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Samizdata quote of the day

Much like Germany has been forced to grapple with its past — it can neither ignore it, nor celebrate it — Australia’s treatment of Julia Gillard should never be hidden, and certainly not for reasons such as “Everyone hates Julia Gillard”.

Caroline Zielinksi, quoted by Tim Blair.

22 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Mr Ed

    From the main article, this is the crux of it.

    Denying Gillard a telemovie is tantamount to denying her even the smallest of dignities against a merciless machine of hatred which would have ground a weaker person into the ground — literally.

    OK, let’s make a real piece of TV fiction, an alternative reality in which the mother of Neil Kinnock’s hitherto unknown illicit lovechild from a teenage liaison (impossible and daft, I know, and fiction, but we need a story) flees Wales for Australia with her infant daughter, only for that child to become Federal Prime Minister of Australia, surpassing the biological father she never knew, and reaping all the scorn he would have had, had he made in to Downing Street.

    I’m copyrighting the plot, but a packet of cheese and onion crisps might be a tempting offer.

  • Regional

    Julia Gillard was sacked by the Labor Party to save the seats of 14 ministers by their own reckoning.
    Pretty funny considering the MSM and ABC constantly campaigned for her and relentlessly attacked Tony Abbott.
    Many Astrayans found her appalling.

  • Murder millions or ignore a failed lefty politician in Australia? Yeah, totally comparable, I thought so immediately!

  • Regional

    Mister Ed, that would be surreal fiction.

  • the frollickingmole

    I actually attended the demo where the notorious “ditch the witch” poster was put up.

    All the twitterati and presstitutes had a collective dose of the vapours over such a “misogynistic’ and unprecedented, horrific and terrible sign…never before had such abuse been displayed publicly against and Australian prime Minister…etc.

    Luckily the left are so much more decorous and restrained when voicing their opinions.

    Lets not forget one of her first moves as a lawyer.
    She went to kalgoorlie (a mining town) to tell the workers there that rolling over the “widows and orphans” pension fund into her lovers slush fund was perfectly legal and above board.

    Heres a contemporary newspaper report of the time, the money went missing.
    Now imagine an evil “rightie’ politician with that sort of background.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    Gosh, is there any mention of how she elevated herself to the top job, by organizing a coup against Prime Minister Rudd? One barnacled-on leftie, Phillip Adams, even claimed that he quit the Labor Party over this act!
    Is there any mention of how she stayed in power because of the votes of one man with misogynist leanings, even whilst she was claiming that she knew what misogyny was and she had been oppressed by it all her political life?
    Probably not.
    And in one sense, the writer is right- we will always look on those three years with a sense of revulsion, and will have a hard time putting it behind us.

  • the frollickingmole

    Might also be worth looking at the past of our head of the human rights commission here in Oz.

    Thats the one who dumped her disabled daughter .

    Note the parts that are her own words, not made up.

    What makes it so pertinent today is Triggs’ description of her own treatment of one of her children, daughter Victoria, who was born in 1984 with a profound chromosomal disorder known as Edwards syndrome.

    “Victoria was as severely retarded as anyone who is still alive can be,” she told her interviewer.

    “Her condition usually results in the death of the baby before or shortly after birth. In fact, the doctors kept saying, ‘Just leave her in the corner and she’ll die.’ So, it sounds terrible, but I’d look at Victoria and think, ‘Well, you’re going to die, so I’m not going to invest too much in you.’ But she didn’t die. She had this inner rod of determination, and she simply refused to die.”

    When Victoria was about six months of age, Triggs and her then partner took her home from hospital and with the assistance of the Uniting Church, found a family who took over her primary care until her death at the age of 21.

    Triggs said the arrangement bothered her but rationalised it thus: “Yes, because you have a child and you expect to look after her. But in the end I simply made the judgment that I would rather put my time into my other children and family, because I also never believed she would live to that age.”

  • Lee Moore

    Ah yes, frollickingmole, the authentic mark of the lefty intellectual. Humanity in the abstract ? Love and respect. Real ones in the flesh ? Not so much.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Perry de Havilland writes, “Murder millions or ignore a failed lefty politician in Australia? Yeah, totally comparable, I thought so immediately!”

    Stalin said, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

    Caroline Zielinski, a woman so indifferent to human life outside her narrow political concerns that when it comes to comparisons grotesquely dismissive of mass murder she actually outdoes Stalin.

  • Backstabber Gillard got backstabbed.

    Sounds more like Karma to me, I doubt any Australian outside the collection of Labor MP’s involved will lose any sleep over it.

    As for the Australian electorate somehow persecuting Labor for their actions? I doubt it. When she started screaming misogyny to silence debate she showed her true colours.

    Nobody likes a screeching harpy.

  • Paul Marks

    Actually it is the present Prime Minister of Australia (Mr Abbott) who is savagely and unfairly attacked by the media and so on.

    The former socialist Prime Minister was supported by the media.

    Claiming that the lady was persecuted is a lie – she was supported (often to an absurd level).

    And comparing her treatment to the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis is absurd.

  • I actually attended the demo where the notorious “ditch the witch” poster was put up.

    Terrible, shocking, acts of misogyny. Thank goodness the Left would distance themselves from any such attacks on any former female British Prime Ministers.

  • Thank goodness the Left would distance themselves from any such attacks on any former female British Prime Ministers.

    She was made of iron, so that does not count. Or something.

  • PeterT

    To be honest, frollickingmole, there is not enough in that quote to allow me to confidently condemn her action. No doubt there were many factors of which we are not aware, and she simply took what she considered the best option for her family and her daughter. Admittedly the way she talks about it seems quite cold, but that might just be her way of dealing with it.

  • Snorri Godhi

    She was made of iron, so that does not count. Or something.

    As we all know, witches are made of wood.

  • pete

    Have the Australians learned nothing from their dreadful treatment of the Aborigines?

    It seems not if they can commit another atrocity like this.

  • RAB

    How odd. People were falling over themselves to commission programmes on Maggie Thatcher, provided they were Hatchet Jobs not Hagiographies, of course.

  • Michael Jennings

    Hitler has had plenty of telemovies. Of course Julia should get one too.

    Paul Keating had a musical, too, but he deserved it.

  • Yeah, Snorri, a contradiction – who’d have thunk it?

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Michael Jennings, goodness, I had forgotten that. Keating! A sample.

  • the frollickingmole

    PeterT

    I had an Uncle and Auntie who nursed a severely disabled child for 2 decades and saw the toll it took on them, I dont actually blame her for making the decision.

    What is more offensive is the press gallery which would turn the outrage up to 11 if this wasnt a “left” political appointee. Its the double standards, extremely blatant, with which they protect the “right” sort of people.
    It deforms the body politic.

  • Nicholas (Self-Sovereignty) Gray

    Pete, we Australians avoid such questions by blaming it all on the perfidious British, who left us this mess when they ran for home in 1901. Or we can do what the British do, and blame the French.