Apparently Gillard wrote this herself. I think there is a real difference here: the unspeakable and deliberate cruelty towards prisoners over several years....is of an utterly different dimension to the QLD floods.
She wants to invoke the notion of mate-ship in Changi as an exclusively Australian thing, and that men in pathetic circumstances and the motivations is analaogus to the QLD floods.
That Gillard wrote this herself shows that she has a very naive, half informed understanding of history and the human condition.
In the current floods the country has seen nothing remotely close in suffering compared to Changi.
It's pretty offensive and dumb to draw the parallel.
Gillard here is on a par with Rudd when he wrote his "treatise" on the post GFC enconomic order, itself a mishmash of ignorant half informed economic history that would fail an undergraduate.
