John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs highlights the failures of the fourth estate to hold our politicians (and other institutions) to account.
This week Ms Gillard has stated that she will be taking control of her own election campaign, conceding voters had only caught a ‘glimpse’ of who she truly was.
Excuse my cynicism but this smells like more spin and fakery from the new Queen of Sussex Street politics.
After all, Ms Gillard has spent twelve years in parliament, spent years as one of the bosses at the Socialist Forum (that’s where the former communists went to continue their radical agenda), and a few years with Slater and Gordon pushing Labor’s pro-union industrial relations agenda.
Her entree into politics brought some policy gems like ‘Medicare Gold’ and the failed border protection laws that have seen people smugglers make record profits trafficking their human cargo.
As a minister, she has presided over the greatest ever waste of taxpayers’ money, squandering an estimated $8 billion building overpriced tuck shops and toilets. It has been reported that she sent a junior adviser to represent her at meetings of the National Security Committee of Cabinet, breaching Cabinet protocol and vacating her national responsibility.
Ms Gillard has also remained tight-lipped about her bloody betrayal of Kevin Rudd and how she broke the deal they had agreed to. Of course, since that day Ms Gillard has continued with her less than credible policy development work, failing to reach even the lowest of expectations.
First there was the refugee centre to be built in East Timor – despite the trifling matter that East Timor’s Parliament has unanimously rejected such an idea. The fact that this policy was announced without prior reference to the East Timorese Prime Minister demonstrates what a pathetic attempt at spin this really was.
Next we had her new approach to ‘the greatest moral issue of our time’ – climate change. Rather than make a decision, Ms Gillard has outsourced her government policy to her own mini 2020 summit of 150 ‘ordinary’ Australians. An amazing vacuum of leadership from someone looking to be elected Prime Minister.
And then we have Ms Gillard’s rejection of a ‘big Australia’. Despite her defence of the big Aussie vision only weeks prior, she now expects us to believe that population has nothing to do with immigration – even though it makes up two thirds of our annual population growth!
So if we haven’t yet seen the real Julia Gillard, what sort of impostor have we seen over the years? Based on her track record, clearly someone whose commitment to principle and conscience is as transient as a summer cloud on a windy day.
So this week we will see another incarnation of Julia Gillard. It will be the latest attempt to hoodwink Australians that the woman in charge of our country had nothing to do with the failings and mismanagement of the past three years.
Australians deserve better from even an unelected Prime Minister.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
