Rudd hopes for a better week

Kevin Rudd is hoping he has a better week in parliament this week, than he had last week.

We should, too, regardless of which political party, if any, we might support.

Australia’s reputation, as a modern, sophisticated nation, is at stake.

Rudd has now starkly revealed just how much still has much to learn about how the political process actually works.

It can be much cruder, than we might like to believe. Rudd’s own actions illustrate that.

When a radio reporter asked him what he thought of a photograph that Bill Henson had taken of a young Aboriginal girl, the Prime Minister’s answer came straight from his heart. He declared  the photograph of the naked girl to be “revolting.”

That’s understandable, particularly in view of the abuse so many young Aboriginal women suffer.

But Rudd did not forsee that, within days, Federal police would be raiding art galleries throughout the country, including the National Gallery in Canberra, seizing “dirty pictures.”

Prosecutors are now under great pressure to follow up, by prosecuting those galleries, for holding – even if not exhibiting – those pictures.

What next? Burly police men, with sledge hammers, knocking “offensive” appendages off copies of Michelangelo’s David?

Even zealots in the Vatican have ultimately admitted that similar action there was a mistake.

Rudd would certainly never have imagined, when he made that remark, that the police raids would follow.

Now, though, he knows what happens.

He will learn, too, that all this will damage his government’s reputation, around the world.

The government’s attempt to micro-manage fuel prices, through its Fuel Watch scheme, will be politically expensive, too.

It cannot, ultimately, do much about those prices. They are set by basic forces, such as supply and demand.

And last week’s woes aren’t over yet.
Voters will still be discussing “dirty pictures” and petrol prices this week, when they might have been looking, instead,  at the quality of the opposition, which, as usual, is abysmal.

We need to look no further than the Opposition’s Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop, to establish that.

As the Rudd government issued a preliminary report over the weekend, trying to draw together the threads of its highly inclusive 2020 summit, Bishop responded by saying that its paper looked like “noodle nation,” all over again.

No sign of a mental giant at work there.