Missing The Point

So we enter 2013, and as most people are probably aware this means that we’re finally back into an election year. The fiasco that was 2010 seems so long ago and it’s interesting to watch the trajectories of both candidates since.

"Oh Balls! Someone hacked my Minecraft account..."

Julia Gillard has maintained a relatively steady level of public disapproval over the last 3 and a bit years, with low popularity, the breaking of election promises and the implementation of the ‘tax to end them all’, while Tony Abbott has become little more than a naysayer, like his post-election plan had actually involved the requirement for another election as a result of the hung parliament. He probably should have watched the recent anti drink-driving advertisements. You need a plan B, and unless he’s got something amazing up his sleeve we won’t be seeing one in 2013. It will be much of the same as the last campaign, in the hope that a slightly bigger margin will give him a majority government. Up until recently, the polls supported this philosophy... I reiterate - up until recently.

While it has been hilarious, frustrating, maddening and saddening to watch the landscape of Australian political discourse shift over the last Prime Ministerial term, there is one aspect of it (who am I kidding, there are many, but let’s just go with one for now) that has raised my ire.

With her now world-famous speech, the following months have brought the issue of sexism to the front of the political spectrum. While it makes a nice change from the usual issues of racism, and I’m all for the promotion of gender equality, it does pose and interesting quandary regarding my own personal position.

I am not a fan of Julia Gillard or her terms as PM. This is not a recent development, I’ve expressed my disquiet about the whole situation for a while now, but luckily for (most of) you I won’t go on about it unless prodded. It’s not like she suddenly made her sexism speech and I decided I was against her and everything she stood for.

The thing that gives me the shits about all of this is the fact that I can’t express a negative opinion about the PM now, to most of the left-leaning females and even some males who think that it’s merely an expression of my inner sexism. Maybe it’s because I’m from Western Sydney that I’m automatically supposed to fit that description, I’m not sure. But the point is, despite my hesitance to engage on certain aspects of neo-feminism, I am not a sexist. My dislike of the Prime Minister and parts of her position can be brought down to two quite easily definable factors:

1. Despite her extended run as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has never had the majority of public support. In 2010 she was appointed in remarkable fashion, ousting a popularly elected Kevin Rudd at the first showing of poor opinion polls. Even the people who didn’t jump on the bandwagon and help Rudd beat Howard were stunned and felt ripped-off.
   
   
   In the subsequent election, which should have been practically unlosable for the incumbent party, and (if you ask me) would not have even been close had Rudd still been in office, she scraped through by the skin of her teeth. So much so that once again, she wasn’t appointed by the public majority but by three independent MP’s protecting their own regional interests and negotiating terms for themselves. So maybe I threw a bit of personal bias into that last statement but you get the point I’m trying to make here – Julia Gillard, throughout her terms as PM, has never had the majority of public support. If she wins in the next election I’ll quite happily recognise that this point has been negated, but surely it’s existed for so long that its validity has to be accepted.
   
   
   To me this is a more than justifiable reason to be dissatisfied with the person running our country. To others, it is not, as they proclaim the mediocrity of the opposition and TA. I’m not, for one minute, debating that the LNP doesn’t have its own, very wide gamut of problems to deal with. But just because they do doesn’t mean that the point I’m trying to make should be ignored or discarded so easily.
   
   

   2.     The second point of reference for my dissatisfaction with the PM involves the carbon tax. Once again I ask all my left-sided and opinionated friends to just calm the fuck down for a second. I’m not here to debate global warming. My problem with the whole Carbon Tax fiasco is that it was never taken as a mandate into the 2010 campaign, and in that way it revolves around the lie prior to the last election.You’ll tell me to get over it, it’s done and dusted and implemented and the world has continued, and I’ll agree with you. The tax itself matters little in the context of the situation but what does matter to me is the fact it was left off the agenda. Many of the same people who laud the Governments effectiveness on this particular policy were no doubt the same people that objected to the GST back in the Howard era. I know that times are different, but to me this particular issue comes down to honesty. Howard took that divisive bit of legislation to an election, and was willing to go down because of it. He didn’t go down, in case you weren’t aware.

   
   To reverse the decision, promised in the campaign, not to implement a the Carbon Tax so quickly means that it was definitely on the minds of campaigners in the lead-up to the election and while blatant lies are part and parcel of politics the lack of guts to run the campaign on an admittedly divisive issue merely because you were terrified of losing shows the importance of the populous to the actual running of the country, and it is minimal. Once again this can be met with debate, but I need to clarify again I’m not here to argue the Carbon Tax, merely the fact that it was intentionally left off the agenda in the lead-up to an election. Actually, it was brought onto the agenda, and removed with a swift denial that the notion would be contemplated if Gillard was elected to office. It could be attributed to the negotiations surrounding the appointment, with Oakshot, Windsor and Katter, but if such a crucial piece of legislation was on the cards, we should have gone to another election in the first place.

   
   There should have always been a mandate, that’s my issue.

There we have the two reasons I’m dissatisfied with our current Prime Minister. Unfortunately points like these can be blurred in the mire that has emerged since the Misogyny speech. There is plenty to be critical of with this government, and opinionated bell-ends like myself should be able to express our self-important opinions without being called sexist.

What worries me is that, given the success of the whole ‘Misogyny movement’ so to speak, it may play a significant role in the dichotomy that surrounds election campaigns. A vote for the ALP or LNP shouldn’t come down to whether you hate women or not, but it will be one of the enduring stereotypes that will become more and more prominent as the campaign draws near.

To delve into personal opinion, there are far more significant divides in our society that need to be dealt with just as urgently, if not moreso, that sexism and gender equality. I understand the need to deal with the issue, but to me issues like the devolution of multiculturalism in this country, and the class/income divide are just as pressing.

Indigenous Australians, the Homeless, the Poor - they might be men and they might be women, but they’re groups not defined by gender or age, and often not by race. Where is their defence? Do we have to wait until we elect a homeless person or an Aboriginal to run the country before these people get a voice? Let alone a YouTube clip? Julia Gillard was handed power, given the position because of her malleability and marketability – ironically something that most women’s rights advocates probably wouldn’t be too supportive of as the example for equal opportunity.

Tony Abbott has certainly become a joke worthy of much criticism, there’s no denying that. Personally I don’t see how a man with a wife and three daughters can survive on a notion like misogyny, but that’s beside the point. The man has enough issues of his own that this point never really needed to be exploited to the extent it was, but it’s about conveying an image and at the same time, winning votes. It’s all helped develop this feeling that we’re voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’, and that’s not what democracy should be about, it should be about having the courage to stick to your convictions and take them to the people, and to let them decide. It should be about having the integrity to stand up for what you believe in, but instead we watch a tactic-laden soap opera where the only person who never really wins is us.

My reasons for disliking Gillard are plain and simple. They’re not based on some irrational fear of a planet run by women, or any supposed contempt for the advancement of female rights. Instead of letting agenda and discourse turn us against each other on every single point of difference we have, we should be uniting for a true equality that isn’t just based on your gender, age, race or income, but the fact that we’re all in this together. This ‘defending’ the rights of people for the new era has the potential to create a divide that actually helps Australia to move backwards, not forwards. Wait... wasn’t that someone’s election slogan? Ask a refugee...