Australia Gets Its First Female Prime Minister 419
An anonymous reader writes "Julia Gillard has been elected unopposed to the Labor leadership, seizing power in a bloodless Parliament House coup after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided not to contest this morning's leadership ballot. Ms. Gillard will now be sworn in as Australia's first female prime minister. Emerging from this morning's meeting, she said she felt 'very honored' and said she would be making a statement shortly. Treasurer Wayne Swan now steps up as deputy prime minister. He was also elected unopposed."
So... (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this mean they're done trying to cut the cable to the Internet in Australia, or is that still on?
Interesting Historical Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to say... it is a toxic policy, and a new leader is the perfect opportunity for a "cabinet reshuffle". If she makes Conroy Minister for Something-To-Keep-Him-Busy-So-He-Can't-Fuck-Up-The-Internet, maybe we will have meaningful change.
There are actually people within the Labor party who are far more qualified to be communications minister and who are actively opposing the filter (along with... everyone else in the fucking country). Kate Lundy would make a good Comms Minister, for one.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact that it is our first female PM is what makes it news.
TFA is titled "Gillard ousts Rudd in bloodless coup". It mentions her being the first female PM, but that's not the focus of the article.
That would have made it a pretty retarded article. First female whatever is uninteresting non-news.
Re:The Aussie public had no say . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike the USA where all of the most senior government decision makers, with the sole exception of the President, are appointed? Do Americans get to vote for the foreign minister, attorney general, treasurer et al? No. No they don't. They are appointed.
How democratic is it when the most powerful positions in the land are filled by the unelected?
Re:"BUT SHe'S UNELLECTED!! BLAAAAHH!!11!!!!!!" (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the threat by the mining companies to not donate to the election fund this year was the deciding factor in the Victorian and SA factions spilling. A lot of MPs out there rely on mining donations for their election campaigns. Losing those would have made it very hard for them.
The one thing that has come out of this very clearly is that you need the backing of a strong faction. Rudd was never faction-aligned and has now paid the price for it.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:0, Interesting)
Who's to say that a world without prejudice would be any better? You may speculate, even wildly, but it's not that certain.
Also racism is coded into our DNA. Good luck trying to undue millions of years of evolution in a decade, with just an idea.
And yes I am racist. It's how I was born. Guess what? You are too. Unless you were born with Williams syndrome [wikipedia.org]. And it will affect my decisions consciously, or subconsciously for the rest of my life.
Re:Interesting Historical Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, happended only last week here in Finland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Kiviniemi [wikipedia.org]
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting Historical Fact (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think any major political party is interested in removing the internet filter. They all seem happy to let it slip to the back of the mind.
Also, assuming this all wasn’t some stunt to gain power right from the start (You never know these days) She was in support of each policy put forward while Rudd was in control, so I don’t see her having a change of heart any time soon.
There is going to be an election (Score:5, Interesting)
Lindsay Tanner announced his retirement right after the new PM got in. That tells me the election will be sooner rather than later. Internet filtering is the main issue of interest to /. so I propose we get organized and attack Stephen Conroy.
Lets all put Conroy last. Copy my sig. Spread the word. Send a message to Gillard on this subject.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think there will be such a big reshuffle. A lot of serving ministers (including Steven "fuckwit" Conroy) pledged support to Gillard.
Let's not forget, that the reason Rudd was thrown out was because the current MPs felt he could win a election - and by extension they would stop being ministers. this wasn't some Gillard coup, rather a self-preservation exercise by the serving ministers. As such, they will be expecting some kind of reward for their support. Expect Conroy to be shuffled to another ministry where he will let his incompetence shine through.
Re:I for one... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also she is an avowed atheist.
This part is far more newsworthy, especially given the rise of the Christian Right in Australia over the last decade or so.
Re:Interesting Historical Fact (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, she also had a deeper voice than our prime ministers - and her actions in standing up for New Zealand proved she also had a bigger set too.... (hope this is taken as intended, I had enormous repect for her).
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:2, Interesting)
The atheist part isn't such a big deal in Australia, I don't think. Australians are very much secularists when it comes to politics. I suspect that the only PM in recent history to say the words "Jesus Christ" said it when their fucking hair drier went fucking missing.
We've had an anglican archbishop as a governor-general, but the guy a few before him was an avowed atheist (Bill Hayden).
Nothing will Change (Score:2, Interesting)
ALP-Right is the main backer for Julia. Those are the guys who rather purposefully don't want anything done about Climate Change (because it's too "controversial") and have been backing the Federal ALP's general move towards conservatism.
So those issues that caused the Australian public to generally move away from the ALP will continue to be issues for the ALP and voters will continue to desert them for favour of, particularly, the Greens. Look forward, also, to the Super Profits Tax being scaled back, as much as moving away from fixed price royalties to an actual percent-of-profit based tax system is the right way to go (and is supported by most of the public).
Julia wasn't exactly innocent in the ALP's shift to conservatism, either. She was the one pushing the MySchool website which props up private schools and other schools who focus more on achievement tests than they do on actually educating their children. She was also the one who tried to foment a war between parents and teachers over "poor" school results. It's your fault, Julia, because you are the one underfunding education.
The election coming up, the ALP will probably lose seats to the Greens in the Upper House and maybe even in the Lower House. They may even lose the election, and Julia won't do a damn thing about it.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also she is an avowed atheist. I think that's a first for an Australian PM, too.
I certainly consider that far more interesting that the fact she's a female. I'm a pretty "staunch" atheist myself, and find it quite sickening how we're becoming more and more persecuted in the western world these days simply for saying that we refuse to believe a bunch of nonsense without strong evidence. It used to be that the western world was the best place for atheists, but over the last ten years that's been taking a VERY sharp down-turn. For a modern Western country to have an atheist in the "top chair" is definitely an interesting and newsworthy item to me.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Prejudice in general is useful - it allows us to defend from threats we cannot fully assess. Inductive reasoning, for example, it's also based on prejudice. But it's obvious that it's a bias and therefore unhelpful if we actually can inform ourselves and make a rational decision.
Re:"First Female PM" is not news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not in Oz. Historically, religion has been quite distant from politics - yes, we have our resident right-wing religious nutjob (currently that position is taken by Steve Fielding, and before him, Brian Harridene), but even then, it is only really in the last couple of years that religion has started to become mainstream in politics, which is BAD and hopefully will now stop.
When I was growing up, I always knew Brian Harridene as the resident wingnut (he came from the same state as me too), but it was only much later that I realized he was staunch Catholic, before then I had no idea he was religious at all. Of course in hindsight it put all his past rhetoric and bloodymindedness in perspective, but I don't remember him ever explicitly invoking religion in an interview, for example, and I don't think he ever used religion to excuse bad behavior (unlike Tony Blair, who infamously tried to blame his mistakes in Iraq on God, and of course every US president since at least Reagan, who invoke God as a crutch for absolutely everything).