The Rooty Hill Experiment Massive Fail....Why? No One's Listening
Apart from the fact this trip was doomed from the start, the conduct of it ensured more bad publicity. Her office seemed to be terrified that the Prime Minister might meet an ordinary citizen in an unscripted circumstance. Here she was, staying next door to one of the largest registered clubs in Australia, and she sought to avoid it like the plague…
She could find time for a dinner with the mummy bloggers who seem increasingly influential but she failed to do the obvious. Particularly for a Labor leader, the chance to dine in the bistro with ordinary punters you would have thought would be one not to miss.
An $8 chicken schnitzel with the mob while sipping a cool beer would seem to be a no-brainer. Not for our Julia, though… Sure, she avoided the inevitable ugly confrontation, but she left voters believing that she thought she was above them or that they who had put her in her job in the first place were too dangerous to be trusted.
Then there is the mad, unfocussed spending of money Labor doesn’t actually have:
Not only will Gillard and Wayne Swan have to find $15 billion worth of cuts just to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski reforms, Gillard announces another billion or two almost every day. She kicked off her week in the west with a huge promise to raise the height of Warragamba Dam. Within hours of the promise being made it became apparent that she expected the state government to pay for almost all of it and in any event the cost of the exercise had been significantly underestimated.
The problem for her is that the promises come and go so quickly. Virtually no one believes her, so within 24 hours of a promise being made the press drops off and what was supposed to lift Labor’s flagging heartland vote disappears as well.
The Australian.
