mogadon style 15 second polished sound bite via symbol talk: Low content in terms of facts but dense political posture in terms of timing, audience, angle and intent. We all got the message here in the Beltway.
Well, to paraphrase La Gilliotine, ‘that’s that then’ and oh what a price to pay. In a metaphorical way it really is for all those girl children of which none of them are biologically hers but spiritually maybe they are. And good luck to her with that. She’s got bucket loads of courage, no doubt. And in the middle of the night when the chips are down that’s the best resource going.
And it would do the men of this country alot of good probably too, like Obama causing nervous breakdowns in all those walls of unconscious prejudice. And who knows, in the unfolding ecological crisis there will probably be alot of political symbolism around the nurturing gender. Can’t wait for her earth mother cliche on the national stage after The Tipping Point, sooner rather than later would be my guess.
But by then being PM will be about the worst job in the world!