Oi, Oi, Oi?
Current Music: Walkley Awards montage music (a mix of home-brew sample-driven electro, Snow Patrol, Britney Spears and The Who)
Well, Rudd has chosen his own cabinet in an unprecedented and apparently deliberate Presidential move he describes as a "significant step in this modernisation [of the party, which] will be continued." It's becoming clear how he means to style his leadership; witness the harsh punishment of McClelland and Garrett for their deviations. We can only hope Rudd's personal vision is a sound one, because it looks like that's exactly what we're going to get.
On the positive note, we can be pleased at how women have done in this political cycle (assuming we don't remember that they're more than 50% of the electorate-in which case we're shocking primitives and should be mortified). We now have women in both major party deputy leaderships, and seven women in the ministry including Gillard's unique superministry; and the country now has both a woman as Premier of Queensland and an indigenous woman as Deputy Chief Minister of the NT (despite her recent run-in with the now PM). Mind you, we lost our first female Chief Minister in the same reshuffle. And what about Maxine's ministry? (Perhaps her special relationship with the PM will bring her to the leadership faster. I can but dream.)
Despite my concerns about autocratic Blairism in the Lodge, the Nelson (and Abbott) rearguard action to preserve the doomed Howard legacy (notice the rat king who ruled before him savagely clawing its way up his drowning body), and the idea of Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding holding the balance, it is good not to be ashamed of the the national government again.
Well, Rudd has chosen his own cabinet in an unprecedented and apparently deliberate Presidential move he describes as a "significant step in this modernisation [of the party, which] will be continued." It's becoming clear how he means to style his leadership; witness the harsh punishment of McClelland and Garrett for their deviations. We can only hope Rudd's personal vision is a sound one, because it looks like that's exactly what we're going to get.
On the positive note, we can be pleased at how women have done in this political cycle (assuming we don't remember that they're more than 50% of the electorate-in which case we're shocking primitives and should be mortified). We now have women in both major party deputy leaderships, and seven women in the ministry including Gillard's unique superministry; and the country now has both a woman as Premier of Queensland and an indigenous woman as Deputy Chief Minister of the NT (despite her recent run-in with the now PM). Mind you, we lost our first female Chief Minister in the same reshuffle. And what about Maxine's ministry? (Perhaps her special relationship with the PM will bring her to the leadership faster. I can but dream.)
Despite my concerns about autocratic Blairism in the Lodge, the Nelson (and Abbott) rearguard action to preserve the doomed Howard legacy (notice the rat king who ruled before him savagely clawing its way up his drowning body), and the idea of Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding holding the balance, it is good not to be ashamed of the the national government again.