The collapse of the Wilkie-Gillard pact

Well, I suppose just like the deal between Hitler and Stalin in 1939, the deal between Andrew Wilkie and Julia Gillard did not have an indefinite life, and all is over now.

Having seduced the heavy drinking Peter Slipper away from the coalition (and I have been told exactly what is in that infamous video believed to be circulating which Slipper is so nervous about, so I can understand why he would want to drink even more than usual), Andrew Wilkie is no longer of any use to Gillard.

It makes for a very interesting time for the Gillard government, with the next federal election due sometime in the spring of 2013 - now doesn't time fly.

I would have to say that Whitlam did have his good points (he did end conscription, cut tariffs, and introduce a lot of reforms to administrative law to make the burgeoning government more accountable for its actions), and that Hawke-Keating were pretty good on economic reform.

Rudd-Gillard however, has been a government which has been running on empty since it started - wanting to be in government for the simple sake of being in government, rather than to do any good for the Australian nation. It's hard to think of any worse government than this mob - perhaps Fraser or Gorton-McMahon - and it does take a bit of head scratching to think of any government which has lurched from crisis to crisis the way that Rudd and now our Julia has done.

It makes for quite some comedy though - luckily all the work done in the 25 years of Hawke, Keating & Howard will take a while to come undone, so Julia's incompetance is not yet really going to hurt us too much. The betrayal of Andrew Wilkie's deal on poker machines would not be such a big deal (I think it is definitely not an issue for federal government involvement), except that it shows Julia to be both sneaky and weak. Listening to that highly annoying Penny Wong whine that there was not the support in the House of Reps for Wilkie's plans just shows how weak Gillard's government is.

However, there is one thing I want to see far more than Gillard's government defeated, and that is to see Rob Oakeshot unseated. That chap seems interested in only one thing - feathering his own nest - and has no principles. Listening to his justifications as to why he abandoned the national party, who had (a) given him a job as a staffer, (b) given him a safe state seat, and (c) promoted him to state shadow cabinet, because he didn't really believe in their politics (he only went and worked for them because he needed a job), just goes to demonstrate what a shallow, self-interested, disloyal and unprincipled person he is.

Whilst on the subject of the coming election - I think I will make one reflection on Gillard's stupid decision to call the last election for August 2010 (the only August election we ever have had). Expecting one's supporter base to turn out in deep winter, when it is so wet and cold and dark, to man those polling booths and do all the hack work, just shows that Gillard has nothing but contempt for the average ALP member who does the leg work for her. It must be so long since she had any connection with those people that she does not understand the degree of hardship she puts her elderly supporters through when she calls an election for the most uncomfortable time of the year.