Friday 2 March 2012

Julia Gillard 'accident prone' on the ropes again

Julie Bishop checkmates Julia Gillard in credibility gap




It's open season on Julia Gillard's character, with the opposition trying to wound her credibility through repetition, regurgitation and alliteration.

Parliament has become the house of nasty, not nice, in the wake of the Carr wreck. Julie Bishop successfully showed yesterday she had mastered her seashells and seashore by reprising a cutting line by Laurie Oakes: the Prime Minister was "silly and slippery and slimy and shifty".


The Deputy Opposition Leader took her cudgel from the doors of Parliament House to question time and revelled in the weapon's versatility. "The pattern of behaviour that is emerging borders on the pathological," Bishop said of Gillard, as she sought to suspend normal programming so the PM could be called upon to explain the circumstances of the "botched attempt" to get Bob Carr to Canberra as foreign minister.


"The PM has turned denying the undeniable into an art form," she said. "The PM, when confronted with indisputable facts, manufactures a version of events that invariably turns out to be the opposite of what is true." And on and on it went, from Gillard's East Timor flap, to the dudding of Andrew Wilkie, the Australia Day riot and betrayal of Kevin Rudd.


Peter Slipper asked Bishop to withdraw a remark only once, which seemed an arbitrary call, given the multiple ways Bishop was allowed to suggest her opponent was a liar. Although it was not a censure motion, it sounded awfully like the "slag and bag" the Speaker is hoping to outlaw. Bishop argued she was simply asking Gillard "to explain why she seeks to construct versions of events when the truth will do". "Members will recall the Prime Minister telling us that she was a prize winner in Bible studies," she said in climax. "Perhaps she might remember Matthew 12:37: 'By your words you will be justified; by your words you will be condemned'."


The motion was lost 73-68.
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