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