Gillard moves Right in bid to take centre

Gillard graphic

Julia Gillard has shown she is prepared to do anything to remain prime minister, Steve Price says.
Source: Herald Sun




SENATOR Doug Cameron is an old-fashioned Labor politician who refuses to rely on spin and language to avoid answering a direct question.


He’s also a warrior of the Left and a member of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s faction.

So imagine my surprise at his answer to a question yesterday about the Prime Minister, uranium and gay marriage.

The senator was asked if he ever imagined our Left-wing leader standing in front of an ALP conference advocating the export of uranium to India and urging a vote against gay marriage.

Senator Cameron’s one-word answer said it all : “No.” I should have thrown in an additional element: the announcement to be made during this visit by US President Obama of a significant American troop presence outside Darwin.

At the National Conference of the Australian Labor Party on the traditional first weekend of December, that’s exactly what will happen.

ALP members will be asked to vote on gays and the nuclear industry, plus have a debate about US bases on Australian soil.

Those three things read like a protest manifesto for the Occupy Melbourne group, if they had actually anything to seriously protest about.

Marches against nuclear energy and “ban the bomb” demonstrations are as ingrained in the ALP — and especially the Left of the ALP — as wide-eyed criticism of our closeness to our American alliance partners.

One of Julia Gillard’s predecessors as Labor leader, the erratic Mark Latham, called John Howard’s government a conga line of suck holes when George W. Bush was last here.

That was the same visit that saw Prime Minister Gillard’s contracted partners in government — the Greens — use a speech to the joint houses of Parliament by president Bush to heckle and jeer him.

Former senator Kerry Nettle was expelled from the House and a much younger-looking Bob Brown, wearing a sprig of wattle, took up the protests for her. He then tried to line up to shake the President’s hand but was shielded by John Howard from doing so.

It would seem to be no coincidence that the arrival yesterday of the US President for two days has coincided with this sudden aggressive anti-Green rhetoric.

It started almost immediately the carbon tax passed the Senate and the embrace between Senator Brown and Senator Christine Milne ended. The marriage between Julia and Bob seems to be on the rocks, with one of the partners tearing up the nuptials arrangement and deliberately trying to bait the ex-husband.

Nukes to India? Not a problem that they don’t agree on non-nuclear proliferation. Why don’t we throw in a few American troops on Australian soil? That will really upset them; and if those Greens reckon we are going to make it easy for gays to get married, forget about it.

This domestic dispute might in the end be the very best thing Julia Gillard could have done.

ALP voters who are on the Green edge are probably lost for a couple of elections anyway so why not appeal to the old working-class blue-collar voter who doesn’t fear a nuclear India and likes our American alliance.

And what do you have to lose in the power stations of the Latrobe Valley or the coal mines of Newcastle by telling gays that marriage is for a union between a man and a woman.

Julia Gillard has shown she is prepared to do anything to stay Prime Minister.

She dealt with the Green devil to get there and is now prepared to throw it overboard, remaking herself from a warrior of the Left to a champion of the middle ground of the ALP to survive.

She does, though, have that interesting weekend in December to survive. I wonder how many rows back Senator Doug Cameron will sit.

Steve Price is on MTR 1377 from 6am, Monday to Friday

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