Julia Gillard doesn’t like her ministers to tell the truth

From the Daily Telegraph

IN a stunning rebuke of a senior minister, the Prime Minister’s office yesterday warned Stephen Smith to tone down his comments after he said federal Labor had been a “drag on” the WA branch.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard was reported to be furious about the Defence Minister’s comment in the wake of the WA wipeout, which follows worse Labor floggings in Queensland and NSW.

MPs believe the state disasters point to an expected massacre at a federal level in September, when a 7 per cent swing would potentially wipe 30 seats from Labor.

I thought Smith was just stating the obvious.

About Samuel J

Interested in economics and politics.
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35 Responses to Julia Gillard doesn’t like her ministers to tell the truth

  1. Rafe

    Is she really in denial, or just putting on a front to the bitter end?
    Does it matter?
    BTW look at all the Liberal mayors in western Sydney, reported on Bolt!

  2. Ripper

    Classic Streisand effect, She would have been much better off letting it go through to the keeper.

  3. Mike of Marion

    Please stay TLS until the evening of 14 September 2013 – I want to see you blubber all over the ABC TV along with all your stinking supporters!!!!

    mike

  4. big dumb fu

    How can it do anyone any good to have a paranoid megalomaniac in the pm office? This farce has gone on long enough.

  5. Mick Gold Coast QLD

    Aw gees ain’t she clever?

    Tomorrow they arrive in Canberra for two weeks of sittings, the “We is us” team all under one roof. She’s had ‘em divided and conquered for the past month or so, back in their electorates and, the day before they arrive, she gives ‘em good reason to gang up again, angry at her.

    They’ve had six weeks at home polishing up their résumés, sussing out Quango directorships and any Red Cross executive vacancies. They now get to flit from office to office, to whisper and to duck down to the coffee shop and liaise – to gossip and scheme and gain the courage of numbers.

    What will be first for discussion? The bumbling, bombastic CEO’s comical performance over the past seven weeks and the share price (polls) flopping about in the shallows like a beached flathead.

    Comrade Smiff knew exactly what he was doing when he spoke the truth. Stage 2 of whatever his plan is will be implemented with his coterie. Comrade Short One’s Crips will be able to reaffirm their collective position face to face, after weeks of phone calls.

    Comrade Dear Leader (in exile) will ensure his Bloods have a dab in one way or another – that’s the only reason he’ll bother turning up.

    We may well be treated to a fortnight of LA street gang-like internecine warfare in Canberra.

  6. JamesK

    Has Smith decided to be the challenger so Rudd can stand in the subsequent spill?

    Former WA Labor planning minister Alannah McTiernan called for Julia Gillard to resign as well.

    A service at the request of an old friend perhaps?

  7. H B Bear

    Stephen Smith needs to take a leaf from the Legover Man, forget any semblance of personal credibility, just go out there and recite McSporran’s talking points.

    Obviously not a team player.

  8. Gab

    Good summary, Mick. Reads like the concept pitch for the next Underbelly: Gillard Years.

  9. Ant

    Next she will demand that Smith wear glasses, a red wig and start up his own mummy blog.

  10. Fisky

    Stephen Smith needs to take a leaf from the Legover Man

    Not if he wants to stay married!

  11. Mark

    Strategically these guys are a joke. They can’t get policy even basically right.

    tactically though…Jesus. How friggin stupid can you be. What Smith said was benign, truthful and obvious.

    We all nodded our head and said yup, that’s about right and promptly moved on. Now it is news and big time news at that. She is a moron of the highest order.

    How absolutely idiotic can you be. She is asking to be belted this sitting period. I need to stock up on the popcorn.

    I just hope Smith has the balls to tell her to go stuff herself. It would probably save his seat if he does. He may as well. It will be every man or handbagger for themselves soon enough anyway. He may as well jump in early and tell the Red Queen exactly what she is.

    I can hardly wait until the revisionist history is written about this woman. They will be a joy to read. And that is just the words from the left as they rip into her for the destruction she wreaked.

  12. C.L.

    The SMH’s Peter Hartcher calls quits: Gillard must be dumped.

  13. Mick Gold Coast QLD

    “Reads like the concept pitch for the next Underbelly: Gillard Years.”

    Thank you Gabrielle – I do believe I am going to thoroughly enjoy this week’s episode of Blood on The Mean Streets of Canberra.

    Personally I’m on Comrade Dear Leader (in exile) Watch – I reckon he won’t be able to contain himself for more than a day or two. Whatever he comes up with it will be obtuse and fabulously destructive. This is a week in which he will perform alright!

  14. Mick Gold Coast QLD

    In the Telegraph:

    “One Gillard supporter said “Smith’s comments were not helpful at all,” noting Kevin Rudd supporters had seized on the comments.”

    What weasel words they are: “comments were not helpful” It was the truth – how and why could they find the truth unhelpful?

    “In a later interview with ABC radio, Mr Smith was less strident about federal Labor”

    Of course Comrade Smiff has since displayed (again) what a meek and easily bullied, feeble little fellow he really is.

  15. Popular Front

    The SMH’s Peter Hartcher calls quits: Gillard must be dumped

    Did you see the accompanying picture? A face you would never tire of slapping. What a poonce.

  16. Tom

    Alas, it now looks like the backbench lemmings are going to deny us our chance to take revenge at an election — everything she touches turns to shit:

    In the first poll of Ms Gillard’s five-day sleepover at Rooty Hill last week, 41 per cent of people now believe Tony Abbott would do more to help residents of Sydney’s west compared to just 32 per cent for Ms Gillard.

    The results confirm Labor strategists’ fears, that the mini-campaign may have done more harm than good despite a host of policy announcements, as sources revealed that Ms Gillard was bracing for a potential move on her leadership this week.

    So she’ll be sent to the dunce’s corner, the other little shit will return and the communist revisionists will go to work creating the myth of Gillard’s victimhood when she was just a second-rate whore who slept her way to the top.

  17. duncanm

    I give her till the end of the week.. the ALP is bleeding like a stuck pig and will be eviscerated if they leave it longer.

    With someone else at the helm, they can stay on life support till the election.

  18. Splatacrobat

    Gillard is looking more like the Black Knight every day. With both legs gone (WA & Qld), both arms missing (NSW & Vic), only the head is left still squealing “It’s only a flesh wound”.

    This really is a re run of Downfall with only mummybloggers, union hacks, and old journos like Cassidy and Grattan (volkstrum) left to defend the Fuhrer.

    McGowan was Gillard’s Steiner, even he failed to stem the advance.

  19. Keith

    Sounds like Caucus will get another “you’re all against me” speech from the prime liar, just like at the beginning of the year. She might get a different response this time if Rabz’s mole is accurate.

    Hartcher has always been Rudd’s lock stock and barrel.

    A face you would never tire of slapping.

    Rudd’s or Hartcher’s? The look of barely contained glee in Rudd’s picture irrespective of where or when it was taken sends a message beyond the calm words, directed at Cabinet. “I’m baa-ack”

    Assuming Rudd wins the election, how long would anyone expect him to last in the job?

  20. Keith

    Labor is about to knife Australia’s first female PM – bloody misogynists.

  21. Mike of Marion

    If she gets the flick by Tuesday, will she totally resign just to spite them?

    Will the Police arrest her by week’s end re AWU matters?

    Mike

  22. Popular Front

    Rudd’s or Hartcher’s?

    Rudd’s Keith. I’d demote the sycophantic Hartcher to the Obituaries, or maybe the cookery page.

  23. Brian of Moorabbin

    Gillard is looking more like the Black Knight every day. With both legs gone (WA & Qld), both arms missing (NSW & Vic), only the head is left still squealing “It’s only a flesh wound”.

    SA and Tas, Splat.

    That would make two heads squealing..

    .. something which we mainlanders have said about Tasmanians for many years.

  24. Woolfe

    And what has happened to Bob Carr’s hair? Did he spend the evening with Tim?

  25. Up The Workers!

    Smithy!

    Get a grip, man!

    This is the A.L.P.

    We can’t just have random outbreaks of truthfulness and honesty – it might just be contagious! Before you know it, we could have an epidemic on our hands.

    For two solid years, the Prime Spin-ster and Goebbels McTurnip have been keeping the “mushrooms” in the dark and feeding them on bull***t, and along you come and turn a bloody light on!

    It just won’t do.

  26. SA and Tas, Splat.

    Tas elections are after the federal, so all of the angst will come down on the feds first, unlike other areas which have had the opportunity to vent at their states.

    Libs play their cards right down here and they could end up +2 in the senate.

  27. Mique

    “I thought Smith was just stating the obvious.”

    Smith has proved many times that he is utterly incapable of recognising the obvious. If he did, in fact, do so on this occasion, it must have been purely accidental. Somebody must have hit him over the head with a brick. Indeed, Barnett did.

  28. Smith has less and less to lose. Julie Bishop has pointed out that his own seat may be in trouble come September, and really, the WA option – where Smith bails and comes back here to lead WA Labor – must be looking better and better to him.

  29. Bruce

    Simon Benson has an article in the Tele with some juicy stuff:

    She is definitely preparing for the potential for something to happen this week,” said one senior Gillard supporter.

    “We have our helmets on.”

    The failure of the western Sydney stunt to lift support in vital marginal seats was confirmed in the Galaxy poll and cited by several MPs as a “final straw” for the Prime Minister.

    On the ABC lunchtime news an hour ago she was described as working from the Lodge today, which is really really the same as working from her office in Parliament House, and that she is “holding a series of meetings today with key Labor figures”.

    I blame the mummy bloggers and the Alaskan king crab. BTW the ides of March arrive on Friday.

  30. Keith

    While reading Benson’s contribution, I noticed a link to this :
    PM denies Smith rebuke after WA wipe-out

    So, after clumsily rebuking Smith, she then doubles down on the ineptness and denies she did it. This is what a political suicide looks like. She’d rather be knifed by her own camp than face the electors assembled with assorted heavy blunt objects in hand. That way she can go preserving an illusion (in her own mind) of community affection. Truly unhinged. Caucus will be performing a mercy killing.

  31. Infidel Tiger

    The failure of the western Sydney stunt to lift support in vital marginal seats was confirmed in the Galaxy poll and cited by several MPs as a “final straw” for the Prime Minister.

    Maybe a Playboy spread could get her back on track?

  32. BRAIN BLEACH
    BRAIN BLEACH
    BRAIN BLEACH

  33. Steve of Glasshouse

    IT..Post Traumatic Post Syndrome..I now have it

  34. Me too. And I mean that in the worst possible way. Push the little buzzer thing, Steve – I’m sure I saw the nurse coming in from her ciggy break a moment ago.

  35. Steve of Glasshouse

    The Rubenesque form, slight moue but with a come hither glint in her designer glasses.

    Homeopathic cure Phillippa..the buzzer broke

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