|
June 15, 2013
This is a reasonable interpretation of the Canberra Press Gallery at work:
Alan Moir
It's what they do best, other than recycling media release or the relaying the political whisperings when acting in their self-appointed roles as political players. They are, by and large large, hostile to all that policy stuff. It is fear and loathing that sells newspapers these days.
It has taken the Gallery a long time to acknowledge the misogyny and public sexism that is being used by the conservative movement to attack Gillard the person. They've known about it from the beginning but they have deemed it to be unworthy of political consideration. Few have taken a stand against it or even called it for what it is-- a deliberate strategy by the conservatives to use sexism to undermine the legitimacy of Gillard as Prime Minister.
Their default position has been to deny that the misogyny and public sexism is relevant to Australia's political life other than a desperate Gillard playing the gender card.
This is also the position of News Ltd and the AFR. Its weekend editorial, Distracted by the sexism sideshow, says that Gillard's blue ties speech was a desperate diversion born out of the Prime Minister's fire political outlook. It acknowledges the sexismin the body politic --not the misogyny though --and then says:
Labor's problems is its economic and jobs a narrative is now being exposed by its mismanagement of the mining boom. Rather than spreading the benefits of the boom, there is nothing left in its budget to pay for Ms Gillard's grand spending programs for schools and disability services. She and Mr Swan have no rhetoric to deal with Australia's high cost base which is forcing job shedding through Labor's traditional heartland and which must be an urgent policy priority for an Abbott Government. This vacuum has prompter Ms Gillard's wild diversions into issues such as abortion and misogyny and encouraged the distast6eful depths of gender culture to s rise to the surface of political debate.
The high cost is code for the high Australian dollar which is the result of the play of market forces which the AFR supports, along with the free flow of capital. If you accept the role of the deregultaed market as the AFR does, then you accept floating exchange rates.
The high Australian dollar, which has been causing grief to the manufacturing industry, was the consequence of the mining boom and Australia's strong economic position vis-a-vis the US and Europe.
|
the abuse towards Gillard is particularly personal, extreme and relentless. It is hatred of her as a woman, who according to Alan Jones, is mentally ill.