Look this is a waste of time, I know. it was clear from early yesterday morning that the mainstream media was pushing the line that (a) Gillard was selected by the “backroom boys” the “faceless men” (a phrase I haven’t seen used in over 40 years since Whitlam changed the Labor Party structure), and (b) that the “people didn’t vote for her as PM”. I’m not sure whether they were pushing these narratives out of ignorance or as a deliberate start to a campaign to de-legitimise a PM who will prevent the natural party of government coming back to power.
The public is being bamboozled, not being told that, whoever got things moving, all 115 Labor parliamentary members voted on the issue. These are people elected by their constituents, not backroom boys. In fact the only backroom boys playing a part seemed to be the PM’s staff, which I know doesn’t fit the MSM narrative.
People also need to understand that we have a parliamentary democracy not a presidential one. People vote for a local member, not a PM. The party with the most local members forms government. Those elected members choose the leader of the party, who becomes PM if the party is in government, Opposition leader if not. The “people” have no say, have never had any say, in who becomes PM (if Howard had won last time, and handed over to Costello, would the people have “chosen” Costello? If the Liberals had won, but Howard had still lost Bennelong, the Liberal Party would have chosen a new leader – the “people” except those of Bennelong” would have had no say in that process).
Oh and if you see Tony Abbott remind him that he, Tony, came to power after back-stabbing Malcolm, who in turn white-anted Nelson, and further back we had the whole sequence of Howard, Hewson, Downer, Peacock, Howard and so on. And before that Gorton, a PM, being shafted by his own (Liberal) Party
The biased nature of the reporting on what actually happened yesterday reached new depths. And if people don’t understand history, and their own political system, they are wide open to having their ideas massaged by those who do not have the public interest at heart.
