Peter Beattie suggests Julia Gillard “buys
a house in Queensland” as a means of rebuilding Labor in that state. It’s not
as whacky as it sounds, but not for the reasons Peter suggests. The punters in
the sunshine state don’t need to see any more of the PM; rather she needs to
listen to them.
A month living in a pretty fibro in, say,
Cairns, would do Julia a world of good. She’d pick it up dirt cheap, although
it might still be missing a few tiles on the roof, or indeed the whole roof,
but not to worry. Apart from a day trip out to the reef (she’d have no problem
getting a ticket, tourism numbers are way down) she’ll have time to pop around
to a few backyard barbies where she’ll meet some of the welders, underground
drillers, boiler operators and pipe fitters who are on their way to creating
our national wealth, and explain to them how her carbon and mining taxes won’t
kill the golden goose. She may also care to explain to a large number of her neighbours,
many of whom remain unemployed, why their electricity bills are yet again about
to go through those same freshly-retiled roofs.
She
should also pop down to the local IGA on a regular basis, and see for herself
how difficult most people find it to make ends meet. She might find it tactful
not to mention the hundred million bucks of their tax money that she daily fritters
away on asylum seekers, the mismanagement of border control, wasteful car and
‘green’ subsidies, excessive overseas aid and vanity projects like the NBN.
Also,
listening to plain speaking battlers might make Julia realize, as Anna now
appreciates, that it’s not about demonizing your opponents. It’s about making a
promise one day and breaking it the next.
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