Pragmatism rules over principles for Julia Gillard

AS soon as we learned that Julia Gillard was Australia's new Prime Minister, the British media brayed: "Who'd have thought it?".

AS soon we learned that Julia Gillard was the new Prime Minister of Australia, the British media began braying "Who'd have thought it?

 "Australia, that most sexist of nations, to find itself saddled with a female prime minister! How are the mighty and macho fallen!" and so forth. You'd have thought that Crocodile Dundee had had a sex change.

Newspaper after newspaper demanded that I tell them whether this signalled a revolution in Aussie culture.

There was no point in reminding them that the sole unexpected event was that Rudd had sacked himself, which at one time seemed too much to hope for.

The headlines ran "British-born woman Australia's first female prime minister", as if the continent itself could never have produced one.

Gillard isn't just news, she's good news.

It was probably a mistake for Rudd to have left her in charge while he was in Bali, in what turned out to be a vain bid to become a global player in climate change politics.

When poorly implemented policies ended in disaster, it fell to Gillard to steady the ship, which she did with such charm and ease of manner, we almost forgot that she was implicated in most of them.

Gillard's personal credit survived the shelving of the emissions trading scheme, the appalling mismanagement of the home insulation scheme, and the schools' rebuilding program because she was as good at sound-bite politics as Rudd was terrible.

The nation got used to the way she disentangled the most disastrous snarl-ups with patience and good humour, heading off orchestrated media hysteria with her own kind of deadpan common sense and the fewest possible words. She never gave the impression (as Rudd almost always did) that she was in love with the sound of her own voice.

Gillard is not a conviction politician. Her approach, learned as president of the Australian Union of Students, as a successful lawyer, and as chief of staff to John Brumby when he was leader of the Labor opposition in Victoria, is to build alliances to encompass specific aims.

She is for whatever works.

She is now faced with some tough policy decisions, with barely time to make them before the next election.

She has already been challenged to close Christmas Island, and cease mandatory detention of refugees and the suspension of asylum applications. Whether she does any of these will depend upon the party's perception of how such apparent leniency would go down with the electorate.

Principle will have nothing to do with it.

Gillard probably won't have time to rethink the mining super-profits tax, but as Rio Tinto, Xtrata and BHP Billiton share prices continue to fall, and will fall faster if uncertainty persists, she doesn't have time to dither either.

If she calls an early election to take advantage of the honeymoon period, everything will depend upon the manifesto that is at present being drafted by the usual suspects (probably Anthony Albanese, Bill Shorten and/or Mark Arbib).

Once again, principle will have nothing to do with it. Winning is what counts.

Gillard's best asset is the clownish leader of the Opposition, and its untenable position on climate change.

Rudd's catastrophic fall in the polls was a direct consequence of his abandonment of his climate change program. Though the media might continue to treat man-made climate change as an open question, the voters do not.

Gillard should perhaps consider making common cause with ousted Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull as a first step towards revivifying the carbon trading scheme.

She may choose Rudd for Foreign Minister, which would be a good move, not just because he is best qualified, but also because she has nothing to gain by being seen to ditch the leader to whom she was a faithful servant for so long.

Gillard's political career took a long time to lift off. She was rejected three times as an ALP candidate, until she herself drafted rules for affirmative action for the Victorian Labor Party. The aim, modest enough, was to get female candidates pre-selected for 35 per cent of winnable seats within a decade. The rules were adopted and Gillard was finally selected as the candidate for Lalor, which she won in 1998.

Over the years she has become used to intrusive questioning as to why she is not married, why she has no children and what right she thinks she has to represent "working families". She has parried them all with grace.

She has been described as "deliberately barren" as well as by all the pejorative terms reserved for redheads.

She gives the same fitful attention to her wardrobe that a male politician would, and has been vilified for it, but so far she has not capitulated.

We like the way she looks, and we like the way she sounds.

It looks very much as if she will exploit the honeymoon by bringing the election forward, so she can be the people's choice as well as the party's.

What will electing a woman PM do for Australian women?

What has it done for the women of Sri Lanka, India, Israel, the Central African Republic, Great Britain, Portugal, Bolivia, Dominica, Norway, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands Antilles, Pakistan, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, France, Poland, Canada, Burundi, Rwanda, Turkey, Bulgaria, Haiti, Guyana, Bermuda, Sao Tome, Peru, Mozambique, Ukraine, South Korea, Jamaica, Moldova, and Trinidad and Tobago? All these countries have elected female prime ministers. New Zealand has elected two.

It isn't itself an inevitable outcome of improved status of female citizens, and does not result in such improvements.

Sweden, the paradise of women, with 45 per cent women MPs, more than any other country in the world, has never elected a woman PM. And Australia has never elected one either.

Amid the trumpeting about the amazingness of Gillard's promotion in such a male-dominated country, it is easy to forget that the adult population of Australia is more than half female. If women voted for women, governments the world over would be dominated by women.

Men rule because women let them. Male misogyny is real enough, and it has dreadful consequences, but female misogyny is what keeps women out of power.

If women trusted women to do jobs like the one Gillard has undertaken, we might expect radical changes in priority, changes upon which the survival of the world depends.

We might begin to think of solutions to conflict that don't involve the killing, wounding and traumatising of entire civilian populations, we might not send teenagers to be blown up by IEDS, we might think it was better to be healthy than rich.

Psephologists tell us that women vote conservatively.

The movement of so many old Left political parties away from socialism and towards the "middle way" has been blamed on women voters.

We were told that a politician's haircut is of more relevance to the female electorate than his policies. It would be just as silly for women to vote for women simply because they were women.

You get a glimpse of how far we have to go when you realise that we shouldn't give a damn what set of chromosomes a prime minister might have.

In the meantime, go Julia!