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I feel like saying divine orifice. Honestly. I am waiting to hear we have brought out the sacrificial goat or virgin to seal it all. The media always point to the polls as though there is something divinely , mystically right about them. They are a small sampling of the population. They are by a biased media because so much of it is owned by one interest . They are not at all independently or scientifically constructed and yet we have polls in our heads. Polls , polls, polls. Polls are another form of media manipulation as are comments. It is far too easy to create a bias one way or the other and , frankly, polls are not helping us at all and we know it. There is no way we should be running our country and its people by polls.
So, the media today have reported much with regard to the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard power struggle . We still have no idea what it would look like should Tony Abbott become PM. Mr. Abbott tried to give us an idea but the media have avoided this notion completely even though they are quite happy to claim certainty with regard to a Labour defeat at the next election. I love the crystal ball gazing which goes on. To be honest, I have enjoyed what has been brought to me today via the media. I feel like I am getting to know my politicians in a very real way and a way which has been denied me until this hung parliament. Julia Gillard took Kevin Rudd into her cabinet because it would have been foolish not to. He is highly competent, hugely popular and the job as foreign minister suited him and us well. She battled those early days with great courage because the way she was treated had our mouths gaping and that is the thing we are still talking about now in SA. Perhaps it is because we were the first state to give women the vote. We are always conscious of how systems and institutions can harm and disadvantage women and it's one of the first things we note. So we are talking still about the way she was treated, what she had to put up with, how men just assume they can be Prime Minister. Remember when Costello wanted to be Prime Minister? Bad luck. John Howard was the Prime Minister and his party did not want to remove him. We vote in the party. The party decides on its leader. Labour is showing us this time that you can actually do that out in the open and it's quite nice being included. It is better than being excluded. We've noticed the Labour strategist just expects Ms Gillard to give up being Prime Minister because Kevin Rudd wants to be Prime Minister. He is popular. He is certainly very popular in his home state of Queensland. Yet you don't judge your good boss by how popular they are nor if they can draw a crowd in the street. Sometimes bosses are unpopular when they try to bring about structural change and it is not fully understood what that means. Popular is important but John Howard stayed in power for far too long and I don't think anyone would claim that popularity was what kept him there. So I think we need to think a bit harder here. We have two really good politicians and it is a shame they are in the same place at the same time but history will depict it more clearly. Their style is different and they both represent something we want to see. We want a Prime Minister who can give us a good image internationally and both of them can do that. We want a Prime Minister who can effect the changes we need. They can both do that. Is it really about Tony Abbott? So where's that part of the picture?
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