Gillard's pygmy sell-out

THE Gillard Labor Government is stuck in electioneering mode like a dicky DVD. It meets every opportunity to address the future with a return to the past. The solemn promises it made in the August election campaign have been broken or shelved because they were undeliverable. Now, the failed pink batts insulation scheme, solar rebate program, the wasteful BER project and the disastrous Not Bloody Needed broadband rollout will dog Labor all the way to the next election. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's response to her government's multitude of failures is defiance. She has branded the Opposition's views as "economic Hansonism'', a dog whistle if there ever was one, but when Opposition Leader Tony Abbott denounced her language as "shrill and aggressive'' he was set upon by a coven of feminazis outraged at implied sexism in his language. They apparently had nothing to say about her belittling of Pauline Hanson. Senator Stephen Conroy handed the Opposition a bonus with attempts to bully Australians into the NBN. His refusal to provide any coherent guideline to the eventual cost to taxpayers of his monopolistic enterprise is a sound reason to distrust his every word about it. And Gillard has been forced to reassess the wisdom of supporting the independence it initially claimed for the Murray Darling Basin Authority in the face of a predictable backlash from farmers and communities along the river system. Strikingly, Labor is now acknowledging those who live on or near the Murray may know more about the river than any number of Greens and Labor activists living in Newtown or inner Melbourne. Like the monstrous mining tax problem which Gillard assured the nation she had solved, the Murray Darling issue is no closer to resolution than the national health reform package signed by her predecessor Kevin Rudd, which still fails to encompass Western Australia. When Gillard came to office she claimed she had reached a deal with East Timor for an offshore processing centre that would resolve the boat people issue and stop the flow of boats. The East Timor solution was dead on delivery, as Rudd told his staff at the time. He didn't support it then and is only paying lip service to the notion now. It is not going to fly. Ever. Since Gillard's laughable proposal, the RAN has delivered taken an all-time record number of illegal people smuggler boats have been delivered to Christmas Island, with a record number of illegal entrants going ashore. This week Gillard spoke to the Australian Industry Group, self-interested, self-important business personalities which, under the leadership of Heather Ridout has become an ALP appendix. Gillard gave the guests a rousing stump speech, claiming to be committed to economic reform. One can only assume the guests were too polite to walk out, but anyone familiar with Gillard's record would be excused for having done so. Since entering Parliament in 1998, Gillard added her vote to entrenched Labor opposition against reforming legislation. She opposed legislation to reduce the lowest marginal tax rate from 17 per cent to 15 per cent and increase the top two personal income tax thresholds. She opposed an increase in the income threshold for the Medicare Levy, and she opposed the introduction of the 30 per cent Private Health Insurance rebate and the abolition of the 15 per cent superannuation surcharge. She was opposed to the GST. Those employers politely applauding her remarks on Tuesday should have been aware she opposed legislation to ban secondary boycotts and to ban compulsory union fees. She opposed proposals to toughen welfare to work requirements, and to give protection to the right of Australia's 1.9 million independent contractors to remain self-employed. This self-proclaimed reformer worked with the historically corrupt MUA to block waterfront reforms which have seen productivity levels escalate beyond what she, and the trade union movement she represented, claimed possible. Gillard opposed every single Coalition Budget measure that turned Hawke-Keating Labor government deficits into surpluses and left the Rudd government with a bomb-proofed economy that enabled Australia to ride out the global financial crisis. Her speech was fiction. Just like the undertaking she before the election that her government would not introduce a carbon tax - now rejected to placate Labor's great big Green rump and the duplicitous duo of independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. Gillard has a credibility problem. She has broken all her big pre-election promises and wants to reinvent herself as a reformer. Labor is in office but the Greens are in power is the slogan Abbott coined last month. Gillard is now enslaved to the unrepresentative Adam Bandt, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott in the Lower House. She is handcuffed to these pygmies whether it be on the Murray Darling, the NBN, or the introduction of a carbon tax. Pandering to independents and Greens has cost her all credibility and trashed her claim to be a reformer.