labor in strife, page-26

Lie launches Gillard election campaign

Piers Akerman –, Wednesday, January, 30, 2013, (1:12pm)




With the announcement of the September 14 federal election, Julia Gillard has set in place an eight-month election campaign, no matter what she may say.

In telling the nation she had set the date and would be able to differentiate between the time she spends campaigning and the time she spends governing, she also told the first lie of the official campaign.

Everything Gillard does is designed to perpetuate her tenuous hold on government.

Everything she has done since she cajoled the willing Independents to support her minority Labor-Green government has been about hanging on to power.

The national press corps representatives assembled at the Press Club today seemed to swallow the lie.

The first question dealt with national disasters.

The second, from the sycophantic Paul Bongiorno, was a Dorothy Dixer on parliamentary behaviour which Gillard ignored.

The atmosphere in politics, she said, was due to the Opposition’s stance – not her shambolic and disingenuous government.

The third, from the Sydney Morning Herald’s Lenore Taylor, was also gentle as would be expected from a strong soft-Left gallery voice.

Followers of this election will have to keep firmly in their minds the numerous failings of this government in almost every policy area.

It has made promises – and it will rely on those promises (such as the NDIS and the NBN) as the campaign continues to pretend that it has been effective.

But the reality is that its policies have failed.

The border protection policy is a model case.

A successful policy dismantled by Labor to pander to fringe supporters and Green voters and it has been an abysmal failure.

Now, promising certainty and good governance, Gillard has ushered in a year of electioneering.

As for certainty in planning – the only certainty a majority of Australians want is to see the back of the Labor government.