Bob Brown was quite right to describe the questions in the media about Julia Gillard’s personal choices as “disgusting”.
Ever since Tony Abbott’s dog whistling at the Debate about how he’s a family man, with a wife, kiddies and a mortgage (previewed on Saturday in Perth when he talked about his sisters, his daughters, etc…), the media has happily jumped on the bandwagon, with Gillard facing multiple questions yesterday about her partner, Tim Mathieson, whether she intends to marry, and so on. That was accompanied by offensive stories about her earlobes, pages of parsing her wardrobe, and much much more, as I said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Abbott was accompanied on the campaign trail at a childcare centre by his wife, Margie, on Monday, talking about the joys of babies, and by one of his daughters yesterday (for no apparent reason).
Today, we’ve got Janet Albrechtsen making what Bernard Keane rightly calls a “deeply personal attack” on the Prime Minister. Keane goes on to detail a plethora of similar stories, notably in The Australian.
And on Lateline last night, Leigh Sales described Gillard as “single”. (Message to Sales – people with partners are not “single” just because they are not married.)
All this has one aim, and one aim alone – to suggest that Family Man Tony Abbott deeply understands what it’s like to raise kiddies on Struggle Street (North Shore branch), while Julia Gillard does not, because she has chosen not to have children.
This plays very unhelpfully with the leak alleging that Gillard opposed paid parental leave in Cabinet.
The politics of gender in this campaign are filthy indeed, and the media has been a willing footsoldier in pushing a line the Opposition wants to sink into the public mind, but is unwilling to push directly.
Bob Brown is right.
I guess we could all see this coming a mile off. Which still makes it disgusting of course.
Agreed on that anyway, Fine.
Sometimes I think this country is regressing. The media certainly is.
All we really need now to scrape the bottom of the barrel a bit further is a few stories about Tim and Julia eating babies and how Julia is really having a secret affair with Penny Wong.
It’s obviously nasty, nasty stuff, but it’s also very dangerous territory for the Liberals.
If Labor want to fight dirty against Tony Abbott there are some fairly obvious ways to go about it.
Janet, are you prepared to name names?
No?
Then fuck off.
Bob Brown is well aware of the innuendo campaigns waged against those who don’t fit the mould of the preferred citizen as decreed by the coalition.
Now the same disgusting whispering campaign has been launched against the Prime Minister of Australia, and it’s being dog-whistled up by the same creepy Orwellian supporters of the Opposition.
Good on Bob for speaking out. Many more should assist in disclosing this abominable sludge.
Couldn’t agree more that its absolutely disgusting, but par for the course really if you think about the way the media crucified Cheryl Kernot and Carmen Lawrence in circumstances that would never have occurred if they had been men.
The Oz media has a long history of sexist misogyny – which is why I refuse to read or listen to it most of the time. And I’m a bloke too!!
I don’t think that ultimately this will help Abbott and the LNP though. Its just too blatant an attack, and completely irrelevant.
I don’t think it’s wise for the LNP to do this, for the reason Robert points out. The ALP has a much bigger bag of dirty tricks, and considerably more skill at deploying said tricks.
Having lived through past examples of the treacherous manipulations the right side of politics is capable of, with the willing participation of their Media compatriots,will this election campaign denigrate into yet another example of the will of the Australian (not Murdoch} Public being subverted by rumor and innuendo sometimes deliberate lies.One lives in hope we have progressed to the point that we can see for ourselves.
I would just like to find some way of getting these ‘people’ to stop playing in the muck and grow up!
I have rarely been driven to such irritation by ‘journalists’ that I would like to take a swipe at them at the same schoolyard level – and I resent that greatly.
It would be nice if there were some ‘reporters’ out there in MSM-land who would ‘report’ on what the policies of the various parties actually were instead of journalling small minded viciousness.
*sadly*
Clearly SL has forgotten how the Right kicked the Communist can relentlessly post WWI.
The ALP were the semi-permanent victims of that long-running dirty trick.
But then again, sometimes the Libs were the victims of friendly fire from their inept filthy tricks.
I would like to see Labour refuse to play the dirty game, personally. Not that anything would make me vote for the mad monk, so perhaps I’m not the one to ask. I fear that there really are voters out there who fall for this garbage, so I’ll be disappointed.
Moz @ 12 I’m not sure it’s a matter of voters falling for anything; more a matter of the conservatives giving voice to sentiments that a significant number of people will instinctively endorse. A bit like the Pauline Hanson experience, or John Hewson’s comments about renters a long time ago.
I don’t see, incidentally, that it’s any more objectionable than the snarling contempt expressed on this very blog by a few commenters for Rudd’s religious convictions.
Dogwhistling? By stating the facts?
I am happy to concede that the light-weight media focus on hair, fashion etc is gender bias and condemn them for it – but it is an awfully long bow to say it is dog whistling to represent yourself for who you are. If I was running for a political position the fact that I am married with a loving and supportive family that is my bedrock in any storm would be part of the public picture of me and it would not be dog whistling.
If Gillard doesn’t want to play the Gender Identity politics game then why did she agree to the 12 page spread in Women’s Weekly? Did she think she would appeal to the make readership who only buy it for the articles?
Man, I wish spell check was auto on posting.
make = male
It could equally be said Razor that you haven’t heard the dogwhistle in there. I think it’s there.
Mindy – by that rule – every utterance by anyone is a dogwhistle
Not so Razor. If Tony had been campaigning against Rudd it wouldn’t have made any difference because Rudd has a wife and kids. But Abbott deliberately bringing in his wife and kids to this campaign against Gillard is meant to highlight that Gillard is not married and doesn’t have children and therefore “can’t possibly understand what families go through” as he didn’t quite say at the beginning of the debate. Therefore dogwhistle.
Of course it’s OK for La Guillotine to do a spread for WOMEN’S Weekly, but if The Monk did something for a Men’s mag then that would be sedxist.
Who’s saying that? Tony Abbott and family were in Women’s Weekly not long after he became Opposition leader anyway.
Mindy – that is just ridiculous.
Just because he is runnign against someone who has a different family structure doesn’t mean he can’t display his own.
You are the ones putting your own spin on this – not him.
Are you really saying he should exclude his family from the campaign?
@Razor: “Mindy – by that rule – every utterance by anyone is a dogwhistle”
No, just the ones with a not-so-subtle hidden message that yells “I HAVE A FAMILY, NOT LIKE THAT DELIBERATELY BARREN JULIA”.
The whole point of a dogwhistle is it sounds like a reasonable statement with no hidden message unless you’re the intended recipient, which clearly you aren’t. That doesn’t mean it’s not there. Abbott’s statement about family at the beginning of the debate was noted as a dogwhistle by many people – we’re not all imagining it.
At the press conference Abbott gave yesterday with his daughter, his answer that personal choices should play no role in the campaign was prompted by a question which asked him why Coalition frontbenchers were briefing journos and saying that Gillard’s “childless and unmarried state” was a problem with the electorate, and suggesting she be questioned on this.
Presumably the journalists in question are in a position to know that this campaign is coming straight from the Liberals.
Women’s Weekly does a big spread on EVERY new Prime Minister, and most new Opposition Leaders. It would be a huge talking point if Gillard did NOT do the usual Women’s Weekly puff piece.
So emphasising that he and his wife have raised a family at the beginning of a debate about politics isn’t dogwhistling? Why bring his family into the debate at all?
Mindy @ 19 is quite right of course. There can be no rational reason why Abbott’s wife and daughter have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, other than to contrast his family circumstances with Gillard’s. Memo to Tone and Liberal strategists: you no longer have exclusive ownership of the fair dinkum Aussie family brand. In fact, you haven’t had it for quite some time now.
This campaign is the first time I can recall Abbott’s family being in the public eye so yes, it’s a dogwhistle.
Yes DI (NR) @ 28. Until I saw Abbott’s wife on TV on Monday, I could not have picked her out in a line up. Ditto his daughter.
Is calling Tony Abbott a Mad Monk a dog whistle?
A party political hard head
Is not necessarily heart dead,
As Julia today has clearly shown,
Squashing rumors from sources unknown.
She’s forthright, strong and no fibber,
Stand-out model for any Libber.
Trace her career; and right from the start
You can see that she’s no bleeding heart.
But does it take that much awareness
To know she’s a champion of fairness?
Questions about why she’s not married
Have been ever so lightly parried.
Reminds one of another red head
Who resolutely refused to wed.
You know, that ‘weak and feeble woman’
With ‘heart and stomach of’…..a….human?
Let’s all hope that soon will come the day
To this nation their PM will say,
“In this Lodge, where ‘home’ was meant to be,
Here’s my heart for you, who’ve chosen me.”
No, because directly derogatory nicknames are open mockery, not a plausibly-deniable signal to the ideological cognoscenti.
Razor, you appear to be a city boy so let me explain in case you don’t get this (an astonishing number of people don’t, btw; I am not being insulting): a dog whistle is a special whistle pitched at a frequency human beings can’t hear but dogs can. So it is, by definition, inaudible to the creatures whose ears it was not designed for, but audible to the creatures whose ears it was, and who know they are being summoned when someone blows on it. The invidiousness of dog-whistling in the political context is, as Tigtog points out, that it is plausibly deniable. As in ‘What are you talking about, I can’t hear a thing.’
Abbott running his family as campaign aids was entirely predictable against the PM and her partner who I saw described in the Oz today as her “live in boyfriend”. Australia is a deeply socially conservative country which fact appears to have a=escaped the notice of the ALP group who promoted Gillard to PM. This is stock standard Liberal campaigning. Why the outrage? What did people expect? A fair go? Ha. I remember the press campaign against Whitlam after the sacking. Things haven’t changed and won’t until Labor develops a capacity to lead cultural change. Weirdly they didn’t run with progressive policies so they are stuck as faux conservatives while the real deal, Abbott and the Libs, get on with being themselves.
Razor, it’s far more subtle than that. Refer akn, 34.
Really? Compared to what?
Can’t agree akn. If you look at social science evidence Australians are not conservative on life choices and relationships. Social attitudes have bugger all to do with politics.
For absolute clarity, dogwhistles were/are sold basically on the principle of “your dog hears it, your neighbours don’t“.
The whole point is getting the excitable to hear your message while not disturbing the placid.
http://images.quickblogcast.com/115671-107959/dogwhistle_on_Card_USA_a.jpg
Mark @37, so how do you explain One Nation?
Mark: I can see that social research would show that but I’m wondering how we can account for the gap between those results and long periods of reactionary government in Australia? If the nation is ‘progressive’,by which I properly mean (small l) liberal, why no push for a bill of human rights? And how to explain the electoral support for One Nation? I’m arguing an ‘on balance’ position. Maybe it is the case that people surveyed are less likely to give voice to socially reactionary attitudes out of a sense of shame but happily back the coalition in the secret ballot?
Exactly – I mean, why aren’t they in the kitchen tending the fruit bowl? AND wearing shoes.
I call shenanigans.
PC, that’s a breathtaking question you ask of akn.
Ok, oz might be totally radical compared to many places, but just because we haven’t completed the march down the road to fascism, just yet, doesn’t mean akn’s propostion that the country is conservative, at least in huge chunks, is innacurate.
I should think that the problem the thread robustly and correctly attacks is evidenced in the sort of putrid, offensive rubbish proliferated by Laurie Hoax, the Albrechtsen, Sales etc, highlighted through the thread?
Equally, I ought to mention the extraordinary phenomenom of Don Dunstan in SA as an example of Australians not giving a rat’s ass about personal sexuality. I’m just noodling around the idea that the Rodent years and neoliberalism in full global glory may have spooked Australians into wanting the security of orthodox appearances. Dunno. It might be that the meeja campaign against the PM’s private life will provide some traction. I hope not but don’t feel optimistic at the moment.
PC: there is no shining example of a totally, programatically progressive nation state. The Swedes are good on gender in many ways but deeply conservative around the work ethic and drug use, for example. The USA is liberal individualist but has the death penalty. In the UK you can live any way you want if you have the money but watch out if you are ‘different’ and on the streets in the rust belt cities. I could go on.
My point, however, as Paul mentions, is that the sort of campaign against the PM’s personal life wouldn’t get any air time at all if it didn’t resonate with big chunks of the electorate. we have changed, but perhaps not as much as we think. I note, for example, that the leadership of the RSL no longer makes any sort of public pronouncements about social policy as it used to in the 70′s and 80′s. That WWII veteran generation is no longer in positions of power but they sure do vote.
#37; Mark, all is relative (conservatism)
If Australia is such a paradise of dissent; such a hothouse incubator for progressive ideas, why the poor press coverage and the orchestrated campaign against Gillard?
Why do the seemingly illiterate peasantry still have their crown jewels in a knot over folks personal lives, refugees or the sort of basic economic analyis provided by Mr. Denmore in his last post.
ok conservatism is not necessarily reaction and its certainly true that MSM arelikely attempting to dumb down a democracy, but I remain perplexed at what seem very peculiar attacks of the sort invoked against akn.
Can someone (without the sarcasm) develop this notion that akn has it wrong, in more fleshed out form for the rest of us?
I think Australians, whoever they are, are a bunch of hedonistic dumbasses. Thinking about tomorrow’s all too hard. We’re going to waste our natural and human capital like the Americans, ruled over by an unscrupulous elite, which has no sense of identity with the country or its people. Prepared to sell everything to the highest bidder.
It’s a damn shame that the world is looking to the developed nations for leadership in things like climate change or international finance and they get sentimentality and nostalgia. What’s coming after Bush, Blair and Howard? Obama, Cameron and Abbott? Guillard? What a bunch of lightweight nobodies.
I can’t believe that Australians are sentimentalising over the nuclear family and meat and 3 veg. Pathetic.
akn, I couldn’t agree more that the mix of liberal and illiberal is different everywhere you look. So thanks for the serious answer to what was, in fact, a serious question. I’m not sarcastic, I’m just drawn that way.
@40 – My point, akn, is that there is no necessary link between holding socially liberal attitudes on questions to do with individual life choices and support for progressive politics. That is to say, all the surveys I’ve seen, including the authoritative Survey of Social Attitudes, show very large majorities supporting a woman’s right to choose, the right of people to choose not to marry or have children, etc.
None of this implies anything like support for a bill of rights, which is a politicisation of a socially liberal position. Social attitudes, which have become much more liberal over recent decades, more likely build upon a pre-existing sentiment that people’s sex lives, choice of partner, etc, etc, are their own business – in other words are private matters. To take the implications of that into the political realm is to make them public matters, which is not necessarily on most people’s minds.
I don’t see any particular relevance to One Nation here. I don’t recall any ON rhetoric about homosexuality, or family values, or whatever. Hanson was divorced herself, I think. Their point of insertion into public debate was on a separate set of social fractures.
Further, I doubt that most people’s voting intention is shaped by questions of personal life choices.
Where this stuff becomes important politically is among two different constituencies:
(a) the small socially conservative minority, many religious, and quite a number of whom were Kevin Rudd voters;
(b) the much larger group of people who might be inclined to agree with an argument that those without children don’t understand the lived experience of “struggling families” – this goes more to perceptions of elites, being “out of touch”, lacking compassion or being cold, etc.
Both are gendered positions in their own way, but not explicitly in the minds of the voters who hold them.
Mr and Mrs Combet must be rubbing their hands together. The tougher time La Guillotine has, the closer their time in the sun comes.
Could it not be that Julias marital status speaks positively to a larger group of the population than many people imagine? Dont forget that the fastest growing segment of the population are single person households. There are a lot of us who are not married and dont have children. I know it really pisses me off when all politicians seem to aim everything at the so called “families”and bugger everyone else.
OK. I think that’s right. I’ve always tended to mistake the strong liberal individualism of Australia for support for socially progressive politics. There is however a gap between wanting the right to one’s own choices in the private sphere and a willingness to extend the protection of the state to those whose individual life choices aren’t recognised as legitimate in some way or another, ie, to others. This suggests to me the weakness of the social in Australian sociality. I do think that we’ve gone backwards in terms of the possibility of forming cohesive social programs around progressive ideals compared to even 20 years ago. It is a peculiar place. Large numbers of people wanting to say sorry for the stolen generations and apparent electoral support for the NT ‘intervention’.
Katz: hadn’t thought of that but probably prescient. I’ll remember you said it first.
@51 – Yep, agree.
In part this is because socially liberal forces and campaigns have always been on the fringe of mainstream Australian electoral politics. The ‘civil liberties’ strand within the ALP has never been all that strong, being largely restricted to some states and often to lawyers within the parliamentary ranks. It probably peaked in the 70s and 80s, but it’s receded now, and not just recently – Mark Latham’s social authoritarianism was a significant marker along the way.
And John Howard more or less killed off small l Liberalism within the Coalition way back in the late 80s.
Well, if all this is about is “human nature”, does this invalidate the proposition that this election is sexist rather than just an expression of conventional human behaviour, or are some here saying sexism is a reality as in seemingly immutable human nature, rather than a correctible expression of unthought through prejudices derived of conservatism?
Paul, good point but…gulp. I’ll try to unpack that for my own purposes: the media attack on the PM’s personal choices includes an attack on her particular female subjectivity, ie, that she is cvhildless and unmarried but in a stable partnership by choice both of which choices appear to be consequences of an overriding choice to follow a career in politics. The rat arsed media, in attacking her is delegitimising the particular range of choices thatshe has made and these choices are not unusual for women in Australia today. So the reptiles are in fact attacking a specific path of both public and private choices made by many women. In so doing the skunks are effectively shoring up an alternative model of female subjectivity (Mr and Mrs T, Mr and Mrs Rudd and, as Katz notes, Mr and Mrs Combet). These are presumably conservative models of female subjectivity in so far as they conform to finding a balance between parner, children and career and they are legitimised by some form of social sanction (marriage).
Perhaps then we are not dealing with sexism so much as a socially conformist model of female subjectivity. It probably is arguable that it is sexist, or discriminatory, in that this project disrespects some other choices like the PM’s.
As you note, though, it would be not disputed on the left thsat sexism is a “correctible expression of unthought through prejudices derived of conservatism” (read patriarchy for conservatism although there is a strong convergance between the two). If would be easier to defend the PM on this matter, to attack the sexist nature of the meeja project, if it could be shown with certainty that the filth of the capitalist media, sorry, the journalists, were sexist rather than merely conservative about the sorts of private values they think that citizens in the public sphere ought to exhibit.
Well i dont know what you guys are seeing, but the Tony Abbott ‘family man’ has been an integral part of his shtick as long as i’ve been watching him.
I remember ages ago a 60 minutes profile, possibly when he took the leaders job, that showed him mucking around the backyard pool with his daughters and an interview with his wife who said she wished he wouldnt wear those speedos in public. At that point he was facing family man Rudd.
A little further back, I poignantly remember his whole Adopted Son saga, the elation, and the subsequent devastation when the reality was very publicly revealed.
And the consensus, amongst every woman i have ever spoken to, from the most avid green to conservative xian, is that he acted with as much grace and dignity in that situation as anyone in his position could be expected to.
I think its disingenuous to claim that he is using his family in an attempt to dog whistle at the electorate now that he is facing Gillard, any more than one could claim Gillard is trying to secretly project an alliance with progressive defacto couples with her personal life choices.
They are what they are. Is it so hard to just accept?
@55 –
akn, it takes two to tango. As Gillard said yesterday, she doesn’t make choices about her relationship alone. Female/male couples who choose not to have children or to get married typically make those choices together.
@55 –
Combet is not married, and has a new partner, having separated from his previous partner with whom he has children and shares parenting of a stepchild.
Okay, unpacking a bit.
Trotting them out on the campaign trail is one thing. I don’t actually mind that, at least until the meeja start saying to Gillard “Where’s Tim then, nudge nudge wink wink.” Which they have begun to do. Okay, not Abbott’s fault. Maybe. Let’s be generous and say he didn’t do it to point up his ‘family man’ status, he did it because he thought it would help his perceived ‘problem with women’ to show the world that his wife was a woman and so were his daughters. Imagine.
HOWEVER. Beginning his spiel in the so-called “debate” by saying that he and Mrs Tones know what it’s like to have a family, blah blah, was about as dog-whistle as it gets. Why bang on about such things, if not to draw a contrast with Gillard?
And the worst part was he said something like ‘We know what it’s like to have a big mortgage … and pay school fees.’ Oh sure, like a $700,000+ mortgage, and upper-crust private-school fees. Experience which I would have said puts them way beyond the experience of most ordinary strayyans. I find it offensive that he’s so out of touch he wouldn’t even realise that his income isn’t normal, much less try to use it as a point of identification with the masses and a point of difference from Gillard.
He may be aware that this society and its gender biases, especially in professional and political life, make it impossible for a woman to have both an unimpeded career trajectory and children, at least not a woman of Gillard’s generation and probably no woman at all, in which case he is being a hypocrite. Or he may be unaware of that fact, in which case he’s just a sexist fool.
Thanks for clarificaions. So, the election is gendered (duh) and does engage with issues around particular private choices and how they are perecieved by the elctorate but gender hasn’t been played as a trump card as yet(?)
Bob Brown speaks from personal experience, considering the spiteful and equally disgusting personal attacks that have been made on him in the past!
However, I think these nasty, creepy personal attacks on Gillard’s marital and maternal staus, her earlobes (ffs) and her clothes could turn out to be an own goal by the MSM and their clients the Smuggles Set.
This sort of stuff is very off-putting for most people and I would say most women will be extremely pissed off at the school bully sexist bile being directed at her.
I’d say that couples happily living in de facto relationships will also be less than pleased at having their living arrangements subjected to snide sniping by the likes of Albrechtson and other media running dogs.
@8
What a tiresome comment. Right-leaners will always struggle with this kind of stuff. Planet is out and out disgusting but the comments like that are attempts to struggle up from the canvas and put up some kind of a fight. The fact is that most, if not all, of the right wing commentators are bat crazy. Why do our major media outlets publish these people? I’m sure there’s some people living on the streets who have interesting ideas about how the world works. Why not give them a column? It’s probably be more enlightening.
Combet is cohabiting with another MP, I believe. So, Razor, you’re going to need a better example of an ambitious Labor pollie living the traditional family life, who will benefit from the backlash against the PM living in sin.
Bill Shorten? Nope. He left his wife to shack up with the Governor General’s daughter.
Anyway, to mix a metaphor, this dog whistle won’t hunt. The Liberals are completely out of touch on this one. They should check the stats not just on surveys of social attitudes, but how Australians actually live.* It’s not 1962 any more.
Tone the North Shore family man will go down a treat with the “base”. Well, whoopee.
* Including their deputy leader, Julie Bushop, whose domestic arrangements are the same as those of PM Ranga.
@59 –
I don’t recall Therese Rein or her and KRudd’s kids or Janette Howard and the Howard offspring popping up at photo ops during the 2007 election campaign.
Abbott is most likely shoring up his position with female voters by trotting out his wife and daughters. To call this “dog whistling” is a joke. Take a chill pill.
#65, I don’t know who your comment is addressed to but it’s pretty much exactly what I said in the first paragraph of #59, except for the chill pill part. Trotting out his wife and daughters on the campaign trail, while unnecessary, is a separate and lesser thing from banging on about knowing what it’s like to raise a family in the context of a debate between potential Prime Ministers, framed by the camera and the setup as a formal comparison of the two, which does qualify as dog-whistling IMO. They’re separate issues and shouldn’t be conflated.
@66 – I don’t know if I’m conflating them, Dr Cat, but it seems to me that the two campaign appearances in successive days after the debate (and the blather about how many women he knows the day before) shows it’s all meant to fit together as one piece of political communication.
I’d repeat that I don’t recall in 2007 Therese Rein or Janette Howard accompanying their spouses at policy announcements, let alone either of their daughters.
Hmmm. No different really from the dishonest left campaign to portray Abbott as having a problem with women. The accusations on this directed towards Abbott have been rabid and hysterical despite no evidence of any such views.
And there is some truth in Gillard being unable to relate to the realities of raising kids. This should not prevent her from being in politics but may render her less expert on the subject than anyone who has been through the experience.
I cant imagine why anyone would think the Australian media is compromised.
@68 – The job of the PM is not to raise kids, but to formulate policy to allow people to do so and to provide equal opportunities for those kids, Spana. I don’t recall that Amanda Vanstone or Julie Bishop were pilloried for having no kids when they were Education Ministers in the Howard government.
Kim – if that is for me – I am well aware that the new Mrs Combet is the Member for Fremantle.
How they juggle time between Canberra, their trans-continental electorates and adult time must be a masterpiece of scheduling.
As for calling the Member for Fremantle Mrs Combet – if you want the rights, thenyou get the responsibilities, too. Therefore ‘Mrs’ it is.
‘Trotting them out’?? Sorry, but this suggests a contemptuous attitude to Abbott’s family that is every bit as objectionable as dog whistling about Gillard. It implies an oppressed wife and children who are dominated by their lord and master, unlike the superior liberated relationships in progressive families.
If memory serves me right, one of his daughters gave him a bit of a public serve a while ago about something or other, suggesting they do have minds of their own.
@ 59 ‘… this society and its gender biases, especially in professional and political life, make it impossible for a woman to have both an unimpeded career trajectory and children …’
Oh please. This is frabjous self-pitying hyperbole of the most egregious kind.
Oh bullshit. This is the simple truth, and if you think it’s not then you’re walking around with your eyes shut. Show me a woman over 45 with more than one kid and a history of uninterrupted professional progress, and I’ll show you a woman with a very unusual partner or an inherited fortune, or both.
I’m sure you’re right, Kim, whatever Ken Lovell and Spana think. I thought Salient and someone else seemed to be mixing up the two things.
Razor said
Do you know how I know you don’t have kids? lol
Politicians are always on shifty ground when they pull this stuff – from Ted Haggard to Bob Hawke, the narcissistic personality will always out.
Abbott always struck me as a bloke trying just a bit too hard to project that family image.
Ken @ 74, I went to see my GP today, a woman with a family. She asked me about politics, I picked up a few scripts and she bulk-billed me.
She reckons she knows women who had families and became specialists. Most don’t have a marriage anymore. That was her phrase. She says you have to make a choice.
I said, men don’t usually pull their weight. She says, damn right, or words to that effect.
PC @ 75 of course women suffer interruptions to their careers when they have children. But to describe this biological inevitability as the consequence of ‘gender bias’ and ‘sexism’ is not only inaccurate, it actually makes a constructive response more difficult because it antagonises half the population.
And what it has to do with the topic of the post is beyond me, unless we are going to use every event in the campaign as an excuse to resurrect grand sociological meta-narrative arguments.
@Razor,
10 points for incoherence. Ms Parke and Mr Combet are not married, I’m not sure what rights you are talking about and certainly cannot recall any “responsibilities” that would require a woman to change her surname to that of a man she was married to, let alone one that she wasn’t.
Aaw c’mon Brian, now you’re talking about broken marriages. I mean are we going to turn the thread into a general discussion of the problems facing women in our society? Why? Is that somehow supposed to be a reason to vote Labor?
How very delicate and pearl-clutching half of the population must be. Suck it up.
I did nothing of the kind. The biological inevitability is actually having the baby. There is no biological inevitability about being the one who stays home to look after and bring up the baby. The social norms that put pressure on women to do that are set and reinforced by gender bias and sexism (though I don’t believe I’ve used the latter word in this thread, but by all means correct me if I’m wrong). I am sorry if these terms offend your delicate sensibilities, but let us call things by their names.
Then perhaps you should try harder to follow the argument. The topic of the post, if you’d care to have a look at it, contains the phrase ‘gender campaign against Gillard’. Part of said campaign, as most of this thread has been discussing, is Abbott’s constant drawing attention to the fact that he has a family and Gillard does not. I was making the (I should have thought) directly pertinent point that it’s very easy to be a family person and a politician if you can gallop round the country promoting your book at the taxpayers’ expense or spend all day in Parliament while the little woman is at home looking after the kids.
Do you really believe that the campaign (or anything else in public life) exists independently of sociological meta-narratives? Or is it only a ‘sociological meta-narrative’ when it’s something you don’t like?
Ken, I’m just commenting on what I thought was a pretty silly remark, with due respect.
One interesting aspect is that feminists have been attempting to challenge these social norms for at least 40 years (two generations) without signal success.
And the Liberal Noise Machine appears to be well acquainted with that fact.
Now it appears that the gender gap that had favoured Gillard is now narrowing.
This fact must be further bad news for challengers of gendered social norms.
I am less gloomy than that, Katz. There are a lot more family-friendly workplaces than there used to be, which is as much good news for fathers as for mothers. And who would ever have thought that the conservative side of politics would be offering paid parental leave? Indeed, who would have thought that we’d ever see it officially referred to as ‘parental leave’, rather than ‘maternity leave’, at all?
Not necessarily. As long as she goes on getting more approval from women than from men, we’ll have to listen to the tiresome ‘Oh well, women only like her because she’s a woman’ line, which I’m quite looking forward to not hearing any more.
“Family Man Tony Abbott deeply understands what it’s like to raise kiddies on Struggle Street”
“Three daughters, no sons! He had it easy”, scoffs middle Australia.
I don’t think his “I have a family” routine is going to do her much harm.
Would Julia Gillard be considered a more suitable Prime Minister if she had young/teenage children? The partisan opinion columns would be out in force to whistle her up as a neglectful mother.
Her not having children is a political virtue; even more so, the widely held belief that she won’t.
Childlessness, or kids all grown up and moved out, are the only two viable options for prospective female PMs in this country.
Prospective male PMs will never have that problem.
I totally agree with this article. I wrote something similar on my own blog and thought “am I the only one who thinks that this reeks of the lowest-of-the-low?”
I think it is very interesting that in the last 2-3 days the blatantly right-wing media has been filled with stories of Gillard’s “situation” (no kids, unmarried) while Abbott has been portrayed as a “family man” with his wife and daughter joining the campaign.
And now, to just add to this “anti-family” image that is being conjured up, are untrue claims that Gillard has “opposed” FAMILY-oriented schemes…..while Abbott is still happily smiling up from the papers with his daughter, and his party is trumpeting their conservative version of “family values”.
These “leaks” and media focus on Gillard’s personal life are too much to ignore.
It’s perfect timing for the Liberal party isn’t it?
Childlessness, or kids all grown up and moved out, are the only two viable options for prospective female PMs in this country.
There’s been a resurgence of support for this course of action and, it seems to me, a false belief that this advances feminism. Giving up the idea of family because you want a job with a degree of difficulty and reward isn’t a 21st century solution – women did that in the 19th and 20th.
Being equally as likely as John Howard and Tony Abbott to have kids and be in the top job: that will be equality.
(I’m not referring to childfree by choice, which is a completely rational choice and a separate issue. Only people who do have the desire for having children.)
I second what Pav says about workplaces inching towards more child-friendliness with more Dads participating in the school pickup and childrens’ sick days, and I find it very heartening.
The first sentence of that was a quote from NIck in the previous comment. It seems even the em tags don’t work any more in wordpress.
Nevertheless, Gillard’s advisors still recommend that she play the glamour game by means of the AWW spread.
Australie vaut bien une make-over.
@Helen, that first sentence shows up in italics for me.
@Katz, the AWW spread is tricky – on the one hand they always profile new leaders, but they don’t glamorise the men as much when they do. So should they treat Gillard just like they treat all the other women they profile, or just like the other (male) politicians?
Make-over is male, Katz. C’est un male-over.*
Ahem. As you were. I think the topic was earlobes…or something.
*DYSWIDT
I perceive some underestimate the “Brady Bunch” aspect with Abbott’s campaign.
It’s a nasty tactic for Labor and its own planners and spinners will be sending forth counter-images as well as saturating the media with stuff of their own trying to reinforce perceptions of Abbott’s weaknesses, as with some of the less flattering aspects of his life also.
Perhaps he shouldn’t be PM because he hasn’t been able to perform or experience a number of female functions, thus doesn’t understand what it’s like for half the population. As someone above also said, it’s possible for Gillard to empathise with (or envy) men’s problems and likewise, Abbott; as to women.
Altho, maybe the gender card might have a double edge if the Tories overplay it.
Think. It’s a very powerful image, this Partridge family thing Abbott does, the power is “excluding”, specifically Gillard.
‘How very delicate and pearl-clutching half of the population must be. Suck it up.’
Well I guess PC it depends if you want to change the current situation with constructive collective action, or revel in your sense of victimhood by doing your best to be foster a sense of gender conflict.
‘… sexism (though I don’t believe I’ve used the latter word in this thread, but by all means correct me if I’m wrong).’
Happy to oblige. You used the word ‘sexist’ @ 59. Your actual claim was that if someone was unaware of gender bias etc (which is a state of being uninformed), that makes them a ‘sexist fool’. It’s a claim that is both illogical and pointlessly derogatory. If someone doesn’t know that indigenous people suffer extensive disadvantage in Australia, does that make them a ‘racist idiot’? Of course not.
Yes Katz, 90, the permutations within this media construct or simulacra involving the West Wing version of Australian politics are endless.
Maybe we could sheet some blame home – in the broadest sense- to those who decided they would jump into bed with a hostile media to further their own ambitions, and starting leaking against him from inside.
They walked down to the crossroads.
Did anyone in that ALP putsch-group think their Fasutian pact would end with the delivery with Rudd’s mortal soul?
Fools.
That would be every Labor leader in recent memory and their factional supporters. I reject the implication that Gillard is only getting what she deserves. Fark.
Su @ 98 I don’t read anyone saying Gillard is getting what she deserves. The argument is that the tone of the public discussion was eminently predictable and ought to have been taken into account by those who engineered the leadership change and the rush election. Indeed I predicted it here the day after the coup. While it’s fair enough to call the tactics for what they are, it’s a bit rich to pretend they are a surprise.
No one said that, Su. Im blaming – if youd like it very explicit – the plotters who undermined Rudd via sleazy media leaks.
Oh …look whats happening now! Blowback time.
My view: Now’s the perfect time for the ALP to do a Howard 2004 “who do you trust?” moment and turn a negative into a positive: run an ad on parental leave and pension increases, noted that Abbott et al had 11 years and never did either.
Get on the front foot, flip the media the bird, stop being such nervous nellies.
Ken @99 Noone here is surprised (as if), quite a few are aggrieved that these tactics are employed against women. There is nothing inevitable about sexism. Just as it does not follow that because Rudd used the media to facilitate his rise that he should be subjected to a an election campaign based on, to take the closest parallel I can think of, his heart health, it doesn’t follow that Gillard should be the subject of gendered smears and insults.
Su you seem to be confusing ‘is’ and ‘ought’. Again, I don’t read anyone here saying Gillard ‘should be the subject of gendered smears and insults’. But some of us are pointing out it’s inevitable she will be. You are commenting on social ethics and values; others are discussing politics. Maybe they should be the same thing but they are not, and in the course of a thread about a contemporary election campaign it’s more useful to deal with the world as it is and not as it ought to be.
No I am saying that the linking of media and Lib sexism to the manner of her rise is itself sexist. If Rudd had resigned of his own volition she would have faced the same kind of campaign from the Libs who having been warming up to this for ages anyway. Brandis primed the idea that a woman without children cannot make decisions about their education ages ago, Heffernan called her wilfully barren etc etc.
Can I ask why some people seem so insistently and incessantly exercised of this dastardly coup against the Little Battler.
Geez, its ancient history- get over it and focus on now and the examination of the type of politics raised in this thread, involving its confected world and clashes of rival formations battling for control of the spoils of defeat, resorting to sophisticated media techniques to well nigh on brainwash people to cheat them later, by replacing the sense of legitimate issues and their consideration with media fantasies involving appearances over substance, that make voters amenable to complicity with that which is left conveniently left unexplained, to be sprung after polling day.
The era, tho prosperous, is not good for our politics.
No, I disagree, Ken. There needs to be a “calling out”, to use a USism, of such things. We’ll never “move forward” otherwise.
I’ll now go over to the condemnation thread to condemn the neologisms that my head seems to be stuffed with after the reading/listening I’ve done over the last month!
Trying to be as clear as possible: If an election campaign had featured media and Lib sloganeering about “Rudd’s ticker” and sly hints and asides about his fitness for the job based on his “heart” then I doubt anyone would have said that this was a forseeable consequence of his own use of the media to destabilize Beazley. They would have rightly said it was a consequence of the depths to which the media and Libs were prepared to sink in order return a Lib government.
Here’s a perfumed example of the “unbiased”, “well researched” journalism from news.com today. And By perfumed, I mean stinking ordure. Fairfax is almost plumbing the same depths, just with a bit more subtlety for the AB advertising targets.
PC, with respect, i’m just saying its a bit rich to say Abbott is constructing a ‘family man’ persona that doesnt really exist in order to dog whistle the electorate. Its a given, and has its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. He is also a dorky traditionalist conservative, i dont think he is constructing that either and i dare say that often works against him.
Of course there is a broader gender analysis that can be unpacked by the media’s comparision of both leaders personal circumstances, some obviously driven by sexism and political agenda. However, using this same measure, could we make similar claims that Julia is ‘dog whistling’ to ambitious childless women, or, by appearing on Womens Weekly to suburban women who fantasize about glamour makeovers, or given Australia has a largely secular constituency, to people who buy books by Richard Dawkins?
AS for Julia’s childlessness…i think most women who have ever tried to do the ‘juggle’ unstinctively understand why a high powered career isn’t particularly compatible with parenting. (Ever wondered why Natasha Stott Despojer (sic?) has disappeared off the radar for a bit?)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/republic-vote-will-happen-in-time-g-g/story-e6frg6nf-1111116057304
As a prominent feminist, she campaigned against plans to restrict abortion laws in Canberra in the 1990s and in favour of affirmative action. But she’s not sure if women can always combine a successful career with motherhood.
“The young women around me want the same things in their futures that I wanted when I was 20,” she once explained during her tenure as head of the Women’s College at the University of Sydney.
“When I embarked on this course in my early twenties – work, babies, husband – I had no doubt that I would be able to have it all,” she said in 1998.
“Thirty years later, I know that you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at the same time. I feel pangs in my heart when younger women teetering along the work-family tightrope speak of their perpetual tiredness, their frustrations at work, their sense of being pulled in a thousand directions and their endless guilt … I often find myself telling ambitious, clever thirty-somethings that they can’t hold down a full-time, demanding, professional role, have a second child and finish their MBA this year, as well as maintain all the other things that matter to them in their life.
“I tell them not to be in a rush, to seize the day and seize the happiness of motherhood or concentrate on getting the promotion. But not both.”
Her Excellency Quentin Bryce
Paul W, that is brilliant. *clapclapclap*
Ken, I don’t know where you get this ‘self-pity’ and ‘victimhood’ schtick from — the 1970s, possibly, and yes I remember them too — but pour moi I am not now nor have I ever claimed to be either, nor have I ever claimed women in general to be either. I’m not a victim of this crap: I’m an enemy of it. And as Helen says at #105, it needs to be called out. (And called out and called out and called out, apparently.) If you check out the Feminist Bingo card I’m sure you’ll find your line about how women should play nice somewhere on it.
As for getting half the population offside, a quick glance through this thread should confirm for you, however much you may want it not to, that most of the blokes here do actually get it. You, at least in this forum, are in a fairly small minority.
As for your ‘indigenous’ analogy, never mind the bad fit of a small, badly disadvantaged minority most of whom are mainly invisible to white Australians being compared to the situation of safely housed, well-nourished, well-educated women (who make up 51% of the population and seem to be everywhere one turns, no matter how harrowing you may find that): the ordinary schmo in the street could be excused (just) for not knowing either that indigenous people are disadvantaged or that political power is not a level playing field gender-wise, but a man who aspires to be Prime Minister of Australia, in 2010, cannot be thus excused.
Nor do I know understand you can possibly think the gendered history of the workplace can be a separate issue from the topic of the post.
‘The world as it is’ is what has produced the situation we have, up to and including the style and content of party strategy and media responses, both of which are playing up the gender angle. Which is, let me repeat, the topic of the post.
Sorry, SC, comments crossed. We can probably agree to disagree, can’t we, about the extent to which Abbott is trying to favourably contrast himself with Gillard re family? Especially since I haven’t argued and I don’t think anyone else has that the ‘family man’ persona is actually a sham; it’s obviously real.
The fact that women can’t ‘have it all’ is precisely what I’ve been saying, and I’ve never believed that we could — although if you look at Quentin Bryce’s CV you’ll see that she somehow seems to have done so. But then, she is a very exceptional woman.
Actually i’ve met her a few times, and worse still, she appears to do it all in killer designer heels.
Actually PC, looking back you i think it was comments @26 @27 @28 @29 that impied Abbott was only bringing his family in as a counterpoint to JG.
esp this one: ” David Irving (no relation) says:
July 28, 2010 at 5:05 pm
This campaign is the first time I can recall Abbott’s family being in the public eye so yes, it’s a dogwhistle.”
Apologies that it was you i took it up with
Of course Albrectstatistician is a wrong’un, but has anyone noted what the very reasonable Susie O’Brien wrote in Tuesday’s Herald Sun? Now this, this is how a very reasonable columnist makes a baseless attack upon Julia Gillard, http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/gillard-drives-a-gender-war/story-e6frfhqf-1225897175312:
The ’1970s feminist thinking’ Gillard is guilty of is a quite anodyne speech the PM made on behalf of Emily’s List a couple of years ago. Not exactly “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
(For my mind this is a little too much like the anxious white Americans who were upset by Justice Sonia Sotormayor declaring that maybe a wise Latina woman could see things a little differently than a typical WASP. Only I don’t remember any Hispanics experiencing any anxiety on behalf of said anxious white Americans over ‘wise Latina’.)
I hope this is food for thought for those who say they want to see more women in parliament regardless of what party they’re elected for. It means finding common cause with centre-Right females like O’Brien who celebrate small ‘l’ Liberal manhood and get their kicks implying Gillard is somehow no more representative of polite society than Bronwyn Bishop is.
PC my analogy about indigenous people was a reference to your reasoning and not a comparison of them to women, as any fair reading of my comment would make clear, but you seem wilfully determined to misrepresent my arguments so I’ll leave it be.
I notice BTW that nobody has responded to my comment @ 73. It appears that dog-whistling and stereotyping are perfectly OK as long as conservatives are the subjects.
@Spana says: “No different really from the dishonest left campaign to portray Abbott as having a problem with women. The accusations on this directed towards Abbott have been rabid and hysterical despite no evidence of any such views.”
Yeah, we of the dishonest left totally made up Abbott’s views on abortion, his claim that Australian women would get access to RU486 over his dead body, his suggestions that women should keep their legs crossed because their “ultimate gift” should be saved for their husband on their wedding night, his comments about women doing the ironing… OH WAIT, NO WE DIDN’T.
Quoth PC:
SC, This is another point about political dog-whistles – they generally are real opinions/attitudes being expressed, there’s nothing fake about them, it’s just that they are not being expressed as an open challenge. The question is why are they not being expressed as an open challenge to one’s political opponent, why these opinions and attitudes are pitched as subtextual semiotics that can be oh-so-plausibly denied rather than honestly made as at least Heffernan did with his “deliberately barren” attack.
The answer is, of course, that dog whistles are used because they effectively do two things – (1) they show “those with ears to hear” that the candidate shares their worldview, yet (2) they don’t alienate those who don’t perceive the dog whistle. Abbott never has to actually come out and say that his traditionalist views on family roles mean that he doesn’t empathise with voters who don’t share those views, but his fellow traditionalists hear it loud and clear every time he highlights his “family man” image, with the enormous bonus of no controversial soundbites to defend against the dreaded “PC brigade”.
This is why politicians love the dog whistle. It’s also why when they use it they are probably at their most honest, yet with never an accountable statement ever being made.
Actually, I thought most of the coverage from the Left regarding the “Abbott’s women problem” trope was pointing out that women have a problem with Abbott, not vice versa.
It doesn’t matter how many women Abbott knows/likes/loves in his personal life when his public policies on the record, as listed by Rebekka, have been so repeatedly unfriendly to the interests of so many women who are not part of his personal life.
He’s also got a history of making patronising and offensive comments regarding women. Didn’t he call Julie Bishop a ‘good girl’ at one stage. There have been others.
Abbott may not have a problem with women, but women certainly have a problem with him. We get like that when a man tells us that we can’t access safe abortion, that our virginity is a gift and should only be given to our husbands, and his general attitudes from the 1950′s.
Ken Lovell speaks with the voice of male privilege when he states that discussing the structural impediments that women face is wallowing in victimhood. Obviously women should STFU.
I’ll follow up on your comment at 71. This thread is discussing the Lib’s dog whistle re Gillard’s childlessness, not the attitude of LP commenters toward it. Your analogy doesn’t hold.
Has Labor done any comparable dog whistle about Abbott’s religiousity. Not that I’ve seen.
Meanwhile Lefty E and Ken imply Gillard is just getting what she deserves. No she isn’t. There isn’t any cause and effect. No matter how Gillard got the PMship, she would have faced this nasty smear campaign. All because you don’t like her, or the way she came to power, doesn’t excuse it.
Of all the Zombie Ideas (Hat tip to John Quiggin) floating around in the media, Having It All is one of the most irritating.
Men with families and heavy-duty careers = perfectly admirable. (e.g., Abbott, Tony.)
Women with families and heavy-duty careers = “having it all”. (And of course, the connotation is “selfish” rather than “contributing / hard working”).
“Having it all” is a cliche flipped out by various MSM writers to deflect any discussion of how the world of work and childrearing could be better carved up between men and women. Of course, that might mean that fewer men could devote their time to Getting Ahead while still having a family PLUS almost unlimited opportunities for bike riding, marathoning and other manly pursuits. I don’t notice anyone describing Tones as “having it all”, but that looks more like it to me.
Oh I love it.
Because they will not die? Because they are expressed by way of wordless moaning? Or because they eat up your brains?
@PC:
(d) all of the above.
[Slight thread derail for necessary attribution]
Note, I’m citing JQ because it’s the title of his book which I believe is out any minute, and which I can’t wait to read!
[/OK as you were]
Oh, OK, Zombie economics. But that’s still where I got it from.
[OK positively the last thread derail]
Have it all? Being a federal MP I bet he was away from his children a lot while they were young.
“Ever since Tony Abbott’s dog whistling at the Debate about how he’s a family man, with a wife, kiddies and a mortgage…”
This sort of comment, on one of the supposedly more intelligent commentary sites, makes me despair. As I heard it, he explained why he referred to his family – to try to show that he was surrounded by women, and therefore understood and empathised with them – and the statements fit perfectly with that aim. Why the need to speculate on what he “really” was doing? Why not engage with and dispute the actual argument he was trying to make?
Out of a potential group of explanations, to choose the most cynical (when not even the most logical) is straw-manism at its worse. Pursuing this line of thought simply adds to the pointless din: let’s all choose our own cynical interpretation, and head off on different tangents rather than real issues!
As Razor said, “by that rule – every utterance by anyone is a dogwhistle”, and the concept becomes meaningless. What’s next – Julia’s new lipstick is a dog-whistle that she’s a woman and Abbott isn’t?
‘Meanwhile Lefty E and Ken imply Gillard is just getting what she deserves.’
Fine I specifically addressed this ridiculous claim @ 99. However since you and a few others seem determined to misrepresent other people’s arguments so you can fabricate a non-existent case to answer, I’ll leave you to your echo chamber.
Chris, the point is how these issues are viewed. I agree Abbott may well have missed out on a lot. But you don’t read media articles about that. It’s taken as the norm that men have a family a family and a high-flying career and time for hobbies. Not so for a woman. There’s always questioned asked about how she can manage it all.
And demonised for spending time away from her children where a man is lauded for going home early once to pick up the kids.
“The argument is that the tone of the public discussion was eminently predictable and ought to have been taken into account by those who engineered the leadership change and the rush election”
Yes, the tone of the public discussion was inevitable. But it has nothing to do with how Gillard came to power. It was inevitable that a filthy campaign about her ‘barreness’ would be run regardless of how she came to power.
If you really think that the gender argument should have been taken into account before the leadership change, then you’re actually arguing that a childless woman should never run for PM, because she’ll cop this shit regardless.
@Banksia, “As I heard it, he explained why he referred to his family”
Have you missed all of the explanations about dog whistling, or what.
*Sigh* the circumstances of THIS election, as opposed to a hypothetical election in some alternative reality, are that Gillard’s suitability to lead the ALP is the dominant issue. That would not have been the case if she had been in the position for a considerable period; in that case people could judge her on her performance. Nor would it be the case if she had set out a strong platform of new ideas that gave the ALP a new sense of direction; in that case people people would be more inclined to discuss the ideas.
But she chose not to do either of those things. Instead, she spent a week or two ‘clearing the decks’ of anything that might constitute an actual policy issue and then called an immediate election. Of course people are focused on her personality and character and values. There’s nothing else to talk about.
Ken, are you so naive as to believe in a different set of circumstances the Libs would have ignored Gillard’s status? You’re really arguing that the Libs are doing this because there’s nothing else to discuss? What a laugh. Who says that her suitability to lead the ALP is the dominant issue? You really need to get over your obsession.
Does this mean every time some one in the labor party says progressive is it not a dog whistle to the young moderns to rail against ‘conservative tones’?
@Ken “Of course people are focused on her personality and character and values.”
If only they were, rather than on her wardrobe, whether she’s married, why she doesn’t have kids, and her earlobes.
@Rebekka – My point was that there was no need to “hear” (ie speculate on) anything further, if what was physically audible was sufficient. If the supposed premise and the statement do not square, by all means look to what he might have actually intended. If they do – as here – we’re back to Razor’s point. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar. You may be right, of course, but that is only speculation, and one less probable than the actual reason he gave (as he is the only one who actually knows).
We complain that politicians will only present small targets, then refuse to take even simple, plausible statements on their face, so that they have to defend factual comments such as “I have a wife, 3 daughters and 3 sisters”. Heaven forbid that they say something actually controversial!
As well as the time-wasting (look at the length of this thread, and still going!) and diversion from real issues, it shows up blatant bias (when Abbott refers to his family he actually means X; everything Julia says about her parents is sincere) – again, to my initial point, this on an intelligent commentary site makes me despair.
With all due respect, Banksia, if you find discussion of gender politics (on a blog frequented by quite a few people who find discussions of gender politics fruitful)to be a “waste of time”, you’re perfectly free to click elsewhere and read something else. I envy the leisure you must have that the resources of cyberspace, for you, are insufficient.
@Banskia, I understood your comment, I just disagree with it. And Abbott’s statement started with “I understand what it’s like to raise a family” – not so subtle emphasis on the “I” and by implication therefore “unlike the woman standing on the other side of the chair”.
“one less probable than the actual reason he gave ”
Um, hello, we are talking about a politician? An ilk not exactly known for just talking straight.
“As well as the time-wasting (look at the length of this thread, and still going!) and diversion from real issues, it shows up blatant bias”
Yes, but not the way around you seem to think. Geez, us women are so priviliged these days…
“Meanwhile Lefty E and Ken imply Gillard is just getting what she deserves. No she isn’t. There isn’t any cause and effect. No matter how Gillard got the PMship, she would have faced this nasty smear campaign. All because you don’t like her, or the way she came to power, doesn’t excuse it.”
No Fine. You’re conflating two completely separate things.
1. Gender based smearas against Gillard – I agree this may have been inevitable. Only Bob Brown has defended her.
2. The leak culture blowback / tit for tat we are witnessing.
Not convinced one has much to do with the other. Plainly there is a war within the LP over control of the party, and one side is doing what the other has. Im pointing that out. The dynamic is actually pretty obvious. Denying it is actually rather odd. Isnt it plain as day?
Linking #2 to #1 for the purposes of arguing on this thread is simple misrepresentation.
Paul W – “Can I ask why some people seem so insistently and incessantly exercised of this dastardly coup against the Little Battler. Geez, its ancient history….”
Apparently not for the ALP. See the tit-for-tat leaks we’re talking about here. I might well be “exercised” about it, but since the protaganists clearly are as well, what’s the basis of your criticism? Talking about awkward realities some would rather forget?
Mindy @ 119, I think Abbott’s attitudes are from the 1650s rather than the 1950s.
@David Irving, maybe 1550s? There was a burgeoning feminist movement in the 1650s (with writers such as Margaret Cavendish), Abbott would not have approved.
Lefty E You did this at #97! I only responded because you specifically linked this post which is about, well read the title, to the manner in which Gillard took the leadership.
@SC
That would be a faulty, not-quite-silent dog-whistle, don’t you think? Has anyone in the Labor party who ever used the word ‘progressive” then gone on to deny that they meant to imply that Tony Abbott is “conservative”?
Further to the above @SC: I would call your example a “shout-out” not a “dog whistle”.
“Lefty E You did this at #97!”
Nope, not even slightly Su. My comment at 97 is only about issue number 2.
Also, my comment was addressed to Fine’s comment at 120, not yours. Which perhaps explans your confusion. IMO, she clearly conflates the two separate issues there.
…though its true I may have ‘misthreaded’ a comment here that was best put elsewhere.
It probably would have gone better on the “Why are people at all surprised by serial leakers getting leaked against” one.
I heard Leigh Sales’ comment on Lateline on Tuesday night and I immediately recognized it as contemptuous dogwhistling. Even more disturbing was the fact that she had no compunction doing the Libs’ dirty work. This was a blatant show of political partisanship and clear evidence of right-wing bias on the ABC.
Back on the media campaign at the Australian‘s Broadcasting Corporation,The Gruen Transfer had their challenge where tow ad guys come in to sell Abbott and Gillard. Unsurprsingly, 4/5 (one of the was Hewson, so make that 3/5 but it included the Liberal apologist Crabbe too)chose the Abbott pitch based on him saying no more than he was keen on preserving his baby daughter’s interests. “You mightn’t like what I say but you can’t question my motives” … ugh!
You may be right Rebekka @ 142. I was thinking he’s a true Counter-Reformation (as opposed to Renaissance) Man, but my ecclesiastical history is a tad rusty.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/the-leaders/glossy-to-grey-in-a-day-for-digitally-moulded-gillard-20100729-10wr6.html
I saw this in the coffee shop today. I was gobsmacked. The story began “Revenge is a dish best served old….”
I think this is the nastiest thing I’ve seen in quite a while.
Yes, Casey, its ugly stuff and typical channel ten and typical of the sort of thing Media Watch has exposed, decade after decade,to absolutly no response the Meakins JA s, etc, that run shit like this.
Casey, I know the presenter is the monkey not the organ grinder, but what can a person make of presenters and reporters, male or female, if this is the “work” they have sold their souls to do?
Eg, do they present in ignorance, or are they aware of what they are doing?
If they ARE “aware”, surely at least some of them can’t be comfortable with what they are doing?
Lefty E, ” the protagonists are clearly themselves… “excercised”
No, Rudd says he is campaigning for his seat in the advancing of a Labor win and Gillard, who may be as much sinned against as sinning, is getting on with the difficult new job of leader, in the wake of Rudd’s departure, for well canvassed reasons including involving ego, altho you couldn’t knock him for doing his best in the countries most demanding job.
Can’t unscramble the egg, but you are likely to get Abbott in, a fact some of you have canvassed actually as a worthy punishment for labor for following a given agenda rather than alternatives.
Only the tabloid press and malcontents continue this obsessing over what is a leadership change, not an atrocity of Ugandan or Cogolese magnitude.
In the meantime, policies again have to take a back seat to the rehashing of ancient storm in a teacup “history”, furthering the Tory assault on Labor, in favour of a default West Wing soapie that isolates Gillard and disadvantages labor at its strong point, policy superiority to the Libs.
The elimination of real issues to isolate Gillard and lobotomise the elctorate is deliberately perverse, as I’m sure you know andthat is the “awkward reality” I’d rather discuss.
FB, your insight re the mud Crabbe is as soothing a balme as I’ve experienced for some time.
“Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters”.
“Maybe we could sheet some blame home – in the broadest sense- to those who decided they would jump into bed with a hostile media to further their own ambitions, and starting leaking against him from inside.”
Lefty E, you wrote this in a thread about the smear campaign against Gillard, based on her gender. It seems to me your explicitly linking ‘blame’ for this onto the forces who you see as being being behind Gillard.
Perhaps you didn’t mean that, but then why are you talking about these leaks on a thread about gender, if you’re not linking it to gender?
That is a low blow by the Tele Casey. Hopefully it will backfire on them – I think the majority of the Australian people would reject that, even to a politician
I was shocked to see the ‘old hag’ meme bought out.
Amazing. We really are going back to the 50′s.
Fine, read my quote – as you cite it, and tell me what it might possibly have to do you the gendered media smears against Gillard.
Explicitly, or otherwise.
Go on, admit it: its self-evidently about tit for tat leaks. And yes, I DO say pro-Gillard forces pretty much have themselves to blame for that.
We both know it has nothing to do with what the gender agenda on Gillard (how much more obvious could I have made that than at 140?), yet you still want to pretend otherwise, for the sole purpose of continuing an argument we were never having.
That you do so after I acknowledge it was probably misthreaded here is just plain puzzling.
But whatevs… its your bandwidth.
Paul W, this is transparently wrong: “Only the tabloid press and malcontents continue this obsessing over what is a leadership change”.
In case you hadnt noticed, people are being prevented from ‘moving forward’ by serial and damaging tit for leaks from two sides within a divided ALP. So what can the point of your last post possibly be?
Not direct at you specifically, but I for one am seriously bored with the “no criticism of our non-agenda or you’ll get Abbott” line. It has two key problems:
A. We almost certainly wont get Abbott; and therefore
B. the ALP agenda – or more specifically, the lamentable lack of it at the moment – is all the more urgent a topic of discussion.
It seems to me the ALP might have difficulty getting policy on the agenda becuase they arent talking about it – and are instead leaking left right and centre against each other; or on climate, because they simply havent got one.
Personally I was even more shocked by the hatred and contempt implied for the elderly, particularly for elderly women.
Lefty E, I don’t know whether you heard Gillard and the much-reviled Bill Shorten valiantly attempting talk about policy on disability today, but the idiot journalists, totally uninterested in disability and totally shameless about their lack of interest, just kept shouting questions about Rudd and the leaks — questions that Gillard has already answered, as she said, many times: No she doesn’t know where the leaks are coming from, Yes she thinks Rudd is an honourable man, and Yes she’s already said about eleventy times that Rudd will be offered a position on the front bench. They are trying to talk about policy but all the media hacks are interested in is personalities and scandal.
Well Pav, that what happens when you dope the media up on hi-powered leaks to bring down a PM. Its addictive.
They become junkies – and they really cant be sure the ALP isn’t going to give them another hit – since they nearly always do.
What part of “blowback” doesn’t Shorten et al get?
They’ll just have to grin and bear it I guess. My sympathy is limited: this is an especially difficult election media-wise for the ALP, because they made it so.
Okay, Lefty E, you put your comment on the wrong thread. That would be the cause of the confusion.