Gillard tries the emotion thing.

Cartoon: By Nicholson.

Sometime this morning Gillard’s speechwriter handed her several pages of her speech to the National Press Club with the words, “You had better read this Jules, you’re saying it later.”

Gillard: “OK, what sort of speech is it?”

Aide: “It’s full of raw emotion over how misunderstood you are.”

Gillard: “Should I get drunk?”

Aide: “No, not tired and emotional, just upset at the way the public call you a liar over the bullshit story you told them about not having a carbon tax”

This is in fact Gillard’s last line of defense. She has tried the spin and semantic tricks to no avail, so she is having to appeal to the hurt feelings reflex, albeit with the usual semantic twists and turns we have come to expect. She says she couldn't “unsay” what she said when she declared “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.” Apparently that is because a carbon tax “was not what I had in my mind as the future for our country.”

This is where we have to call “bullshit.” The “no carbon tax” statement was clearly designed to give the impression that an unpopular and electorally disastrous imposition on carbon emissions was off the agenda for at least three years. Of course, being a government decision it is described as a reform. She said putting a price on carbon was her government's equivalent to the floating of the dollar - a reform that would transform the country.

That ‘transformation’ is what we are worried about. But hey, the poor misunderstood Julia starts:

“It doesn't come easy to me to expose my feelings as I make these decisions,” Ms Gillard said, as her voice wavered. “I was the shy girl who studied and worked hard, and it took time and effort but I got from Unley High to the law and as far as here, where I am today.

“I've brought a sense of personal reserve to this, the most public of professions. And the rigours of politics have reinforced my innate style of holding a fair bit back in order to hang pretty tough.” Ms Gillard said she had tried to allow her decisions to speak for herself, and leave the results to speak for themselves. But she realised she had to open up and explain herself better.
The public outpouring follows almost daily attacks on the Prime Minister over her broken no-carbon tax promise.

She said she'd made the pledge with a clear view of what she meant. But she faced a difficult decision following the election, given the result and the reality of minority government. “I had in my mind pricing carbon and reaching an emissions trading scheme,” she said. “I could have said, in this parliament, `I'll hold to those words'.

“And the absolute logical consequence of me doing that would have been to say, `We'll put carbon pricing into the too-hard basket'.

Noticeable in tonight’s lineup was Paul Keating, the man who gave us the L-A-W law tax cuts, (well he didn’t actually give them to us, but gave us a pre-election bullshit story about L-A-W tax cuts.) Paul waxed lyrical about Julia and how Australia had industries equivalent to the early stages of the industrial revolution and how Jules was going to change all that.

Australia has been consistently on the cutting edge of the best of modern technology for many years. This statement is a load of condescending rot, and an insult to Australian industry. I guess Paul has not gotten over his idea that we are a mob of knuckle dragging clowns that are too unsophisticated to recognize the truth in deceit.