Julia Gillard loves cliches: moving forward, working families, the new julia and other senseless gibber. McTernin must have told her there was still good mileage left in the tedious, "sleaze and smear" and "negativity" repetition. Count the repetition!
When will Gillard realise that most of us can't bear to see her or hear her? Julia has become that uninvited, annoying party goer who hangs around like the smell of stale grog, long after the drunks have gone home. Fewer than ever believe anything she says. McTernin is leading labor over the cliff.
Highlights from the Prime Minister’s interview Sunday with Paul Bongiorno on Meet the Press: Compiled by Andrew Bolt
HOST: Well at the end of the year, at the end of the Parliamentary session, it seems that the AWU slush fund affair is inconclusive… Wouldn’t a short, sharp inquiry, an independent inquiry, judicial inquiry, end the matter?
PM: ... Australians are rightly sick of this campaign of sleaze and smear… Mr Abbott’s made it perfectly clear that he’s going to stay wedded to this sleaze and smear, not only now, but even if he was elected Prime Minister. The driving force of his Prime Ministership would be continuing the sleaze and smear.
HOST: ... A new promise from Tony Abbott is that if he wins the election, he will have a judicial inquiry into this issue....
PM: Mr Abbott is now going to ask the Australian people in 2013 to vote for him on the basis that the centre of his Prime Ministership would be continuing this personal campaign of sleaze and smear… I think Australians are heartily sick of this, Paul; heartily sick of this negative, personality-based politics from Mr Abbott. We’ll let him just carry on with all that sleaze and smear…
HOST: And we will talk about that, Prime Minister, but there’s a Galaxy Poll this morning in the News Limited papers – it finds 31 per cent believe you’ve been economical with the truth. Thirty one per cent believe you’ve lied. Only 21 per cent think you’ve been completely honest. And the poll says 60 per cent want a full account in the Parliament. Will you deliver a full account in the Parliament?
PM: ...I am not going to become bogged down in Mr Abbott’s campaign of sleaze and smear. The fact that he’s got no positive plans for the nation’s future is his problem and a matter for him…
HOST: Prime Minister, it’s a very big allegation for the Opposition to make, that you misled the WA Corporate Affairs Commissioner. Now union sources tell me – union people I’ve spoken to – is that it’s very unusual for the name of the union to be put on these associations or accounts that are used and, as you’ve told press conferences, every union does it, but it’s unusual to put the union’s name in the name of the association, and that’s where the misleading comes into it.
PM: Paul, this is all sleaze and smear from Mr Abbott and his team, because they haven’t got anything positive to say. I did not do anything wrong. The Opposition spent the week in overreach and then humiliating backdown… It just wants the sleaze and smear to keep going… Their political strategy is one of negativity…
HOST: More than 30,000 boat people have arrived since Labor came to power, and 1,000 have drowned.... Prime Minister, November was the latest record month for boat arrivals, none of your policies have worked at stopping the boats, stopping the arrivals. Is it time to consider Temporary Protection Visas and turning back the boats, considering they’re the only policies you haven’t yet tried, and the ones that you have tried have failed?
PM: Temporary Protection Visas didn’t work when they were part of our nation’s policy last time… Every step of the way, of course, we continue to encounter negativity from the Opposition, always negativity…
