Jazzing Julia at her misrepresenting best

Back in November 2007 I wrote the following comment (which I never posted) about an Abbott vs. Gillard 'debate' on Nine's Today show. The debate was during the lead-up to the 2007 Federal election:

Till now in the official [2007] election campaign Julia Gillard has seemed constrained in her manner. Maybe it's a question of restrained - I mean by the Party elites who must be aware of how off-putting she can be to the ordinary Australian with whom she is totally out of tune in terms of life style and outlook. But this morning on Nine's Today Show she was, eyes fairly dilating, back to her trickiest, scoffing and mocking best.

She obviously thought she had the Coalition's Tony Abbott cornered and all that remained was the coup de grace. Perhaps I have used the wrong French expression here, for the women of the hard Left, like rigid feminist Julia, would not want to end Tony Abbott's suffering too soon. There are few men in politics that the women of the hard Left hate more than Catholic Tony Abbott. You know, all that masculinity, manliness, religion, defence of the family and traditional morality...it's enough to make them throw up...'keep your rosaries off my ovaries!'...

What had really set Julia's leftist spite going was vision taken by a Labor Party sneak who had been stalking Tony Abbott to capture the right useful moment - tactics bearing the familiar imprint of Wayne and Julia. The vision was of Tony Abbott speaking at a local electorate function. This is what Abbott said as reported by Nine News:

Abbott: I accept that certain protections, in inverted commas, are not what they were...I accept that has largely gone. I accept that. I accept that the industrial relations commission doesn't have the same powers to reach into the nook and cranny of every business that it used to have. I accept that. That is the best protection, not going off to some judge or industrial commission that might order your employer, who you don't like and he doesn't like to keep you in an unhappy partnership forever.

Lisa Wilkinson [on the Today show]: Tony, what were you thinking? [Julia sniggering in the background]

Abbott: Terrific statement because I was making the absolutely self-evident point that under Work Choices you've got more work, you've got more jobs and the best protection for someone who is unhappy in his or her current job is the chance of a new one - certain sorts of counter-productive protections, pseudo-protections aren't there...these so called protections were counterproductive and the fact that we have had two million new jobs under the deregulated Coalition system, unemployment at thirty-four year lows, shows that this new system is much better for workers... Four-hundred-thousand new jobs since Work Choices is the best evidence that Work Choices is good for workers,"

Julia Gilliard: Tony's a sort of curious character because from time to time he has these amazing flashes of honesty and he tells it like it is and he has told it like it is. Work choices has taken protections away. I'm glad he concedes that for every Australian to hear. That's exactly what Labor has been saying. Work Choices has allowed the safety net to be stripped away.
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This answer is vintage Gillard misrepresentation and smear. There are few people on the extreme left of politics that are as accomplished as Gillard in defeating a perfectly rational and compelling answer to a legitimate question with mockery and deliberate misrepresentation. She is doing it the 2010 campaign and at this stage with even more success. Most of the media simply refuse to look closely at and analyse her speeches and replies to criticism. To her discredit Lisa Wilkinson did not, or could not, see the tricky way Gillard sidestepped Abbott's explanation.

Work Choices is finished. It is finished not because it is bad economic policy, but because Gillard and her union mates mounted such a campaign of distortion and misrepresentation that the electorate swallowed it. They never gave the electorate a chance to understand it.

A true conservative, never surrendering his overriding principles, will always look at prevailing circumstances. The prevailing circumstances are that the majority of the electorate are convinced that Work Choices is unfair and that Labor's Fair Work legislation is not. Politics of the meanest sort has decided the question of competing economic policy - not economics. It will remain that way until the electorate changes its mind.

Abbott's point that Work Choices provides more work, more work opportunity, which means more choice of work, more chance of work and thus more work protection is supported today by many economic commentators who are following the 2010 election campaign. There are grave warnings about Gillard's plans for stultifying and stagnating re-regulation. The editorial in yesterday's edition of the Australian brings the focus onto the real issues. The headline and opening paragraphs:

NOT DOGMA BUT A DEBATE ON WORKPLACE RELATIONS

NEITHER Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott is keen to talk about their industrial relations policies. Sure, the Prime Minister wants to warn us the Liberals have a secret plan to reintroduce the Howard government's Work Choices, which if you listen to Labor, was one step short of slavery. And the Opposition Leader is desperate to distance himself from that policy, the single most important cause of John Howard's defeat in 2007. This is not good enough. We need a debate on the problems with Ms Gillard's Fair Work Act and how Mr Abbott would address them in office. This should be a campaign plus for Mr Abbott, given he says he opposed Work Choices in cabinet. We have now seen enough of Ms Gillard's industrial relations laws to recognise the damage they will do...read more

There will not be any real debate on industrial relations during the 2010 because Gillard, Swann, Crean and union heavy Paul Howes, National Secretary of AWU, will do what Gillard and the Labor Party did to Abbott in the 2007 elections campaign: they will shut down debate with mockery, lies and misrepresentation

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com