LABOR IS CARRYING ON LIKE A PACK OF PORK CHOPS

21-June-2011

The high political farce of the last few days is unprecedented. Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd are tearing each other to shreds and nameless Labor MPs are also leaping into the fray. It’s rapidly turned into a can’t-look-away episode of Jerry Springer; “Knifed in the back a year ago and still mad as hell”.

 The invective has become a bloody spectator sport, with one Labor source declaring the backbench would rather chew their right arm off than have Kevin lead the Party again.

 But the most telling comments of the debacle belong to Julia, who believes that opposition to the carbon tax will fade with time and an expensive taxpayer-funded advertising campaign. She also declared that the tax is part of her “vision” to “remake our experience of what it is to be an Australian”.

 Gillard clearly underestimates the level of distrust and anger in the community about the carbon tax. She really ought to get out there and visit a pub, RSL club, building site, or just strike up a conversation with a few people outside the Canberra bubble.

 She’d rapidly get the picture that this runs deeper than a “bad sell job”, that people aren’t simply going to “forgive and forget” once the tax is in place. Public discontent and distrust in this Government is entrenched and growing deeper each day.

 And Gillard’s high-handed vision of “remaking our experience of being Australian” is a huge part of the problem. This underscores the public’s suspicion that the carbon tax isn’t about the environment at all – it’s about wealth redistribution and reshaping Australia.

 It’s about a far-left vision of needing to correct Australia. As if we were inherently wrong.

Gillard’s desperate desire to prove our national worth to the world by sacrificing Australian jobs and industry on the altar of a carbon tax speaks of a deep-seated insecurity that harks back to the old cultural cringe.

 It’s baffling to most Australians. They don’t get the Greens’ abhorrence and shame of our wealth-creating industries. They don’t get the symbolic imperative to be the first to impose an economy-wide carbon tax.