I get it. It is okay to call Mr Howard a lying rodent or to critize him personally for his age or being short but its not okay to attack Ms Gillard because she is female. Only the feminist get to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not. Sexism will always exist because men and women are different if you have not noticed. When its a woman making personal cracks about men it is politics but when men make remarks about women it is sexism. This article is funny at best.

One of the correspondents in the Advertiser made an interesting remark this morning (Tuesday), saying that Ms Rein's decision to sell her business for her husband "and for the country" was presumptuous and an insult to all women. I could not agree more. Ms Scutt's views are not much better and either show a remarkable lack of understanding of how the ALP works or too much bias to be worthy of consideration.
Coming from someone with Ms Scutt's experience and intelligence I can only presume the latter.
We have made it hard enough for women in the past and Julia Gillard's insistence on a back to the future union regime can only make it harder not easier. Ms Rein could not have done what she did under the proposals the ALP are putting forward.

If this article was anything more than an apology piece for the ALP the author might have mentioned Rudd and the ALP leaking the story about Kelly Hoare's sex drive to destroy her reputation and kill off any sympathy for her.
Feminists were very quiet on this one. And lets not forget Labors abuse of Sandra Nori recently

Runner, you don’t get it really.

The issue turns on the question: when is a personal attribute relevant to public life? Discrimination is wrong, and usually unlawful, in certain areas if it is based on irrelevant attributes like race, religion or sex. Unless there are inherent sexually-based requirements in a job (e.g. supervising the changeroom in a women’s underwear department) the best person should get the job, not the best man or best woman. Otherwise discrimination occurs.

It’s OK to call Howard a lying rodent because he is a liar and his lies clearly impact on Australian life. That’s a relevant attribute that can be demonstrated with evidence. (Dunno about the ‘rodent’ bit – seems unfair to rats, somehow.)

But it’s not OK to criticize Mr Howard because he is short or of a certain age (or race, sex, religion etc) unless it can be demonstrated that these characteristics are relevant to his role as a politician. (Opinion: maybe his age is beginning to tell on him with his recent increasingly poor performance – but maybe he’s just rattled.)

By the same standard, it is not okay to attack Ms Gillard because she is female (or Mr Howard because he is not). When Mr Hockey answered media questions about why Gillard’s IR policy was getting more support than his, he was wrong to attribute that to Gillard’s sex or physical appearance. That was irrelevant. So was Bill Heffernan’s gratuitous remarks about her having no children. Totally irrelevant to her duties as a politician.

Your somewhat pathetic special pleading – “Only the feminists get to decide what is morally acceptable and what is not” – cuts no ice. In fact, most of the moral guardians in Australia (e.g. priests, imams, politicians, media editors and philosophy teachers) are men.

Likewise, your deterministic claim that “Sexism will always exist because men and women are different…” is foolish and wrong-headed. Sexism exists because men and women are treated badly on the basis of their sex when that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. Value judgments should be made on merit, not gender.

You start off with a good point runner. Targeting someone for their sex is no different to targeting someone because they are short. Politics is a dirty game, and most have mud on their hands as well as on their face - male/female, short/tall, old/young. Actually I'm surprised that the government is making more use of comparing Rudd to Latham and arguing that both are/were too young to be PM. When your Howards age you could easily make that argument, and we all saw the spectacle last time when the ALP tried for a young and dynamic leader.

Rudd and Rein face a problem that confronts many couples. Often two careers will come into conflict with each. One might soak up extraordinary amounts of time, another might be faced with a career that will only progress with an interstate or international move. Someone needs to sacrifice for the marriage to work. I am certainly not proposing that this should always be the woman. But in this case it appears that this is the agreement that this couple has come to. They tried to continue with both, and worked out the hard way that the two are on a collision course. And they chose that Rein sell the Australian arm of the business (and guess what, she will continue to own the international part of the business - she's only divesting the direct conflict of interest).

runners comment reminded me of the longstanding attacks on Ammanda Vanstone regarding her looks. I don't recall if pollies were in on that in public but attacking how she looks has been a common item for years.

Do we as a nation consider those kind of attacks Ok when the target is someone we don't like anyway?

I suspect that personal attacks will stay with us while we keep voting for politicians who use those techniques.

R0bert