I am amazed that the author of this article cannot realise that the reign of Gillard, a total incompetent,(let's hope it comes to an end soon), has fouled for any other woman in the future a tilt at PM in this country. She has proven to be indigestible in whatever way she us served up. A mistake in every way.

That having been said, as a devious political operator with the Zionists pulling the Obama Washington sideshow strings and engineering the Rudd execution, she does have some capability to make a point or two, most based on lies, some on absolute stupidity (the Education Revolution...wait until that hits the airways) and now the carbon fiasco, painted into a corner from which she cannot escape. Her behaviour makes Rudd look like a saint, makes Howard's sickly "man of steel" pale when compared to the Zionist war dance in the Oval (not Opal) office and her take on really fair, honest and humanitarian foreign policy considerations makes her a living joke, if it all wasn’t so serious. And now, trying to consolidate her position with the US by suggesting a military presence in this country, selling off our independence for once and for all.

That will never happen, Ms Gillard, even with the US -compromised Arbib in their pocket.
What a messy bunch of NSW right wingers are now warming their backsides in the Federal club. That’s how they do it....with the interests of this country secondary to foreign interests and personal power.

So Keneally just doesn't have enough dirty Australian history to mix it with such people and probably never will. She is an amateur, a pretty little temporary appointment in NSW, dictated to as is the norm in that crippled state with even that well beyond her grasp. She might be admired by Bob Hawke but she’s the right shape for that honour.

For the serious rusted on Labor voters, if they are any left, start looking for someone who is not pretty, knows and understands people, is strong–willed and intelligent and available.

We’ll vote for him in 2023.

Tess Lawrence,

The politician, L’Enfant terrible of Democracy, has to be locked into a Lunatics' Asylum and left there until manageable.

In the hands of politicians governments cannot be but destructive, unjust and murderous.

Or should it be the other way around, and anyone who votes a politician to power needs that treatment until sanity prevails?

Sanity is when we stop waste and destruction, when we reject laws that foster dissent and injustice, when we defuse our armory of weapons.

But, you may say, where would we find fun without the carnivals of election carnivals?.

There are some who wonder why Kenneally did not stay on as leader, to help stabilise the ALP after its thrashing. Was this an abdication of responsibility?
Yes, she was given a poison chalice and knew it. Therefore, why did she compound the disaster by again raisng privatisation, surely the hemlock in the chalice?
Anna Bligh in Queensland, also, and her bottom-feeding antics on privatisation, easily explain why the perception has grown that women politicans are figure heads operating as shopfronts for Fugly faction barons; every one knows the public loaths neoliberalism and for good reason in most cases. In fact the most able and powerful realist women of our time, women like Gillard and Hillary Clinton, have struggled to make the slightest dent in our western political pathologies, thus far. As with the corporate women who made it to the top, the exercise seems to have been negotiated at the cost of the newcomers unconditional subscription to the political, personal and ethical values of the cultural hegemon, whether you care to see that in terms of patriarchy, or capitalism, or corporatism, or pomo "dominance".
The system seems to remain as impervious to basic cultural change as it ever was.

Tess Lawrence says:

"Kristina Keneally may have lost a State but she has gained a Nation."

Whilst I agree she was gracious in defeat, and displayed an acute sense of the theatrical in the choice of the funereal clothing she wore to deliver her concession speech, I am unconvinced as to her value to Australia in Federal politics.

To my mind, she fits the nepotic mould so all-too-prevalent in the ALP these days of being one half of a political 'power couple'. I have read in recent days a description of such as generally being so far out of touch with the lives and day-to-day concerns of ordinary Australians as to be incapable of competently representing them. Just recently I came across an old copy of the Sydney Sun-Herald of 3 April 2005, which I had saved for garden mulching and weed suppression. On page 22 was an item headed "All that glitters", and I quote:

"Meet another of the NSW Labor Party's
golden couples - Ben and Kristina Keneally.
He is executive director for policy strategy
and finance at the NSW Department of Housing
on $200,000 a year. She is the MP for the
south Sydney seat of Heffron on $106,270 a
year plus an electorate allowance of $34,735.
Ben ... works for Housing Minister Joe Tripodi,
head of the Terrigal faction to which the couple
belong. ... "

Kristina entered the Parliament at the 2003 elections, after having earlier won a bitter preselection battle with then-sitting Heffron MP and member of the Brereton dynasty, Deirdre Grusovin. Not a bad seven year stint, all in all, for a girl from Ohio.

Tess Lawrence also says:

"Yes, Kristina can do Canberra. ... If she's
not thinking about it, she should be. ... And
so should the other architects of the failed
Gillard Experiment, like ... Mark Arbib, America's little spy
guy in Oz."

Enough to make one wonder, in a 'designer democracy', how much worse the rout might have been without the operation of Kristina's Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment (Automatic Enrolment) Act 2009.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uak12iuc9OkJ:www.elections.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/84428/NSWEC_Annual_Report_Final_WEB.pdf+NSW+Government+Gazette%2B"Joint+Roll+Agreement"&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&source=www.google.com.au

McReal.

She actually said in her speech to the Press club, that to her dismay her father was a Republican.

Has been.

Smuts said of Churchill, it is the only time in the world’s history where one man saved the world. Yes he made mistakes and as the war continued he lost his edge at times but without him you might now be speaking German.

Rexw

While not arguing with you about Gillards competence, I would argue that you cannot tar all possible woman Prime Ministers with the same brush because of one woman example. If that was the case we would be looking for a gender neutral prime minister, based on the competence of some of the previous male prime Ministers.

Forrest Gumpp.

You say that you are unconvinced as to her value to Australia in Federal politics.
The question I would ask is:
Out of all the federal pollies we have on offer, who would you recommend as a future prime Minister, leaving out the lunatic fringe of Abbott.

The editorial by-line accompanying Tess' article titled 'Kristina's killer heels start the march to the Opal Office' says:

"Even her frenemies think Kristina's
got the right stuff, so why not inject
it in at the highest level?"

Perhaps, in a way, she has already done just that. Not as yet with her personal presence as a declared elected member of the House of Representatives, or Senator, but through something done during the term of the NSW government that bears her name.

Ten days after her having been sworn in as Premier on Friday 4 December 2009, the NSW Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment (Automatic Enrolment) Act 2009 received Royal Assent, on 14 December 2009.

The explanatory notes to the Bill for that Act included this statement:

"The new provisions make it clear that the
[NSW] Electoral Commissioner is to keep and
maintain a roll for each district. The current
practice of a joint Commonwealth-State roll for
each joint subdivision being kept by subdivision
registrars will no longer be continued."

It was a provision of the passage of the legislation that the Act was to come into effect on a day to be proclaimed. The proclamation of the Act was made on 24 September 2010.

It was a provision of the NSW and Commonwealth Joint Roll Agreement then in place that 12 months notice was required to be given of intention to terminate that agreement by either party. I have been unable to find any gazettal of such notice, despite an inference created as to its existence within the URL for the NSWEC Annual Report given in my earlier post. The Commonwealth, still believing itself bound by the agreement may see a requirement to continue to exchange roll information and incorporate names emplaced under NSW automatic enrolment rules upon Commonwealth rolls in effective circumvention of enrolment provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

Names covertly so emplaced could potentially be very helpful in paving the way for those 'killer heels', along with many others, to Canberra in the event of an early Federal election.

Was that the intention?