Tony Abbott sprinted out of Parliament so the opposition wouldn’t have to “accept” under-fire Labor refugee Craig Thomson’s vote — but this week Coalition frontbencher Mathias Cormann wrote to Thomson asking for his support on legislation.
Peter Slipper, on the other hand, is a different case. Aside from those lewd late-night texts, the s-xual harassment allegations and the dirty deal to put him in the Speaker’s chair (before the Coalition tried to throw him out), Abbott says he’s “happy to have that vote”.
It’s all good fodder for Julia Gillard, who is also happy to accept his vote — and was happy to keep him in the Speaker’s chair — despite knowing months ago about the language on Slipper’s phone they were quick to judge this week.
S-xism may be rampant in Australian politics, but so is hypocrisy. And that transcends the party divide.
It’s hard to pick a winner from this tragically funny week of politics. It’s certainly not voters.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of the media.
So how does the Coalition justify ‘accepting’ Slipper’s vote?
Too many are sucked into the gender war to identify why Australia is unhappy with its leadership. Gillard does not have the capacity to lead this nation, her argument could have been delivered by any university gender warrior. It is easy to suspect she has been waiting many years to unload in this fashion, that this gender war is one she bought into since her school days, waiting for the opportunity to take it to the national stage. Well she may well be offended but that just means that her most significant speech identifies her as a victim and representative of those aggrieved. She represents victims and not the nation. She does not unify and she does not lead.
In fact, if true that she has known the contents of Slipper’s texts for weeks or longer, her manifest poor judgement in comparison to Windsor/Oakeshott who pressed the Speaker immediately for his resignation speaks volumes and should bell the cat.