I'm not worried about Julia Gillard's abysmal rating in polls. I'm not convinced anyone but journalists and backbiters have any real desire to roll Australia's first woman Prime Minister and replace her with any of those ambitious men among whom she floated to the top of the Labor Party.
All that she has done is sound insincere: ditch the ALP's pre-government commitment to on-shore processing of asylum seekers; maintain the live cattle trade with Indonesia in face of clear evidence of grossly cruel practices; and blather about the sanctity of marriage.
She has shown she is human and, above all, determined to hang on to office despite all the crap thrown at her for being a woman (see the top eight stereotypes). And you've got to admire that, though I do confess to being disappointed in my hope that the first woman to be Australian Prime Minister would be a statesman. We have just another politician.
Yet we have the leaders we deserve. The parliamentary ALP is so derived and driven by factions that it can decline to implement its formal, written policies on, for example, an emissions trading scheme, or the humane treatment of asylum seekers in accordance with our international obligations — which are explicitly to assess the claims of those who arrive in Australia and claim to be refugees.
Gillard cannot see past the poultry [sic] advice of Immigration Department turkeys (to cite Bob Brown) who feel that Australians couldn't cope with an average of 600 arrivals on shore a month, which we already do (they come by plane).
A party that was truly connected to voters would have them with far greater influence than the careerists who currently flap their wings in smoke-filled offices and say who's in and who's out. It has been in their interests that community activists and organisers and men and women of passion and vision have been sidelined from parliamentary and administrative policy-making.
The ALP's branches are drooping as the roots dry out.
Poor Gillard can't win a trick. She came to power because the factions forced her to step up to the guillotine and stand under her own Damoclean sword. When she faced the electorate she got a hung parliament. I was excoriated for not denouncing her as a creature