As if she could help herself, given she will certainly and serially be approached for comment.

Remember Chk Chk Boom’s name? Me neither.

Mind you, the Milky Bar kid, is full of surprises. He looked at his most innocent yesterday I thought. But then I remembered he is a student of Chinese language and culture. It would be very surprising if his chosen sport at Uni weren’t something like a Chinese self defence sport or even a Japanese version like Judo.

Judo which seems to have derived much from Chinese traditions is imbued with a philosphy of non-attack. There are no attack moves, nor resistance to attacks. There is a yielding. Much more than a yielding to them. They are helped along with sleights and twists that cause attackers to fall or put out a shoulder, to fracture an arm, or in extreme cases even to break their necks!

I listened to the puzzled chattering of Fran Kelly this morning with an equally confused Michelle Grattan. Both shaking their heads. Both mentioned some of the things Rudd could have taken credit for, but didn’t! All very strange, they thought.

Is it?

BARRIE CASSIDY: Prime Minister, there was a curious piece in the Sydney Morning Herald recently. A young researcher from Sydney wrote that she had a conversation with you after a function and when you were told that she was doing a PhD, you said this “that is an excuse that all young women are using nowadays to avoid starting a family”. Did you say that?

KEVIN RUDD: Barrie, I have absolutely no recollection of saying anything like that, and you know something, they are not my views. If you’re at an Australia Day reception with hundreds of people around, as I think was the case as far as that discussion was concerned, there’s, you know, conversations going on every way.

I would never say anything like that – it’s not my views. I have exactly the reverse views. I mean, I have been passionate about the role of women in the economy, in business, in society, pursuing their own individual careers. I think whoever this person is has simply got the wrong end of the stick, and…

BARRIE CASSIDY: So is she setting you up? Because she went on to say you used a terse voice and you were not looking in any sense ironic.

KEVIN RUDD: Well, Barrie, I’m sure on any given day the assessment of your capacity for irony and mine may vary depending on who’s listening to you and who’s watching you and watching your facial expressions.

All I’m saying to you is, that is not my view of the world. I can’t understand how someone could have taken that as being my view, given that everything I’ve stood for in my public life is exactly the reverse.

I’ve been criticised for my communications style. Take all that criticism.

http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2010/s2832260.htm

most christian PMs in Australia are moralistic regulators because most are.

and nick yes, as i say, the article does not go far enough, but it does unpack a few aspects about the dominence of chistian debate, ethics and sheer fantasy in what i reckon could be a secular system…god forbid anyone on left these days should be allowed NOT to go to church on sunday…if sg, you reckon ninas a crackpot from her text..i reckon rudd is, from the same text.

enough.

You may have missed that line in the New Matilda article, Eric.

Rather than being “not a stretch” away from your own “expectations”, the article you linked to point-blank disagrees with you.

As I said above, I don’t dispute that Rudd has christian views which may be conservative on some things. But I think given his wife’s career and his policy perspectives, it’s difficult to believe that he thinks women’s “place” is in the home, or that women are exclusively meant to breed. And that article you linked to is a complete crock. It points out that Rudd may have laid claim to being a “christian socialist” and then goes on to suggest that means he believes the policies in some catholic communique on labour rights.

since jo has run away I doubt she’ll be able to tell me what “unsupported characteristics” I have ascribed to Nina, but I can hardly imagine that whatever they were they would be a bigger stretch than the kind of guff in that New Matilda article.

So no, as yet, no evidence that Nina’s interpretation of Rudd’s public comments or position is close to correct, so no basis for any confidence in her interpretation of his private, off-the-cuff comment.

And how is it that my inferences about Nina’s article are ascribing “unsupported characteristics” to her, but accusing Patricia of “continued baiting” of Casey is not doing exactly the same, given her mea culpa at 183?

I suppose I should sign off here, but that New Matilda article does give me further cause to think that a lot of left-wingers are really desperate to ascribe a strong form of conservatism to Rudd that he may not actually be showing in public. This thread is an example of it, as are Nina’s misinterpretations of his public statements. I know a lot of people are disappointed in his work so far but I really think it would be better if some of the critics here and elsewhere took a chill pill, and tried to restrict their disappointment to what he has said, and the policy areas where he has actually failed, without inventing hysterical roman catholic links or false notions about empty-wombed 30-somethings.

i’d give this article a try…altho for me it doesn’t go far enough…but from where it does go it seems to me not a stretch at all to expect that the ruddster will have views, informed by his conservative christianity, about the place of women and the function of the their bodies. as i have stated previously there is plenty of evidence that points to rudds christianity being the basis of his whole social policy platform. his conservative christianity is by no means a private matter.

and with “Most of the 30-somethings there would have had children, for starters, so wouldn’t find the atmosphere hostile as Nina did”..like you were actually there were you? oh no..it was Nina who was there, sorry got confused for a moment.