JG ~ PM

21 August, 2010 will be the day that Julia Guillard is officially voted in as our Prime Minister ~ well, that's what I'm hoping. It was good to hear her media address this morning after she sought a mandate to hold the next general election from our Governor-General, Quentin Bryce. I was heartened to hear that amongst other things, she values ~ courtesy and caring for one another. High on her list of priorities is Education, Employment and Health. Tony Abbott ~ ever ready to dig the knife in ~ stuttered a response to Guillard's informative and well metered speech about an hour later. He said that he was going to eliminate all those taxes (didn't he say recently that he was bringing in a new company tax?). I was really annoyed that, rather than focusing upon what Guillard had to say about 'Bringing Australia forward', that the media, following Abbott, who always appears to be looking backward, spoke about her use of repetition. Haven't they heard about iteration as a way of stressing a point? Duplicating the idea of 'going forward' was, I think, a good idea ~ it certainly stressed in my mind the need for progress ~ both away from the past, which can't be changed to a more positive outlook in which change can occur. And talking about change, I did 14 laps of the 25 metre Kensington pool this morning, which justifies me making Linzer Torte Squares this afternoon. Hope the lead up to the election is sweet ~ though I doubt it! I guess if we get sick of the bitch-fight on commercial television over the next six weeks, we can at least get some kind of sanity from ABC News 24 which will be providing commercial free news breaking stories from Australia and around the world from next Thursday at 7.30 pm. It's got to be better than the Election 2010 coverage of Guillard's speech and Abbott's response conducted today by commercial television ~ I'm surprised that no-one made a comment about what Julia was wearing, isn't that usually the way the media attempts to undermine women in politics?!