Gillard’s loss is Abbott’s gain

It stays fairly close at the top, Tony Abbott now regularly getting more than half the coverage of the PM, who copped another bad couple of polls in the last couple of days. The mining tax is back to haunt the Government, as the pressure builds from the right on that and the carbon tax, while the pressure from the left on asylum seekers ramps up. As the Liberals in Canada and many others have found out, being in the centre these days usually means you end up hated by everybody.

While Joe Ludwig continued learning the names of all these journalisty type people that he’s never met before, Peter Garrett ended up being the only Cabinet Minister willing to meet the Dalai Lama — he’s obviously not planning a school excursion to Beijing anytime soon, but Tony Abbott and Bob Brown didn’t miss the opportunity. To continue the pitfalls of centrism theme, trying not to offend anyone can mean you end up disappointing everybody.

John Faulkner liked that theme too, calling for more public policy debate in the Labor Party amongst a slew of other major reforms, just as Julia Gillard tells everyone to shut up and toe the line. Meanwhile Peter Reith has had a go at Liberal party structures as well.

What neither party seems to be willing to face up to is that given that there’s no huge philosophical divide between our main parties anymore — unless you’re pretty rabid or living in the past, why on earth would you join a political party, except as a career?

Methinks whatever they propose they might be micturating into the wind.

Talkback was mixed regarding Gillard and her live export policy, while some callers were angered at how many job losses it would cause, others agreed that the cruelty needed to stop. Tony Windsor was slapped with criticism from talkback callers for supporting the Gillard government’s policies especially carbon tax.

The Dalai Lama, ever the calm and peaceful diplomat was unfazed by Gillard’s snub.