With the government in a polling free fall coupled with toxic talk about Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s leadership as she enters the last sitting week of Parliament before the September 14 election, her top strategists have decided to side step the harsh political reality to sell another soft soap story about Real Julia.
And that is, that the republican leader of the ALP is happily knitting a toy kangaroo for the royal baby – while she poses with wind-swept hair accompanied by her well behaved pet dog, Reuben.
Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!
In the next edition of the country’s top selling Australian Women’s Weekly (which hits stands on Wednesday), the PM’s chief communications spinner, John McTernan boasts that getting his boss into a glossy photo shoot for the monthly mag was “a no-brainer”.
Personally, I think it’s roodiculous (sorry!).
Award winning reporter Caroline Overington nails it when she writes: “Having Ms Gillard pose with needles was not The Weekly’s idea. Her office came up with it. They wanted our readers to know that she’s making a toy kangaroo for Catherine and William’s baby (or, to put it another way it’s a gift for a child that Ms Gillard, who is a staunch republican, never wants to reign over us.”)
At least the PM admitted to Overington, “This feels slightly absurd”, as she props on a high-back chintzy chair with a jar full of knitting needles and skeins of wool scattered around her.
Absurd, you say? Well, that would be a no-brainer!
Sure, the PM likes knitting – and she likes to “knit for babies, in part because they are smaller projects”, she said.
But given the current state of politics in Australia – no surplus, record illegal boat arrivals with hundreds of asylum seekers lost at sea, a deeply divided ALP that is tearing itself apart, and that’s just the start – you’d think the PM’s top strategists could come up with something a bit more authentic than the tough-as-teak, tough-as-nails Real Julia knitting for the next member of the royal family for whom she has no real affection?
Again, you’ve got to ask – what judgement?
Julia Gillard, a member of the socialist left who may also want Australia to become a republic so that a more controlling constitution can be put in place should not really be called a “Republican”.
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