kowari asked about the sexist challenges to Gillard’s leadership (which I think were more of a media beat-up than a serious consideration for her withdrawal but I could be wrong). Nonetheless, the challenges on the basis of her marital status did occur, at least in the media. Would they have occurred had she been male? Possibly not but it’s hard to say in this nuclear-family obsessed age. I found this article from The Age very interesting, arguing that questions about Gillard’s involvement in the development of Labor’s refugee policy would have better served the leadership debate, especially compared with Beazley’s reaction to the Tampa scandal. The writer goes on to argue that we have lost a moral dimension to politics… interesting, that’s a similar argument that Howard has but the morals he’s referring to are Christian reactions, not the idealistic ones mentioned here (honesty, social justice). I think the argument does apply well to the electorate though: last October’s vote was clearly a hip-pocket vote and a vote by Howard’s ‘comfortable’ Australians. As I said last post, I think they need to get a little less comfortable before they start to care about other people’s pain.
