... into the ground.

Everyone is looking at Gillard or Abbott as though they are the key things that matter.

The life values of a society are lived out in their politicians. Gillard and Abbott are products of those who believe maximising personal benefit defines life. Those around them attempt to be puppeteers controlling them, society acts as though they will solve society’s problems without them having to sweat, to quote one rich Australian ‘government is there to do things for me not to me’.

Both Gillard and Abbott could be removed; but nothing will change because the root malaise is not recognised or dealt with. A society based on individuals maximising personal benefit is not a society. Gillard and Abbott are not the main argument.

Be careful what you wish for Tess.
Give me a hundred Julias rather than one (shudder!) Tony ...

Bring back Malcolm Turnbull please, coz all is forgiven :)

What is it that Julia Gillard is doing so wrong? Handed a poisoned chalice in the first place, she has beaten the odds by staying in power in spite of constant and vitriolic criticisms. Her very real achievements, such as keeping the Government on track since 2010, hampered by a tiny and treacherous majority, are derided. Alone she carries the odium for the brutal deposition of Rudd, when it seems to me - a disinterested observer -that far from being instrumental in that unsavoury episode, she was, like him, a victim of the faceless men who wanted someone to rescue them from the mess they had made. In the best traditions of chaotic Governments when they know they have lost the plot they handed the leadership to a woman, in this case to a woman who was clearly not prepared for it, I say she was not prepared because from what I have seen of Julia if she thought she was in the running for the job she would have prepared for it. They would never have handed the job to a woman in the first place had there been a man available - and prepared- to do the dirty work. I say she was unprepared because I remember her emphatic protestations of loyalty to Kevin Rudd and I remember her colourful and apparently sincere statement (on 17 May 2010 The Age)"There's more chance of me becoming the full-forward for the Dogs (Western Bulldogs AFL team) than there is any chance of a change in the Labor party."

Not a trace of evidence has ever been shown though that Rudd was this supposed tyrant - I suspect the truth is more that he was smarter than the toads who gave us Gillard.

Let's get one thing very clear from the outset - Gillard is racist to the core, I have attended meetings and had talks with her about refugees and the Iraq war that curdled my blood with her total disinterest in anyone not white and "good migrants' like her parents and her.

No PM ever has told refugees they have to stay home and die, not even Howard, yet this one told Sri Lankans to do just that and we now pay more than ever for refugee jails here, in Indonesia and Malaysia than we ever did.

I have never liked her and never will.

But having had a drink with Kevin and listened to and talked to him he is highly intelligent and just plain decent no matter how much the right wing toads in the ALP claim otherwise.

579, thank god for that if she managed to get a job running a school tuck shop, we'll all be doomed.

Suse I'm afraid your taste is all in the wrong place.

When did you first discover this attraction to slimy con men, that you display?