keywords

"union bosses"
"child sexual abuse"
"clever"
"pornography"
"impact on the family"
"the safety of our customers"

You get my drift. Keep saying them over and over, and hopefully something will seep into the national psyche. I don't understand why Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd, or any of their team have not responded to the wall-to-wall overuse of the term "union bosses" by identifying it as a keyword the Liberals are using. Just like they are with Johnny being a "clever" politician.

I have no doubt that the sleeping issues that lie in the backgound of the recent "emergency" response to an issue that has barely changed in 11 years—alcohol abuse, child sexual abuse, the availability of pornography—are the real reason this policy was concocted, to bring these issues into the subconscious of the "mums and dads", without explicitly addressing them as "problems" for the entirety of Australian society. Surely these have been popping up in Mark Textor's focus groups, and are seen to be important issues for the "Howard battlers" and conservative new families living on the urban fringes of our capital cities.

Much the same applies to why, for example, our private "public transport" companies are focuissing so much on consumer "safety", rather than on service provision, new lines, or getting more rolling stock, um, rolling.

The Honeymoon is over

Just a week into his leadership of the federal ALP and Kevin Rudd has been served up a typical manoeuvre from Our Man of Tinsel. And what a beautiful wedge it is:



Consider a recent proposal made by a certain opposition leader that immigrants to Australia undergo a Citizenship Test—you know, bone up on our national language and its idiom, and understand a few things about our history—Captain Cook 's arrival, say, or convict settlement, squatocracy, or the White Australia Policy spring to mind as pivotal periods of our nation's great past. And then there's our culture—the triple-fronted cream brick veneer, the hero worship of outlaws and sportsmen, the Hawaiian pizza, Ern Malley and the denigration of anything vaguely intellectual (other than cricket statistics of course, which should probably have their own university canon should Our Dear Leader have his way). Naturally, these are all important parts of all the daily life of all Australians, and each and every one of us should be able to identify them on a multiple-choice quiz. Hell, maybe we should hold this Citizenship Test in a smoky pub where the winner gets to take home a passport rather than a slab of VB? Second Place would of course win a meat tray, culled from all the animals represented on our coins.

But I digress. This idea was originally proposed by former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley who was trying to outflank the Government on "Border Protection". And I quote The Economist:

Mr Beazley himself, however, has consistently fared badly in the polls, because he has been unable to explain how, or indeed if, Labor differs from the conservatives.

And so, with Bomber gone and many of his rightist policies under a question mark, what better time to raise the stakes thinks Johnnie. A silly idea which will unite his own cherished hansonites and cause a schism between the indignant Left and bickering Right of the ALP. And thereby they begin to tear themselves apart again.

This is the first true test of Mr Rudd's mettle.