PM offers no hope to social Left

MORE of the "real" Julia Gillard is now displayed, with the Prime Minister offering her fullest exposition for rejecting both euthanasia and same-sex marriage.

Ms Gillard, in fact, is not the social progressive many Labor backers and politicians have wrongly assumed. On the contrary, she has deep roots as a cultural conservative and traditionalist.

This is obvious across a range of issues - her belief in personal responsibility, rejection of the option of state-sanctioned killing, support for biblical and cultural dimensions of the Western canon and the belief that social heritage should keep marriage to an institution between a man and a woman.

Indeed, on such issues she seems aligned with John Howard.

Ms Gillard signalled on the Sky News Australian Agendaprogram yesterday that her views on same-sex marriage and euthanasia were deeply held. This puts her in direct conflict with the social agenda pursued this term by the Greens and much of the Labor Party.

On same-sex marriage, Ms Gillard said: "I find myself on the conservative side because of the way our society is and how we got here. There are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future."

This allows for no compromise. For social progressives, the news on Ms Gillard just gets worse. She is an atheist who likes the Bible.

She said: "I think it's important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I'm an advocate of religion - clearly, I'm not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture.

"It's impossible to understand Western literature without having that key of understanding the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them and deconstructs them and brings them back together." The Prime Minister was happy to accept the brand of "traditionalist". She puts this into a personal narrative too often ignored in assessments of Ms Gillard's outlook.

Explaining her family background in a pro-union, pro-Labor, conservative household, Ms Gillard said: "We believed in politeness and thrift and fortitude and doing duty and discipline. These are things that were part of my upbringing. They're part of who I am today."

On euthanasia, Ms Gillard was sympathetic to those people who "may want that choice". But she rejected the argument. She had "never been able to satisfy myself" that the policy of the pro-euthanasia advocates contained "sufficient safeguards".

Her concern is that euthanasia laws "open the door to exploitation and perhaps callousness towards people in the end stage of life."

It is an important comment. At a time when support for euthanasia is growing in some state ALP governments, Ms Gillard has sounded a clear warning against it.

The broader point is that the Greens social agenda will run into Ms Gillard's resistance as a political conservative on such issues. Her views will become prominent because, as she says, they are tied to her past and identity. This will become a serious problem for the Greens and Labor's progressive wing.