Moving forward, trust me

She certainly hasn’t saved us from Rudd’s policies, all of which she supported.

I remain uneasy at the recollection of her first words to the Australian people when she appeared to tell us about the leadership change. “I have taken control,” she informed us. “The government has lost its way and I have taken control.”

Like most everybody else, I didn’t know the government had lost its way, let alone that we were about to chuck out the PM. Usually these things take quite a bit of time to build momentum, and somebody notices what’s going on. But voters didn’t have the chance to catch up before it was all over.

There were indeed night terrors in the ALP as the fear grew that they might lose the election with Rudd at the helm. It must have been a serious worry for them, but not for the rest of us because we didn’t know or didn’t care about it. The crisis Julia stepped in to avert was all the ALP’s, not the country’s. People who didn’t vote Labor wouldn’t have given a toss, except to exploit the circumstances for their own advantage. Julia and her gang weren’t protecting “us”. They were protecting their own backsides.

The ALP also wants it both ways. They want to assure us that we do indeed choose our Prime Minister. And they want to be able to get rid of that Prime Minister if unelected interests and powerful party factions decide the PM needs to go.

Furthermore, if we, the people, demand information about what was involved in usurping our democratic choice, we will be told the process is “confidential” and “private”. In other words, leave it to us, even if you didn’t elect us; we know best, and we don’t have to explain ourselves to anybody.

It is the height of hypocrisy for Gillard to tell us we have the right to choose our Prime Minister, when she herself has so spectacularly demonstrated that the people have no right at all to determine whether or not the PM we’ve chosen sees out his or her term. This demonstration renders our “choice” worse than useless. This demonstration degrades our “choice” to the level of a wishful illusion. This is Ms Gillard messing with our heads, and we acquiesce with her manipulations at our peril. This alone demonstrates that Julia Gillard cannot be trusted.

If the ALP wins government, the Australian people will have endorsed the right of non-elected interests and party factions to decide who will be the Prime Minister of this country.

I’d really like to know what’s happened since the leadership change that has assisted the government to find again the way it had so regrettably lost. Things don’t seem much different, and if that’s the case, why should I vote any differently from when Kevin Rudd was steering the boat?

Apart from that, I fear that Ms Gillard’s brand of dull, repetitive and unnecessary reassurance may well turn out to be as deathly boring as some people found Kevin’s unending waffle. There’s something insulting about her repressive reassurances. The “I know best and you don’t need to worry because everything’s going to be all right” method of quietening dissent.

“Don’t you worry about that,” said Jo Bjelke-Petersen. And look where that got the Queenslanders.

And I really don’t like the accomplished manner in which Julia avoids answering questions. Yes, I know it’s a mandatory skill for politicians. But on another level, it’s a bit unsettling that the PM should be so good at it.