Mixed Feelings

Australia has a new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. She is our first female PM and, as far as I can work out, our first red haired PM. Not that the color of her hair matters, nor does her gender.


I have mixed feelings about this changing of the guard. It all happened so quickly and so stealthily. I feel bad for our ex PM, Kevin Rudd. It almost seems as if the bullies in the playground decided they didn’t like him any more and found someone else to play with. They literally pushed him out of the cubby house without warning. Now if my boys had done that to anyone else I would be storming out at them demanding apologies.

So, I’m unhappy with the process. But if I seriously look at the alternatives, there are none. I am acutely aware that we have an election looming, probably in the next three months, and I am petrified that Australia will vote for Tony Abbott.

A vote for Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party will turn the clock back decades, at least for women. Apparently Abbott believes we are all better if we stay behind our ironing boards:

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up." Later, he said it is “more common to see women ironing,” informing us that it’s the way it works in his house.

Well, it certainly doesn’t work that way in my house. I made sure to teach all my boys how to iron and, if necessary they iron their clothes. But in fact we iron very little. I find if you fold clothes as soon as they come off the line they don’t need ironing. And yes, I am the one to get them off the line. Unless of course I hang the clothes inside and leave them there long enough. In that case the boys just take them off the racks and put them on!

So Tony Abbott prefers his women to be doing housework, not to mention that apparently, according to him, the greatest gift a female can give is her virginity. What? Are women to be valued for nothing more than an unbroken hymen? Does anyone seriously think that how and when a female has sex is more important than how she brings up her children? Or how she contributes to society in general? Or if she is a law abiding citizen?

Oh, and he doesn’t particularly like the homeless either – when asked if he would continue the Rudd Government’s attempt to half homelessness by 2020, he replied in the negative. In justifying his stance, Abbott quoted from the Gospel of Matthew ”The poor will always be with us,” he said, and referred to the fact there is little a government can do for “people who choose to be homeless.” Please tell that to the victims of the GFC who can no longer afford homes to live in!

If Australians have any pride in their country at all, if they want progression and not regression, they will not vote for Tony Abbott. But I’m very afraid…