I'm not PC, says Prime Minister Julia Gillard in move to end illegals arriving by boat



She's shaping up very well so far, despite the far-Leftism of her youth. There's far more sanity and realism among the Australian Left than we see in their U.S. and U.K. counterparts. Times could well have changed but it is a fact that Australia's most revered conservative Prime Minister -- R.G. Menzies -- spoke highly in his memoirs of his Labor Party opposition, calling them men of principle etc.

And Conservatives don't generally like to be reminded of it but after the inertia of conservative PM Malcolm Fraser, it was Labor Party PM Bob Hawke who pushed through in Australia the sort of reforms associated with Reagan and Thatcher in the U.S. and U.K. One can only hope that Gillard is in that mould. Her defence of John Howard is certainly remarkable. Howard has long been comprehensively loathed and derided among the Australian Left


PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has charged into the asylum-seeker debate, indicating she will take a hard line approach to stop boat arrivals and declaring political correctness should be "swept out of the away".

A day after solving the mining super profits tax imbroglio, Ms Gillard set about cleaning up another one of Kevin Rudd's failed policies before calling the election - the influx of boat people. In an obvious clearing of the ground for a strong policy statement, Ms Gillard said that Australians who were concerned about asylum seekers were neither racist nor intolerant.

The new PM jumped to the defence of John Howard - the architect of the Pacific Solution and the Tampa crisis - saying the former PM is "most certainly" not racist. She also declared that:

* Political correctness was dead and should be "swept out of the way" in such sensitive national debates;

* Australia needed an "effective" border protection policy.

"I do understand the concerns when people see boats looming on the horizon, I also understand that there's nothing humanitarian about people being on boats and potentially at risk of losing their lives at sea."

Ms Gillard's straight talking on asylum-seekers comes after illegal boat arrivals exploded under the Rudd Government, causing headaches for Labor in opinion polls, particularly in crucial marginal seats in Sydney's western suburbs.

Ms Gillard said we had to be honest when talking about the problem, saying she would oppose any attempt to shut down debate by labelling people concerned about border security as racist. "I certainly dismiss labels like intolerant or racist because people raise concerns about border security, but we've also got to be very alive to the complexity of this and that there's no quick fix," she said.

Echoing Mr Howard's comments on political correctness at the beginning of his prime ministership in 1996, Ms Gillard said she wanted openness in public debate to be a mark of her prime ministership, as long as people spoke with goodwill and were not critical of race or culture.

"There's a temptation for people to use these labels and names to try and close down debate and I'm very opposed to that," she said. "People need to be able to have honest discussions. "So any sort of political correctness, or niceties that get in the way, I think, need to be swept out of the way."

Ms Gillard defended Mr Howard, who was labelled a racist by the Indian media last week over his bid to become vice- president of the International Cricket Council. "The suggestion John Howard should be labelled a racist, what a load of nonsense, he's most certainly someone who's not."

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

2 comments:

  1. "She's shaping up very well so far"

    And another one buys the spin...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Of course we won't know until she's survived the next election (not a foregone conclusion).
    But it could be that she's an old fashioned working-class-values type of leftist, instead of the post-modern cultural relativist type of leftist we are all too familiar with these days.

    ReplyDelete

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