In the Drum this morning, Annabel Crabb critiques an interview on Sixty Minutes last night in which Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson are questioned, apparently mortifyingly for the viewer, about their relationship. It’s degrading, Crabb concludes, and though I didn’t see the interview, I’m sure Crabb’s assessment is spot on.
The question we need to ask is how desperate is this Prime Minister that she allows herself to go on prime time television with her partner to subject both of them to degrading interrogations about their personal lives?
Julia Gillard seriously damaged the dignity of the office of Prime Minister by the manner in which she assumed it. Remember her breathless, hysterical claims that we had lost our way, and she had taken over to help us find it again? It sounded then as if the country was on the brink of destruction thanks to Kevin, and Gillard was here to save us.
Now she seems incapable of exercising any of the discretion and restraint one would hope was second nature to a prime minister when it comes to her personal life and her intimate feelings.
You can’t blame the program. They’re after ratings like any other commercial television station. The responsibility for this self inflicted public humiliation lies solely with Julia Gillard. Its a timely reflection on her lack of judgement, her lack of wisdom, her lack of character, and her increasing desperation about her plummeting popularity, that she now exposes her intimate life for public spectacle as a last resort.
At the very least it’s tacky and embarrassing. At worst, it’s proof that the country is not in serious, capable hands, and that Gillard’s capacity for unwise silliness (first demonstrated in that Women’ s Weekly airbrushed photo shoot) and her lack of sophistication and political judgement are more deeply entrenched than we feared.
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- ‘We won’t marry for political gain’ (heraldsun.com.au)
No Place For Sheep 
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