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27 comments:
Nice. And how's this: if you live in central city, you are represented by women at every level of govt, from Clover Moore on the City Council, to Kristina Keneally, Julia Gillard, Quentin Bryce, to the Queen...
Love the labels
Tim left out Verity Firth and Tanya Plibersek!
That picture gives me a tingle.
My only thought (betraying my kiwi roots) is about why this day has been such a long time coming.
Well varrious "left" bloggers seem to be in absolute panic mode. The rolling of the Ruddster has been compared to "the dismissal" FFS by people (men) who have in the past seemed far more intelligent than that. Also the "Red Barren" slurs start ted to emerge really quickly, right on cue in fact. I am, to say the least, surprised by the collective disapointment. I am hopeful that Julia is not only smart enuff to avoid being controlled by "factions" (shock horror) but also left enough to gradually introduce reforms that the Ruddster, being a godbotherer, would never ever have considered. I have not voted Federally for the last 20 years. I have abstained and paid the fine (voting informally seems to me to be a cop out). I will however be voting for the ALP next time, on the strength of a real politian in the top job, rather than yet another christian. Australia has a chance here to face the future as a secular progressive nation, it would be churlish and sexist to vote any other way. IMHO of course. Best.
And the shades of Vita Goldstein and Catherine Helen Spence were there too, applauding from somewhere near the ceiling.
Fark, indeed.
About time.
Yes I'm all in favour of the sisterhood too but you simply cannot equate women with good political leadership - think Margaret Thatcher!
@ Di - do you mean all women are bad leaders or that you think Margaret Thatcher was a bad leader? She was after all only one woman.
We also have Angela Merkel, JohannaMary McAleese (Ireland), Sigurdardottir (Iceland), Portia Simpson Miller (Jamaica) currently in power. (Plus many others) Helen Clark until recently was a very good leader for NZ IMHO also Benazhir Butto (Pakistan), Chandrika Kumaratunga (Sri Lanka) There are quite a few women in power around the world at the moment, and many good ones who have been in power so taking Margaret Thatcher as the stereotype is a bit shortsighted.
I am not making any assumptions about their policies or politics, simply that there was and are more women in power than just Margaret Thatcher.
"you simply cannot equate women with good political leadership"
Whoever said you could? All I've done is post a photograph I like.
Such a great picture, and something almost unimaginable before 2007, I think.
Word verification - fully!
Whee-hee!
I've met Julia a couple of times and she's great. Really smart,very good with people and very funny with a definite larrikin streak.
Of course like all pollies she'll stuff up and break the hearts of her fans.
But I do have hopes of her at least changing around perceptions of what a politicial leader should and could be. And watching her drive Abbott up the wall is going to be fun. As the comment bitch puts it, he's going to be "rebsibl".
Plus she's a redhead. Bonus!
I'm not saying that women are not good leaders but I wouldn't applaud them just because they're women and Maggie was a case in point.
I think Julia has the potential to be a very good leader but the manner of her ascension to the job has left a bad taste in my mouth. Catherine Spence and Vida Goldstein may be there applauding from the ceiling, along with Mark Abib and Bill Shorten, while champagne corks pop in mining boardrooms and wherever the liberals hang out. After all, there's no bigger political scalp than that of the Prime Minister.
It's a nice photo but a lot can be read into it.
Again, who said anything about applauding them just because they are women? I was applauding the occasion; I was very, very happy and emotional to see the first female Governor-General swearing in the first female Prime Minister. How it happened and to what particular personalities is a completely different issue.
I don't find it easy to separate the picture from the context of events in which it arose.
Well, I think this was about the best possible resolution to a very messy situation. Now, if Julia had won by just one vote, it would have been an entirely different matter ...
"...I was very, very happy and emotional to see the first female Governor-General swearing in the first female Prime Minister. How it happened and to what particular personalities is a completely different issue..."
Hear hear - and as for the last line, I am somewhat astonished at the incoherent and competing tropes of gender betrayal, political betrayal, indeterminate gender (the empty fruit bowl + womb thing), and whatever the hell TAbboooottt is crapping on about - not forgetting the miners who are actually stupid enough to be publicly claiming Rudd's scalp. Hopefully that will finish off any public support for their it's mine, it's all mine... routine.
Am not just applauding this kind of foto but COLLECTING them for special news box (I fear I need a serious vertical file...)
Thanks for this one - it is completely wonderful. I especially loved them standing up and talking straight after, and the handshake. Wow.
I mentally stand up and salute every time I see this scene. Huzzar!
WV: ininate. Is that a word? It should be.
Yes, yes, yes to most comments on this thread. But, as an aside, please Bernice, don't refer to the mining executives who run mining companies as 'miners'. Those execs etc don't actually do any of the (dangerous) work of mining.
I'll play Hattie, and second the comment above by Eric Sykes.
W V = kinicat
Great photo for a great occasion.
There's a lot to like about Gillard, and I've anticipated her eventual leadership for yonks.
I know that the pragmatics of politics mean that she will eventually disappoint me, because all politicians do.
But I'm still a fan, and I'm thrilled that, as others have said elsewhere, we now finally live in a country where young girls can see that women can lead us.
I have a pristine Sydney Morning Herald which bears the image of Julia Gillard looking skyward, beaming, while Quentin Bryce gazes warmly on her.
Amazing moment. Just amazing.
Yes. And what Eric Sykes said upthread; I'm absolutely intrigued by the amount of bile being thrown around online by various people, most of whom are young to middle-aged men establishing/reinforcing their Left credentials by bitching and moaning about how she'll lock up asylum seekers and bend over for the mining execs and kowtow to Israel and generally do a lot of other horrid fascist things. Will she? Why don't we wait and see?
All this business about a tiny cabal of faceless men is starting to get right up my nose, too; anyone would think no vote had been taken. The fact that Rudd would have done so badly votes-wise that he wisely withdrew, and the fact that his treacherous sending-round of a golden-boy mentee he saw and nurtured as a mini-Kev to spy on her was clearly the last straw after her long exercise of patience, tolerance and loyalty, are being resolutely deflected and ignored.
Enough with the back-stabbing trope, the classic one for cowardice, too. There was no 'back' and no cowardice about it. If she stabbed him at all, she stabbed him in the chest, and if, like Keating in his last days, he refused to see what was coming, then surely the fault is at least partly his, just as it was partly Keating's, for not understanding the effects of his own behaviour.
Agree with Kerryn's latest comment completely. Some of the commentary from the so-called left has been appalling. The instant descent to cynicism is almost unbelievable. The default position for 'serious' commentary is that you presume the worst, and everyone was rushing to show their 'serious' credentials. How very grown-up of them all.
Well, I wouldn't want to rush into cynicism, but I would note that I heard on ABC (NSW) central coast radio, Julia saying to the announcer, Scott Levi, that "of course" the children at the local private Grammar School were brighter than the children at the local state school, and I found this statement to be shocking.
Julia has broken my heart already twice, but no more than any of the other Labor pollies, and perhaps she'll find a better voice from here on in.
Di, I think you're missing the point. We should be celebrating because women are 51-52% of the population and so if there have not been any women PMs before now it is a screaming indication that something is radically wrong. Yes? The idea that a woman PM is "no better" is part of the point - a woman shouldn't have to prove herself better to get the same position. We need women and men with the same amounts of talent to rise equally.
The fact that we hope Gillard will be an OK PM is a different topic entirely.
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