By Kevin Glancy

In Australia, Julia Gillard has probably destroyed the hopes and aspirations of many women intent on succeeding in politics.  Gillard is the Prime Minster of Australia and in that she has failed, not because she is a woman but because she is a dishonest politician who has lost the trust of the voting public through her own misdeeds.

Criticism is not sexism and many male Prime Ministers have also failed in the past including her predecessor Kevin Rudd. Like Obama in the U.S. he promised much and delivered very little. In the politics of spin, rhetoric and broken promises, along with Gillard, they are all proven performers and they do it with arrogance. 

Obama is fortunate and he now has a second chance to redeem himself but it doesn’t look good. During his election campaign and in his victory speech Obama revisited the same ‘feel good’ rhetoric he used prior to his first term. Kevin Rudd is not so lucky, betrayed and smeared by Gillard there will be no comeback, certainly not in the near future.  

However, as far as Gillard is concerned she is no longer just a politician. All that changed when she held up her gender and used it as a defence in her 15 minute baseless, sexist attack on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. By using her gender she brought her womanhood to the fore and made it clear that she wanted to be judged and treated as a woman and not as a ‘genderless’ politician.  Those on the Left who have used the defence of Gillard; that any criticism of her is made because she is a woman, can no longer argue their case on those grounds.    

No other Australian Prime Minister has used their gender as a defence and it took a woman to find the ugliest corner of the room and then attack like a deranged viper. In fairness to male politicians in this world of supposed equality, whenever they are attacked by a woman in parliament they should now follow the lead of the Prime Minister and use the gender defence.

In her rant as a woman, she falsely accused Tony Abbott of being a misogynist, sexist and a woman hater. Worse, her vile and dishonest behaviour was employed to distract people from the fact that she was actually defending Peter Slipper. This was a man who compared a woman’s sexual organs to parts of a shell fish in a range of women-hating text messages. 

It took a woman to do that and like an immature schoolgirl, this woman continues the lie and turns her lies into point scoring.

Today, (7/11/12) Gillard, was actually boasting about the ‘praise’ that she had received on the international stage for her baseless rant saying that she has won global support for her attack on Tony Abbott. This is what she said on ABC Radio.

“The President of France congratulated me on the speech, as did the Prime Minister of Denmark and some other leaders just casually as I’ve moved around have also mentioned it to me.”

Of course, none of the international supporters who praised her speech had any idea of the context of that speech.  Nor did Gillard own up and tell them that the content of her speech was based on a lie and that she used the ploy to defend disgraced Speaker, Peter Slipper’s obscene, anti-women text messages by lying about Tony Abbott’s character.

Gillard’s rant and now her bragging is hardly, prime ministerial conduct and it is a disgrace to that office. Here she is boasting about something which was an out and out lie on her part. Many male politicians have told lies before her but it took a woman to boast about it on the world stage. Where does it end?

Can you imagine the reaction and outrage if a male PM boasted in a similar way, having attacked a female politician based on lies?  And women go on about equality and the ‘glass ceiling’ why would you bother worrying about such an issue?

For Gillard, accusing a man of such things is the lowest refuge of any woman and it destroys any notion of equality as it demeans women everywhere. If, as a male, you can’t criticize a women’s performance as a politician without being accused of sexism then women should not be in politics until they learn what equality really means.

John Howard was called vicious names by many on the Left and over many years, both prior to and during his time as PM. These people including the Green’s Bob Brown and many in the Labor party, including current Ministers, employed the vilest language and used extremely rude signs to describe Mr. Howard.

One caricature used by Bob Brown even showed Mr. Howard in an insulting sexual position with George Bush. Did the media defend Howard? No. Were they outraged? No. Did they remind Bob Brown and his Labor mates when they complained about a sign referring to Gillard as a ‘Witch’? No. But never once did John Howard complain publically, nor did he ever suggest that such behaviour by his opponents was due to his gender.

If you look at the behaviour of Labor females in politics, they are proof that women just can’t handle such senior positions or the rigours of politics. For them, telling lies is just a routine part of the day and for anyone saying all politicians are the same I would simply say – show me the proof!  

Under Gillard there is a huge difference between the type and regularity of the lies Labor politicians tell and the generally harmless Opposition gaffs.  Bearing in mind that the Opposition is not in government and with the exception of a handful of journalists, are the only ones trying to hold Labor to account.

But the Left-wing dominated media who continue to ignore the sins of Labor has, along with Gillard and her Ministers, conveniently labeled Abbott as ‘negative’ when to a large extent that’s the role of an Opposition. Of course Abbott has also been blamed for just about all the failures of this current government.

Gillard, Roxon, Jenny Macklin, Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong along with a whole host of feminists and supporting female journalists have illustrated quite clearly that Left-wing women in politics and their supporters in the media will resort to any trick in the book to defame a male counterpart. It’s vicious, vindictive and highly personal and goes way beyond simply name calling.

Nicola Roxon for instance knew about the Slipper text messages back in May 2012, yet still used taxpayer funds to defend Slipper (with 17 lawyers) and accused others of making vexatious claims when she knew that those claims were true. 

Here’s yet another Labor woman who has destroyed the integrity of her Office and betrayed the neutral role that should be observed by the Office of Attorney General.  It’s a tradition that has been observed by all men who have previously occupied that high office. Would we want another female Attorney General?  Following Roxon’s disgraceful non-neutral performance – I think not.

Like Gillard, Nicola Roxon is a clear example that Labor women cannot be trusted to hold senior positions in government.  It proves that they will employ lies, hypocrisy, fiction and double standards to justify or defend their incompetence. When that fails they will play the gender card.

Fortunately, I don’t know of any woman who likes or supports Gillard and her ilk so maybe there is some hope. Woman on the conservative side of politics like Julie Bishop and others do not use their gender to defend themselves and that’s probably because they are there solely on merit.  

This is unlike Gillard and her Labor female colleagues, who have benefitted by affirmative action and have not truly earned their places. In Labor pre-selections a male candidate requires six votes for every one vote given to a female candidate. Yet Labor has the gall to talk about sexist behaviour and equality.

Let’s be clear, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Tony Abbott has any of the characteristics that he has been accused of by Gillard.  Even the ABC had to go back to 1998 to find something that Abbott said that might be sexist. At the time he was making an observation made by many others. It was a debate and what he said was factual about the obvious traits of men and women in the workplace and as much as ABC interviewer, Leigh Sales tried to make it so – it was not sexist.

The truth of the matter is that Tony Abbott has quietly and privately raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support women’s causes over many years through his work for many charities. He is married with three daughters, who are saddened by Gillard’s baseless attacks on their father and he has a female Chief of Staff and a female Deputy Leader.  I could go on and on to illustrate that, far from being a misogynist, Abbott is a big supporter of women in Australia and always has been.

But what about the future political aspirations of women faced with the example set by Julia Gillard? How can anyone take a chance and vote for a female candidate, particularly a Labor woman given the overwhelming evidence of their incompetence and deceit?

Julia Gillard is a proven habitual liar. She is deceitful, she spins, she misinforms, she’s clearly incompetent, she won’t answer questions about her role in the AWU scandal and in that; there is the stench of corruption.

Her defence of being young and naïve at the time is hardly true – she wasn’t some misguided teenager, she was in her thirties and a lawyer/partner in Slater Gordon. If you were to describe Gillard as being young and naïve at the time you would have been considered by her to be a sexist and a woman hater.

She announces policies about NIDIS, education, Murray Darling Basin, NBN and many others that are unfunded and are timed to fall into the life of some future government. But the Left-dominated media do not hold her to account; do not ask her where the money is coming from and it won’t matter because Gillard will be long gone and will avoid facing the music about more broken promises.  

Men have made promises and broken them before but Gillard has taken it a step further. Taking credit for lying about promises she can’t possibly keep and cannot be delivered during her reign. It took a Labor woman to do that.

As the first female Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard has taught us a valuable lesson and it’s this; for the good of the country let’s not ever put a second Labor woman in that job again – this experiment has failed.

Please note: The views and opinions expressed above are those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher; www.theissue.com.au