How to offend Julia Gillard
Today in Parliament, Julia Gillard very obligingly gave us a guide on how to offend her. Here’s how:
- say her father died of shame
- say that abortion is the easy way out
- imply that she’s a liar
- stand next to a sign saying "Ditch the Witch"
Fair enough. Admittedly, I was a tad surprised to find out just how easy it was to offend Julia Gillard. I thought she was tough and was beating those mean and nasty men of Parliament at their own game; apparently not.
But perhaps she’s tougher than we think. Here’s a list of ways in which, thus far, it has proven impossible to offend Julia Gillard:
- call lady bits by offensive names when sexting Commonwealth employees
- steal hundreds of thousands of workers’ money via a union slush fund
- use union money to pay for prostitutes and lavish curry dinners
- have an affair with a married man
- make racist comments about your builders and renovators
- stab a duly elected Prime Minister in the back because you’re worried about the opinion polls
- let your staffers stir up a riot of protesters on Australia Day to attack the Opposition leader
- waste a generous surplus at a time of economic crisis
- cite Bruce Springsteen as your economic guru in a cringe-making video
- lie about introducing a carbon tax to save your financial bacon because you’ve spent all the money you inherited
- sell the soul of your 100-year-old political party for a mess of Green pottage (gluten-free, hallucinogenic and with no nutritional content whatsoever)
- use any means necessary to preserve your one-seat majority in a hung parliament
Philippa Martyr blogs at Transverse City
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins