Australia's 27th Prime Minister, The Hon Julia Gillard, MP
Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. What did I miss? Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
- What will PM Gillard mean for health?
- Laying Rudd's headstone
- Strength in union
- Half of what I say is meaningless
- The Gillard experiment: time will tell if it works
- Send off the clowns – the Rudd dumping, and collapsing mainstream politics
- Begin Rant: Playing Ministerial reshuffle
- A letter to the new Prime Minister
– analysis from Croakey at Crikey
– “At the end of the day, Rudd’s downfall was about leadership in the conventional managerial sense that the owners of small businesses and chief executives understand. And it was about the exceptionally poor preparation professional politics affords one prior to tackling the single most challenging leadership exercise of them all.”
– “During the long lead up to the [2007] election campaign proper, it was not Rudd who was on the phone every morning deciding on the tactics that mattered. The daily grind of Your Rights At Work in the elite media and at the grassroots was led by others, including of course Greg Combet at the ACTU.
In this context, it is not that surprising that the Unions chose Julia Gillard over Kevin Rudd, nor that Labor caucus has followed. Gillard has shown she knows how to be part of a leadership team within a large campaign machine. Rudd was unable to negotiate or collaborate with his own staff and Ministers, let alone industry or the Greens.”
– “So while on Wednesday night in the flush of excitement I wrote:
What complete fools. They might as well give Abbott the keys to the Lodge now – because they sure as hell will be giving the LNP a huge boost in the polls.
I now take that all back.”
– Bob Ellis – “It was a cock-up, in short, but not altogether a cock-up, for it had some distant high clear trumpet-notes of a possible victory too.”
– Guy Rundle looks at the bigger picture: a groundswell of popular discontent all around the world – “This collapse of legitimacy comes from two factors that are less coincident than they are different sides of the same coin – as the scale of problems facing Western society has rapidly been revealed, the utter disconnect of deadened elite political parties has come to the fore.”
– Comprehensive outline of Possibilities from Kathryn Crosby
– “Now’s a good time to send Julia Gillard a personal message – congratulating her, and reminding her of what you’ll be hoping for from her Premiership. (She will definitely be getting these sorts of messages from groups like the ACL.)”
Categories: linkfest, Politics
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
The 62nd Down Under Feminists Carnival 
zomg, this was my 2000th post.
And a great post it was, tigtog! <3!!
Bob Ellis’ post had me rather annoyed. I don’t think he can wrap his mind around a woman PM. He said he didn’t think anyone would vote for her, not women or men. Well, I’m a woman and I’m going to vote for her.
I think I’ll have to paint her at some point. No matter how her stay in the big seat pans out, she’s our first woman PM. A big moment for me, I like to commemorate things like that.
I had exactly the same reaction to that part of Bob Ellis’ post. Mind you, I find myself nearly always having a mixed reaction to his analyses – half FUCK YEAH and half HELL NO.
I just have to squee briefly somewhere and this is appropriate: being able to say “Prime Minister Gillard” is just as exciting as being able to say “President Obama”.
It’s not like it solves anything to do with sexism, it’s not like she’ll necessarily be a better PM than the blokes before her, it’s just a huge friggin’ symbolic deal to some part of my brain.