History loves great speeches, and much of the time ignores their backstories. Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a brilliant address to the House of Representatives on October 9, 2012 excoriating the current opposition leader Tony Abbott.
Welcome to the premiere of Sky News Australia's kinder, gentler, interactive political talk show and weekly engineering tutorial all wrapped in one, "Building Bridges with Warren Truss".
This week's special guests:
Tony Abbott.
"we will hold them ferociously to account because that is what the Australian people will expect of us." *
Barnaby Joyce.
Although the Murdoch empire is generally perceived as pursuing a pro-Liberal agenda in this election, this clearly evidences itself only in its loss-leading broadsheet "The Australian". As for the "Daily Telegraph", famously endorsed by Kristina Keneally as "the people's paper" a while back, there is only one over-riding agenda - to make money.
News yesterday of a makeover in Julia Gillard's election campaigning style surely contained a typographical error when it referred to "Real Julia". It brought back images, firstly of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" but also of "The Addams Family" (more so its motion picture sequel, "Addams Family Values").
That, in turn, takes us way back to July 2010, when the Australian Workers Union put out an unfunny and not particularly clever attack ad, but which suddenly takes on a whole new relevance:
"Just think.. if this were a soccer match we could have had 30 minutes extra time followed by penalty kicks. #ausvotes #debate #nilnil"
- me on Twitter, 7.36pm 25.7.10
The Leaders Debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott took place on Sunday night. There's nothing more that I can say about the content. Really. The transcript is here.
"Thank you to those who arranged the Leaders debate to avoid clashing with the finale of Master chef."
- NSW attorney-general John Hatzistergos on Twitter, 21.7.10
If you consider the continuity errors in Tony Abbott's glib slogan proclaiming that Workchoices is "Dead. Buried. Cremated.", then maybe you are looking for an "Exhumed" to be inserted into that sequence - at least once, maybe more often. Abbott's serial non sequiteurs on the talk-radio circuit on Monday suggest that neo-liberal IR reform, whether named Workchoices or some other moniker, is not about to disappear from the tory agenda. Where's Freddy Krueger when you need him?
"...today I seek my own mandate to move Australia forward.
...this election is about the choice as to whether we move Australia forward or go back. Our great nation, our very great nation, has been built by generations of men and women who had the courage to move forward.Moving forward, of course, requires conviction, it requires confidence...
Moving forward with confidence also requires a strong set of convictions...
I will be asking Australians for their trust so that we can move forward together.
It's 36 years since the passing of that great American comedian Bud Abbott. He left us a great legacy of funny lines in decades of vaudeville, film and television. Many of those lines were scripted by some very funny writers.
His namesake, honourable member for Warringah and current Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott also says many funny things, but they are mostly unintentional and, as he confessed to Kerry O'Brien on last night's 7.30 Report, unscripted.
While everyone else does their weekly campaign summaries on a Friday, I get around to it whenever... in this case the following Wednesday.
(i) "Coalition gains one point on Labor!" Well golly gee. Four words: Statistical. Margin. Of. Error.
"Today In Cricket: Events on this day in cricket history" is now a book. Available on initial release through Cafepress.
