I tend to forget just how in-your-face Gary McDonald was with Norman’s adventures in public commentary:
Despite the disgruntlement from the people rallying in the above video, and despite how many people were highly perturbed and critical of the way in which Whitlam lost office as PM, the voters overwhelming preferenced Whitlam’s ouster, Fraser, at the subsequent election. In fact, the LNP coalition came to government with the largest majority in Australian federal political history.
There are too many differences between the situations to draw hard and fast parallels, but it’s nonetheless worth noting that polls indicating that the electorate is perturbed by sudden confrontation with the brutal ruthlessness of political ambition have not necessarily, historically, translated into the electorate punishing the successful employers of such political ruthlessness.
Categories: arts & entertainment, media, parties and factions
Media Circus: No More Knights And Dames Edition 
The 62nd Down Under Feminists Carnival 
A poster appearing around Brisbane 
Hoyden About Town 
What’s amazing is how close McDonald could get to the action. Just wouldn’t happen now.
When it comes Gillard/Rudd – I suspect that most people don’t care either way.
I think you are right Fine, and I just wish that some people would get over it. The endless rehashing is getting tiresome. *note to self – stop taking part in endless rehashing then*.
I want this election campaign to be over, but I can already see what it will be like if (when) Julia takes us to the polls next time – She won against the worst the Opposition had to offer last time/She wasn’t proven so people gave her a chance/People gave her a go because she’s a woman. She’ll never get to win on her merits, there will always be a reason. I hope next time it’s Julia and Malcolm Turnbull and Julia still wins.
Mindy, I heard an interesting interview with Cheryl Kernot today, in which she thought Gillard was copping criticism because she’s broken the feminine stereotype, i.e. she wasn’t the faithful deputy helping her male boss. She grabbed power, instead of waiting for it and some of the boys don’t like it one bit.
I’m so sick of it.
I can no longer bear to read over at misogyny central. It was Swan who proposed the ETS be dropped and Gillard agreed but history is being determinedly rewritten now, and Swan is forgiven and forgotten. Rudd refused to even meet with the Greens from April 2009 onwards, in terms of his preparedness to negotiate to get legislation through the senate he was worse than Howard, but now he is being hailed as some sort of environmental saviour. I think I need to take a break from the blogs, but I won’t unfortunately be able to forget that self proclaimed “progressive”men advocated putting Abbott in charge to send a message to Labor. The biggest danger to women’s status is far preferable to a female PM.
A certain coterie just don’t want to hear it, do they?
Certainly, there should be questions asked about political party leadership processes in the wake of this spill, as in any other spill. I just don’t think that those questions are the most important questions facing us in this coming election.
To be scrupulously fair, that’s mostly Spana, of whose self-proclamations I harbour the severest skepticism generally.
The others may not believe that their preferences would put the Libs in charge but Spana is not the only one there who is advocating putting the Libs before Labor, Tigtog. They will be in the minority thankfully – as predicted, Abbott is polling very poorly with women and never have I been more grateful that we form a smidgen over 50% of the population. If Rudd had remained PM we would now be entering the election with no ETS and the stated intention to wait until 2013 before attempting to introduce new legislation, but he was the golden boy while Gillard is evil incarnate and every policy failure under his watch is being carefully reattributed to Gillard alone. I am very pleased to think the Greens will probably increase their primary vote and maybe even get a senate quota outright in some states, but the sexist flight from Labor is just appalling.
So. Furious.
And to top it all my son has just broken my car window. Gah, what a day.
su, car window woes oh noes 😦
I hadn’t caught up on some of the comments in the Carbon Price Now! thread. Disturbing, indeed.
It’s interesting to me that somebody challenged an earlier comment of mine at LP with regard to the #spill (as essentially a Vote of No Confidence) with a reference to The Dismissal as if it should be an argument-killer, but when (as in this post) I pointed out that Fraser actually won the subsequent election despite most people thinking that the Dismissal itself was on the nose – a very loud silence has ensued.
Yes Tigtog. I think there is quite of lot of genuine perturbation and a feeling that Rudd should have received a less peremptory dismissal, but the polls indicate that that is not going to change the 2PP. The Greens had slipped to around 12% nationally but I expect that will probably go up again to around 13% now that Gillard has signalled that the stalling (or worse) on Climate Change is going to continue.
su, there’s a couple of commentors there who I think would have been advocating Greens-1/LNP-2 even if Rudd was still PM, based on (a) the lack of movement on climate change and (b) the muddled policy on asylum seekers.
I disagree with them, but I don’t think it’s only Gillard as PM that has them thinking this way. They figure that so long as the Greens have the BOP in the Senate to knock down anything too extreme (Workchoices II, etc) from the LNP, all that will happen is that the ALP learns a lesson about how it still needs the Left. I can see the logic, but I dispute the premises – the strategy still gives me a cold shiver.
However, some of the others spluttering oh dearie me how could we possibly trust Labor now – gah.
I think the ‘teach Labor a lesson’ could backfire spectacularly when Labor try to come more like the Liberal party (difficult at this point I know) to win back those voters who went Green 1 Libs 2. Three years of Tony Abbott? I don’t think so and I sincerely hope not.
From what I’ve read this morning it seems that millions of Australian’s don’t care one way or the other. They’d rather watch the Masterchef final, so the only public debate we’re probably going to have between Gillard and Abbott is being moved to an earlier timeslot to avoid a clash in which the politicians would come off second best.
Sheryl, I think it’s less that they don’t care about where they are going to place their vote this election, it’s more that they’ve already made their minds up whichever way, so why watch a debate full of posturing sound-bites that won’t change their mind?
It’s only us wonk-tragics who get caught up in the theatre of politics who really care what they’re actually going to say on telly.
Great comment from Pavlov’s Cat over at LP: