Liberal Scott Buccholz has been to seven funerals for people taken by floodwaters in his Queensland electorate of Wright, which includes the tragic town of Grantham. That’s one death for every month he has been in Parliament.
No wonder Buccholz was in tears even before he had gone far into his speech to Parliament’s condolence motion. The emotional wear and tear would have been enormous. The big man had to take off his glasses at one stage to tend to fast-filling eyes.
Julia Gillard also teared up during the debate on the same motion, and there will be many who will claim her brief surrender to emotions was contrived.
This means they believe Gillard used one of the most solemn occasions Parliament has experienced, after one of the most disasterous summers in the nation’s history, to pull a cheap political trick.
That was unlikely to happen, and it didn’t happen. Gillard was genuinely affected. Tony Abbott didn’t think she was pretending.
The Opposition Leader said with great elegance of the Prime Minister: “Whatever political disagreements we have had, she has shown a decent heart.’‘
Abbott, too, delivered a powerful speech as the Parliament dedicated itself completely to the important job of speaking for a nation made almost inarticulate by weeks of great trauma.
Both he and Gillard referred to Jordan Rice, the youngster who told rescuers to take his younger brother first, but who wasn’t there when rescuers returned. Abbott wants him to be remembered by a heroism award and he will have little argument.
Gillard also referred to the living, such as emergency helicopter pilot Mark Kempton who in two and a half hours of hectic flying took 28 people to safety.
She said Kempton and his crew should be patting themselves on the back.
“Instead, Mark is haunted. He’s haunted by the very human face of this disaster, a woman he rescued who wept uncontrollably as she was pulled into the helicopter.
“In a media report Mark said: ‘I looked over my shoulder and saw her sitting on the floor of the aircraft and she was devastated. It was heartbreaking’.
“What Mark was witnessing was a young, pregnant mother who, just seconds before the chopper had arrived had had her young child wrenched from her weary arms by the floodwater.’‘
Gillard would deserve to be condemned—Hell, she would deserve to be impeached—if she had told that story and others to help fake an emotional response, including her tears, for political advantage.
Of course, she didn’t.
But the dislike of Julia Gillard is now entrenched in some sections of the electorate and nothing she does will be accepted, not even when she give an involuntary glimpse into her most human dimensions.
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