Phwoarr, check out the policies on Julia Gillard
The Age opinion-editorial page, 14 March 2006

Julia Gillard, it's said, has four strikes against her as a possible leader of the ALP. Never mind that only three strikes will see you off the field in baseball, a strategic game made extra fun by sneaking to the next base, secret signals, and in my case, sleeping with the coach. But I digress.

I don't know what the ALP brains trust, which by now must be four blokes and an urn, is thinking. Surely they can't have many members or much more than $2.50 left. And ALP leader Kim Beazley has about as much chance of being elected Prime Minister as an iceberg lettuce.

Last time I voted in a federal election I was so thrilled there was an alternative candidate to the ALP and the Liberals in my electorate I tried to vote for her twice. Anything to avoid going for the mob who took away poor people's right to have decent teeth, or for the ones who let them get away with it.

Telling the Labor party faction-fanciers that Beazley can't win seems about as effective as a lecture on manners and common decency from Senator Bill Heffernan, or on morality by Gareth Evans and Cheryl Kernot. The ALP, lead by Beazley, does an impressive impersonation of a dentally-challenged elderly Labrador (it's probably a pensioner Labrador who can't get its teeth fixed on Medicare). While the government is taking away so many workers' rights it makes you wonder when oxygen will be listed as a perk, the Labor Labrador opens one eye and farts like a sigh, its paws twitching in dreamlike reverie.

Sorry, where was I? Four strikes against Julia Gillard. She's a Victorian, she's from the left of the party, she's a woman, and she doesn't have a husband and kids. Imagine if she did, they'd be hounded by media while she was accused of neglected her family to do her job. Not like all those absent fathers in parliament who'd get zero points in any exam that asked them their kids' favourite colours, their kids' art teacher's name or what their kid had for tea last night.

While being a man in parliament is apparently a get-out-of-town free card for buggering off and poncing about sounding important while their wives get on with the sticky and exhausting end of bringing up children, apparently it's somehow compulsory for women in parliament to have kids.

I don't know whether Miss Gillard knows one end of a bub from the other, and I don't care. (I bet she's quite experienced with tantrums.) I like her joke that she can't remember what colour her real hair is because she's been dyeing it so long: lots of women will relate to that. Just like they're going to relate to the inevitable snide comments. Brace yourself for the thinly-veiled accusations that Miss Gillard is frigid, or slutty, or bats for the other team. It's got to be one of the three, doesn't it? Or phwoarr, all of 'em.

Already one political commentator has described one week of Miss Gillard's higher public profile as "parading around like a C-List celebrity" - something unsaid of her colleagues possessed of higher profiles and testicles. And memo commentators: if you're going to write about women politicians, it's probably best not to refer to them doing "enormous internal damage". It's a phrase that seems disturbingly gynaecological rather than a reference to internecine spite.

Kim Beazley won't admit he's a dirigible that's snapped its moorings, pootling across the sky in increasingly elliptical parabolas of pointlessness. And if the ALP seriously can't consider a leader because he's not from Sydney and he believes in slightly more social justice than Donald Trump and he's a she, then they may as well tie themselves in a hessian sack and throw themselves in the Yarra right now. Actually if they're in the Yarra they probably won't need the hessian sack, but anyway.

I don't know much about Kevin Rudd, but he seems rather across the Wheat Board business, and frankly, somebody's got to be. He's keeping his head down and has his very own testicles, so there's much more chance of him suddenly strolling into the lead position, like that gold-medal-winning Olympic skater did when everyone else in the race fell over.

Please, Australian Labour Party, the country is begging you. Get a new leader. Choose Mr Rudd or Ms Gillard, or anybody else - Molly Meldrum's a bloke with a girly name. Let the new leader pick their own team regardless of which stupid faction they belong to, then make like a Rottweiler and go after that smirkfest they call the Liberal Party.

For god's sake, Tony Abbott's in charge of women's health. Somebody do something.