Labor’s leaky leaders

Airbrushed world of Julia Gillard

The election news of the week was the leak from Laurie Oakes’ deep throat inside the Labor Party. And what a leak it was. It revealed that Julia Gillard was a fiscal conservative. She made a clean breast of it to contain the damage. “I am a fiscal conservative”, she admitted. Gasp! Kevin Rudd had made a similar admission before his GFC conversion but, at the time, it seemed less controversial. She explained that she took her responsibilities to “hard working Australians” seriously. She went on to explain that she had a responsibility to look closely at large amounts of expenditure “from every angle”; and that if people wanted a prime minister who was cavalier with expenditure then she wasn’t that prime minister.

It is to be wondered what the next leak will reveal; perhaps that Julia has a weakness for working too hard for hard working Australians; Julia secretly believes Mother Teresa did good works; Julia holds volunteer fire-fighters in high regard. How will she get out of those claims, if they are made?

You just can’t help admiring her front – so to speak – can you.

The leak, of course, had nothing to do with the responsibilities of cabinet ministers to scrutinise expenditure. The leak was about Ms Gillard’s character and attitudes.

“Elderly people don’t vote for the Labor Party” and therefore why give them such large pension increases. Did she say it? And if she did, what does it say about her character and attitudes. She has denied that she said it. But look, most people, if they were accused of saying something totally unconscionable, which they didn’t say, would go to some length to say it was completely untrue and without a shred of veracity.

It doesn’t quite cut it to say, “I deny that”, and now let me hastily go on to explain how fiscally responsible I am. Of course, if she did say it she has compounded the offence by her denial; by ‘misspeaking’ (as American politicians caught lying euphemistically put it).

It’s not a pretty picture but, apparently, it can be airbrushed away in the world of Julia Gillard.

We are in the middle of airbrushing on a grand scale and not of the Women’s Weekly kind. An editorial comment from the Australian (29/7) is typical: “her adroit handling of the issue showed her strength under pressure”. Say something unconscionable, invent a complete spin, look feisty about it and, abracadabra, the compliant media is in thrall. No comment anywhere either about breaching cabinet confidentiality.

Gillard is accused of reneging on a deal with Rudd. She has refused to comment claiming she would never ever reveal the details of these confidential conversations. What, not even to simply deny it? She has been asked whether she ever spoke up about the government ‘losing its way’ and ‘going off track’. She has said consistently that she cannot say anything at all about cabinet discussions. What, not even to say some conversations took place? No, apparently, the confidentiality of cabinet discussions is sacrosanct.

As it turns out, ‘confidential’ means just what Julia chooses it to mean. She has denied saying in cabinet that ‘elderly people don’t vote Labor’ – however unconvincing the denial. We now also know from her press conference that she was fighting the good fight in cabinet. She did not leave it to the money men Messrs Swan and Tanner; the traditional guardians of the public purse.

She didn’t just say ‘yes’ in cabinet to proposed pension increases for non-Labor-voting old people and to paid maternity leave? She “held them up to the light”, “examined every possibility”, and “asked every question”. She was the voice of fiscal rectitude; standing up for hard working Australian taxpayers.

All the time we had thought she had supported the massive wasteful expenditure on pink batts, green loans and BER rorts. It can’t be true because she is clearly exhaustively diligent in scrutinising expenditure. She has revealed ‘confidential’ cabinet discussions to back her story.

But that is not the end of the matter. Once satisfied that they were “affordable today and affordable tomorrow”, she backed the pension and maternity leave proposals all the way. Here you have in one package, fiscal rectitude, generosity and no nasty bits. Mills and Boon should take note when Julia leaves politics. Her ability to construct plausible political tall tales depicting her heroic qualities might be fodder for a new book series.