At home with the fake Julia

Australians won't be tuning in to At Home because they want to support Australian arts. They'll be tuning in to watch our Prime Minister engage in the mundane and ridiculous. In short, they'll be tuning in to laugh at her.

You may argue that the audience is smart enough to recognise that they're not watching the real Ms. Gillard. But at a subconscious level, At Home will no doubt affect the perceptions of Australian voters.

After all, Bishop looks like Gillard, speaks like Gillard, and negotiates the media like Gillard. Bishop encapsulates everything the Australian population knows about and expects from Gillard. It doesn't matter that one's an actor and the other is a politician. They may as well be the same person.

In the same way that we liked the Joe Hockey of Sunrise or laughed with the Tony Burke of Yes We Canberra, we will adjust our opinions of Gillard according to her fantasy portrayal on At Home. In the examples of Hockey and Burke, public policy was irrelevant to their television performances. Likewise, contentious political issues will most likely be avoided by At Home, if we are to trust the ABC's commitment to remain non-partisan.

I fear At Home will nonetheless leave many Australians with a twisted perception of Australia's political landscape. Our newspapers and commercial television stations are already making their best efforts to remove the politics from politics. At Home is only going to add to the noise.

I'm all for political satire and democratic free speech. But when I go to the polling booth in 2012, I want to be for voting for a leader, not a comedian.