Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Kevin Rudd Asked Driver for Sex...Oh...Wait...+ How Affirming is the Action?

That should read "Kelly Hoare Asked Driver for Sex". But you may not necessarily make that distinction were you to have briefly seen the blaring headline on Sunday's Terror.

See, apparently Kelly Hoare is a 'Rudd MP', not merely a 'Labor MP' - or, forbid, just 'Federal MP'. Despite the fact that prior to this story being released, Hoare had just been shafted for Greg Combet, so she wasn't even an MP anymore, let alone a 'Rudd MP'.

Still, guilt by association and all that - even when there's no actual association. Something tells me Kev's meeting with Uncle Rupert didn't go quite as well as his smirk implied.

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Anyway, this segues nicely into a debate currently under way about women in politics and affirmative action - an 'insulting relic', according to TUAI Janet.

Firstly, with regard to Hoare: If she is guilty of what she's been accused - asking a driver to 'come inside and fuck me' - then she's not fit to be a MP, and the Labor Party did the right thing shafting her, even if it was just so they could install Melbourne-based Combet in a safe NSW seat. Can you imagine the furore - quite rightly, too - if the gender roles had been reversed here, and it was for example Wayne Swan or Tony Abbott making the same request of a female driver? So I don't have much sympathy for Hoare, victim or otherwise of the Labor machine.

Now, with regard to Labor's affirmative action program: It's fair to say I have mixed feelings about this. I don't think we can be so naive as to think that gender equality has been completely achieved and made affirmative action programs in politics redundant just yet - and I probably won't really believe it until such time as we have a female Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister (go Jules) and/or female premiers who haven't been propped there merely as scapegoats for the administrative debacles of their predecessors.

So I'm not opposed to the concept per se - but I question how it is applied within Labor. Think of some of the recent candidate announcements for the 2007 election. Who have been given either a safe or winnable seat to contest? Greg Combet (Charlton), George Newhouse(Wentworth), Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong), Jason Clare (Blaxland), Gary Gray (Brand) and Michael Kelly (Eden-Monaro), for starters.

But who've been given difficult or virtually impossible seats to contest? Mia Handshin (Sturt), Nicole Cornes (Boothby) and Belinda Neal (Robertson).

Do you see a pattern?

If Labor's AA program is merely a tokenistic pretence of support, which doesn't actually translate to installing quality female candidates into winnable Labor seats, then it's pretty useless. Similarly, Labor is only shooting itself in the foot if its AA program leads to a lightweight like Nicole Cornes getting a gig, while a quality candidate like Warren Mundine misses out to a fairly ineffectual hack like Julia Irwin.

But I don't think the faults of AA as applied by Labor are of themselves cause to dismantle the program altogether. The fact is women bear extra pressures in what is still a male-dominated, chauvinistic (in Labor and Liberal at least) industry. Penny Wong's take on criticisms of Cornes sums these pressures up quite well. While Labor loyalties prevent Wong from identifying the more legitimate critcisms of Cornes' apparent ignorance of policy and issues, she makes the valid point that

the pressure (on women) is on to be all things to all people. Given that this is an impossible task, women are then often criticised for not measuring up.

They’re either too pretty, too young, too fat or too unmarried. You have to ask whether male candidates get the same sort of treatment.


Furthermore, as Wong argues, sometimes the greatest critics of women are, sadly, other women. They're in an almost impossible situation, not just with men but with the sisterhood too.

And double standards are rife. It was offensive to read the Murdoch rags repeatedly refer to 'Julia' in their headlines when Gillard was under scrutiny for her 'jihad on business' comments. Would the same papers ever refer to 'John', 'Tony' or 'Kevin' so patronisingly? Don't think so.

So for the moment, I think the extra support is still needed, and I agree with affirmative action 'in theory'. But 'in theory', Communism works. 'In theory.' In practice, it doesn't seem to be working quite so well for Labor.

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posted by Sam @ Tuesday, May 08, 2007 8 comments

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Note to Labor: Suck less

You know, Labor really isn't doing itself any favours at the moment. Nevermind the very disappointing resolution on federal same-sex couple laws, they've now chosen Nicole Cornes to run against Andrew Southcott for Boothby, in a bizarre move for which there is only one word - and it's not even a word - 'wtf'?

First some background for non-Adelaideans in the audience: Nicole Cornes is the upgrade wife of Graham Cornes, a Local Legend, or so he'd probably like to think. Being Adelaide, he's a LL because he used to play footy, and now he sells cars and hosts a show on 5AA. N Cornes, meanwhile, writes a column for the Adelaide Sunday Mail and runs her own business.

But how's this for less-than-appropriate criteria for running not just for federal politics, but for Labor?
  • She's a self-confessed ex-Lib voter who as recently as 2004 was writing that John Howard had proved himself to be a fine PM;

- "I won't have to answer any tough questions, no hard-hitting questions, will I?"

- (to ABC local radio) "I have done a quick phone call with 5AA. Your show is different. You ask serious questions - they're not going to give me any hard questions, it's just going to be a soft interview."

- "(I am) not prepared for the onslaught of straight into policy and straight into in-depth conversations regarding issues I really don't have a grasp of, yet."

Wowsers, that is not good.

Of course, the starving Howard meeja lapdogs have pounced quickly - and if they were able to criticise without whipping out their shrunken man-bits to jerk-off over Cornes' (apparent) physical attractiveness, they might actually have a credible argument. It's really difficult to fathom why on earth Labor has gone with a person who clearly has no idea what is involved in federal politics or what voters expect from their elected representatives, other than a hope that she can cruise into the seat on her (Adelaide-only) celebrity - and that maybe male voters in Boothby are as lecherous as Andrew Bolt.

And most frustratingly, Boothby is precisely the sort of seat for which Labor should be reserving its A-material. It's fairly safe Liberal, yes, but it's affluent inner city, and full of doctors' wives (for want of a better term) who've had enough of Howard and who feel Rudd is similar enough, yet different enough, to vote for instead. Southcott is a nobody who could easily be overshowed by a high-profile, quality candidate. Labor, until now, had a not unrealistic chance of winning.

In that regard, then, Labor has made a much smarter choice endorsing Mia Handshin to run against Christopher Pyne in Sturt. Again, you won't have heard of her outside the Adelaide bubble, but she has a fairly impressive track record in actual politics, as well as a 'Tiser column she's written for the last 10 years. She's always had a bit of an over-privileged, precocious, Overachieving Young Student Pollie element about her - think a young Nat SD - but at least she knows the business, and knows not to say at her first media conference, effectively, 'don't ask me about politics, I'm just a girl. Hee hee!'

Labor also looks like they're getting in right over on the east coast, with quality candidates set to challenge Malcolm Turnbull and Gary Nairn in Wentworth and Eden-Monaro respectively. And it is nice to see Labor preselection branching out a little more beyond the usual hack-to-candidate, just-add-water gene pool (Greg Combet and Bill Shorten cruising into their safe seats notwithstanding). But seriously, even a hack would've been a better choice for Boothby than Cornes - at least they'd be trained to speak properly on cue.

I'll have absolutely no sympathy for Labor if they happen to lose this election by one seat. It would be entirely their own doing.

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posted by Sam @ Tuesday, May 01, 2007 4 comments