Sunday 7 April 2013

Are Gillard and Wong misandryists?

Having won world-wide acclaim (from some people) for her parliamentary speech vilifying opposition leader Tony Abbott as a 'misogynist' for his criticisms of her (AND of being sexist, although Gillard later tried to redefine woman-hating (misogyny) as being merely another term for being sexist!), Gillard's latest exercise in 'positive' non-electioneering (since we're not in 'election mode' yet, according to Labor) while on the international stage during her China trip was to paint Abbott as an "economic simpleton" for his criticism of Labor's new superannuation tax plan. Wong followed this up with comments that Abbott "behaves as a one-man wrecking ball" for observing that the Labor government policy of taxing people's retirement account earnings above 100,000 in order to fund the government's deficit was akin to what the Cyprus government was proposing (to tax people's savings above 100,000 in order to fund the government's deficit...).

Continued references to 'that man' by Gillard suggest there may be a trace of misandryism [or possibly just hating that one particular man ;) ] creeping into Gillard's attacks on the opposition leader. After all, it is hard to objectively paint a Rhodes Scholar (Abbott) as an "economic simpleton". Julia Gillard and Ying-yen Wong on the other hand, weren't Rhodes Scholars, and their Arts and Law degrees don't make hem economic experts (at least Abbott did Economics and Law degrees). So, after repeatedly promising to wind-back government spending in order to achieve a budget surplus in 2013, and failing to do so, perhaps it is the Labor side of federal politics that has a larger quota of "economic simpletons" - especially now that a large tranche of the more talented Labor ministers have been relegated to the back bench for supporting a change of leadership.

It appears to be one of Labor's current spin strategies to paint any and all cricism of their economic policies as 'negative' and 'economically illiterate' - perhaps they think this is one way to counter the general view that Labor is a worse 'economic manager' that the Liberals. A more effective approach would be to actually deliver a budget surplus, and via cutting government waste rather than by simply finding new ways to tax in order to fund their spending habit.

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