Real Julia

After a dubious start to the election campaign, Julia Gillard has thrown away the rule book. From now on, she promises, Australians will get the real, dinkum deal. As she told ABC radio’s Richard Glover, “I want to bust out [of the traditional campaign]. I’m not going to die wondering”.

Yet, after a few days of the “real Julia” you get the feeling all it involves is some jelly snakes on the campaign bus and a little less “moving forward”. Surely if she were serious about unruliness, her action contract for the campaign would look more like this: 

1. Stop the babies
It wouldn’t be a campaign without politicians squeezing babies or journalists making jokes about politicians squeezing babies. This time, we have Julia desperately cuddling up to kids to prove she’s not unmarried or childless and Tony having a go to prove he’s not crazy or misogynistic. If you can trust someone holding a baby, you can trust them with the country. Or so the logic goes.

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