Gillard (finally) fires up

From the reported remarks at the Victorian ALP Conference today see here it appears that PM Gillard has finally found the right way to attack her conservative opponent. Instead of bland sloganeering and focus group tested catchphrases we finally saw here a Keatingesque line of attack, which was exactly what was required to deal with a political animal like Abbott.
I think she was channeling Keating when she came out with phrases like "acting like the love child of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump", and "the fight was not between right and left, but between right and wrong", while getting stuck into the self-important "shock jocks", and devastatingly, praising up Conservative Prime Ministers Cameron and Key. This is a key point for me, she's clearly showing that climate change is not some trendy lefty cause, but a REAL issue that needs REAL answers from serious people. And the recently released Australian Election Study see here clearly highlights that Abbott is generally reviled by the electorate, in fact rating lower than Keating at the disastrous 1996 election landslide.
So the lesson in all this is that it's all in Gillard's hands; she has to sell this tax, stand firm on her beliefs (assuming she has any?), and stare down and ridicule the Opposition's obstructionism.
The Australian electorate will usually reward conviction politics; they don't like Abbott, and they're scared of the Carbon Tax, so it's up to Gillard to explain to us why we need it....and why we don't need Abbott!

more Combet, less Gillard?

After reading this defence of the Carbon Tax see here by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, it left me wondering, what the hell is PM Gillard doing? Granted every time she opens her mouth you just want to cringe, but as the PM she should be articulating the arguments that Combet is making. Why isn't she out there saying things like;

•  Australia risked long-term economic damage if the proposed reform was abandoned
• If we let this chance pass us by, climate change policy will become the poisoned chalice of Australian politics for the next decade
• The consequences of this would be profound for all Australians, especially for those businesses that are now so reluctant to take responsibility for their actions and refuse to see beyond next year's prospectus
• The eventual cost of economic transformation would also become more expensive as Australia struggled to catch up with the rest of the world
• We would not learn how to live in, let alone how to prosper in a carbon-constrained world, while our trading partners would increasingly see us as industrial dinosaurs

But instead of this type of reasoned argument, all we get out of Gillard are comments about her favourite football team, and speculation about marrying the First Bum....what's his name?
We do live in barbaric times I think.

Gillard finally grows some cahoonas

After spending the best part of the last six months criticising and ridiculing PM Gillard, I've finally gained some respect for her. And how did this occur? Well bizarrely it involved the cynical and deliberate tactic of rejecting a carbon tax on the eve of the election, knowing full well that's exactly what you're going to introduce straight afterwards.
Now while a broken promise (on such a game changing issue) is nothing to be proud of, at least we're now having a proper old fashioned political debate about an issue of immense importance. While the complex issue of climate change (and what to do about it) can be argued elsewhere, what really impressed me was that Gillard threw away the focus groups results playbook and decided for the first time to act like a leader, ie leading from the front and arguing a case of why we need this carbon tax. A leader must lead from the front while facing down their opponent's scares.
The script is pretty easy to follow, whether it's a GST or a carbon tax, the Opposition will argue that the sky will fall in if it's introduced, while the Government must be able to stare down the hysteria and tell us why this policy is for the greater good etc.
So despite all the mouth frothing and analysis thus far over who's winning and who's losing, for me this "courageous decision" has not only put the Government back in the game, it's given them a raison d'etre which they've so sorely lacked since the election.