Last week’s fiasco was triggered by Labor’s media bills
(Letter published in The Australian, 26 March 2013.)
Julia Gillard’s insistence that she is on a sound policy course is little short of astonishing given that she can claim an electoral mandate for few if any of the policies she has been pursuing since her knifing of Kevin Rudd.
The resignation of two well-regarded ministers who were former heads of the union movement, Martin Ferguson and Simon Crean, indicates that she has badly misjudged not only the role of the union movement but the national interest too. Many calls have been made for a return to policies that acknowledged the vital role played by the private sector in a competitive economy under a Hawke-Keating government, which these two (former) ministers supported as trade union leaders.
The wide disagreement now publicly revealed amongst (former) Labor ministers certainly suggests that those who describe themselves as independents should now seriously examine their roles as supporters of the Gillard government.
Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic