Bring on the Last Supper

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had union boss Paul Howes and assorted ALP and union officials to dinner Tuesday at Kirribili House, my colleague Simon Benson reports in The Daily Telegraph.Howes, the head of the AWU, came sharply into focus last year when he stupidly appeared on national television claiming he had a role in the political assassination of the sitting prime minister, Kevin Rudd.

A number of the actual plotters have told me that they had been planning Rudd's demise for months and that the self-publicist Howes did not play a part in the coup. Nevetheless, Howes fantastic claims serve to illustrate part of Gillard's fatal problem. Her massive lack of judgement. Had she wished to rub more salt into the wounds the Australian public rightly feels she has delivered to the nation with the passage of the carbon dioxide tax (which she so notoriously lied about) and the failure of her Malaysian solution, she could hardly have chosen more fitting dinner companions without including the independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie as well as a member of the Greens, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, perhaps. Oakeshott, like Windsor, comes from a conservative electorate which he has betrayed with his support for the erratically Left Gillard government. It is a classic tale of self-interest. No-one could possibly claim that the Gillard government has delivered the stability Oakeshott predicted when he decided to rat on his constituents. He has been rewarded with cups of tea and pats on the head from the prime minister but he cannot help making an absolute goose of himself whenever he opens his mouth. His latest gift to cartoonists and columnists was his comment that Telstra's deal with the secretive NBN corporation could need greater scrutiny while the whole flawed NBN concept needed no such investigation. Nothing really needs saying about such pea-brained thinking. The stench from the NBN plan grows daily but this idiot thinks things are hunky-dory. Senator Hanson-Young looks just as foolish with her phony questioning of the Commonwealth Ombudsman before a Senate estimates hearing in May. It has not been revealed that Ombudsman Allan Asher, supposedly the people's independent watchdog, provided the questions Hanson-Young asked him and even gave her an outline of the answers he would supply. Their actions have trashed the reputation of the office of Ombudsman and it is reported on Fairfax media that he may resign today. Pity that Hanson-Young doesn't share his shame. But Gillard, Howes, Oakeshott and Hanson-Young have done some good. They daily remind us what influences this putrid, dysfunctional government and why it should be dispatched as speedily as possible. Would that the Queen could act during her visit, she would be the toast of the nation.