Now’s a good time to send Julia Gillard a personal message – congratulating her, and reminding her of what you’ll be hoping for from her Premiership. (She will definitely be getting these sorts of messages from groups like the ACL.)
This was mine:
Dear Julia
Congratulations on becoming Prime Minister.
I hope that your election by the Labor caucus means that the ALP will now become a stronger voice for humane policies in Canberra.
I hope that, notwithstanding your rhetoric on your first day about “being strong on border security”, you will be ending cruel present Labor policies like refusing to process refugee applications from countries that are so dangerous that our troops are still dying there.
I hope that you will be able to break with your predecessor’s lock-step with Mr Abbott and Jim Wallace’s unrepresentative mob on issues of continuing discrimination such as by finally enacting marriage equality – it is long overdue in this country for gay and lesbian people to have equal rights before the law as the rest of us. (That will be a historic change and something that would cement your place in the history books as a positive, reforming Prime Minister.)
I hope that you will move to cancel Mr Conroy’s fundamentally flawed internet filter plan that not only will be expensive and curtail Australians’ rights (particularly given its incompatibility with our existing classification system), but will – by driving the criminals further underground where they’re harder to catch, and by giving parents a false sense of security – actually put children in danger. (If you care to look you’ll realise that lobby groups for victims of child abuse oppose the filter.)
I hope that you will push for decent health services, particulary in the long and cruelly-neglected area of mental health.
I hope that you will not cave to the big 3 miners and will stand up to their corrupt bullying of parliament, of the rest of the mining industry, of the rest of corporate Australia.
And I hope that you will negotiate meaningfully on climate change, which means treating the Greens as representatives of a progressive left rather than just ignoring them as a threat to the Labor base that must be destroyed. If, as you say, climate change is a real issue to you, negotiate meaningfully with them, as your predecessor refused to do.
I expect that the ALP thinks that your background will be enough to convince progressive voters to vote ALP ahead of the Greens even if you continue the existing conservative ALP policies – or, worse, if you make them even harsher.
Believe me, this will NOT be the case from me. I look forward to voting for (or at least preferencing) a Julia Gillard who represents the principles that put her into politics in the first place – not the Right faction that arranged the numbers yesterday.
Best of luck in your term of office. I hope that the Gillard premiership is one of which all Australians can be proud.
Yours sincerely,
Jeremy Sear.
Moved On 
Don’t hold your breath Jeremy.
Dear Julia
You have taken the bait and further diminished the Labor brand. Why is it that whenever Labor is deep doo-doo they always send in the clowns? Ultimately your vaunted ambition got the better of your promises of loyalty and your previous distaste for unelected PMs.
While your flexibility is stunning, your integrity has been drowned in the torrent of Rudd’s blood gushing through your fingers.
We look forward to the masterclass of manipulation you will now emit from both sides of your sly mouth. No wonder so many lawyers end up in politics.
Cheers
SB, you entered that in the GetUp! portal? I’m impressed, given that your fingers must have burned with unholy smoke every time you touched the keys.
I’ve never been to the GetUpthemselves webpage.
I’ve never been to the GetUpthemselves webpage.
Whist i dont entirely agree with GetUp, at least they’re trying to do something.
What the fuck have you done SB except sit around insulting and complaining about everybody?
That’s because you hate grassroots democracy, SB.
Unless it’s the Tea Baggers, you love them.
Congratulations on your lack of consistancy.
Cheers.
I’m with bloods (from an earlier thread) – don’t feed the trolls.
Marek, Getupthemselves! are a tightly held limited liability company.
Upon noticing today that Gillard pronounces “sheet” as “shit”, I prepared a question for her first appearance on Q & A as PM.
In short, I want to know whether she thinks the fact that the Fairfax press fashionably piled on Rudd after The Australian means there’s no such thing as a good broadsheet in this country.
Michael.
If you are referring to the audio I heard, where she was talking about her political style being about change rather than running around getting numbers of supporters who would vote, the term she used is “Chits”.
Chits just means small pieces of paper with writing on them, a bit like Bookies’ slips.
The sound is Ch like Cheese, rather than Sh like in Shit.
Your question is valid. The right wing crackpots are still convinced that the Media is pro Labor however. Just ask Mr Blot.
“Congratulations on your lack of consistancy.”
Wrong, Marek. His posts are consistently boring, cliche-ridden and grotequely intemperate. He is also a miserable prick who should be ignored. It’s the only way he’ll learn.
your html link goes to the same place as your letter to Gillard (oblivion)
and SBs right about Getup.. if anyone cares to research its origin, they might find a certain wooden horse made popular by the greeks
Link fixed.
And sorry, Karl, what do you mean? In what sense is GetUp a trojan horse?
follow the money trail, its easy to find the landscaper for this aussie astroturf
No, still vague smears. What are you talking about?
GetUp runs campaigns on progressive issues, to pressure politicians to consider the progressive voice. What’s the conspiracy? What money is corrupting it, and in what way is it corrupting it?
Getupthemselves! is a corporate entity more like the Chaser guys without the sense of humour. It is big on stunts. They are another example of a political trend imported from the US by some Harvard grads. It is Moveon.org’s Australian cousin.
Getupthemselves! boasts a large membership, because it is remarkably easy to join. All you need is an email address. However, joining will not give you voting rights. Getupthemselves! is a company. They have a Board of Directors, and it is the Directors who have headhunted Simon Sheikh to be the Executive Director. He wasn’t elected by the members or anything democratic like that.
The average age of members is 55, and many are public servants who are also good sources of political information. Canberra loves Getupthemselves!, one in 30 of the local population having signed up to them.
Getupthemselves! is a tightly controlled company seeking political influence by exploiting the feeble-minded losers who sign up. Still, they should be applauded for some of the better stunts their bosses have engineered. Their shit-stirring attitude should connect quite well with Australians. But the Public should understand that underneath the stunts is an iron-fisted leftist agenda.
“The average age of members is 55, and many are public servants who are also good sources of political information. “
Well, we know who you’re reading. That average is completely meaningless, since most GetUp members are either at the younger or older end of the population – it “averages” as a middle-aged public servant, but only by cancelling out old and young.
As for “iron-fisted leftist agenda”? “Iron-fisted”? These are the groups that campaign AGAINST authoritarianism, not for it. These are the groups advocating FOR human rights, not against them. The idea that the powers that be, that are gradually increasing their undemocratic security powers, are benign and it’s the few opposing them who are the tyrants is just… well, it’s Orwellian. It’s doublethink.
“we know who you’re reading”
Big Brother is watching, eh?
No, you’re just parroting almost word for word a stupid attack on GetUp from a particular News Ltd columnist last week.
You mean this or this or this or this?
Sorry: or or this
George Soros provided the seed capital for both MoveOn and also GetUp
So?
so its not really a grassroots movement, is it?
Who the hell cares what it’s called? The point is that it’s a way for ordinary progressive people to lobby politicians to stop ignoring progressive issues.