St Julia – Patron Saint of Earlobes

Sainthood could be Julia’s toughest gig yet. Only a week ago she couldn’t even fart without stuffing it up according to the media. Everything about her was wrong: legs, bum, hair colour, jackets and earlobes. (I never understood the earlobes thing – I mean, seriously?).

Never mind she was the most productive prime minister ever, in terms of legislation passed averaged over days spent in office  (if you don’t believe me see The Guardian’s analysis and cute red chart on respective Australian Prime Ministers’ productivity).

Fastforward one week. Now the media don’t have her at their disposal to criticise, they have taken to eulogising her. Poor Julia, she wasn’t listened to, she wore too many white jackets and people were mean about her earlobes. One day I sincerely hope Laurie Oakes takes a look in the mirror himself. Just saying.

I think it is a real shame that people have to die or be publicly humiliated for the media and people in general to finally say nice things about them. Why can’t people say some nice things at the time? Not when they are politically or actually dead.

I think Julia might have preferred a fair go by the media when she was actually in charge of the joint. There’s no point the media offering her a sainthood now out of guilt or need to fill screenspace. Because I’ve got a feeling Julia isn’t interested in sainthood. White’s not really her colour.

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A political life is full of woe

Who would be a politician? At least in Australia. (It’s probably pretty good in Italy where you can bonk underage Middle Eastern prostitutes and then lie about it, be convicted and still be a hero).

As for Australia, all you have to do is keep the economy strong, introduce a disability scheme and educational reforms and put a price on carbon to help the environment and they’ll hate you.

I know what happened to Julia was partly of her own making. I know she should never have hung out with the faceless men, donned the pearls or slowed down her speech to pre-kinder level. It was all, well, not the real Julia. But then what is? The sad thing is we never got to find out.

So now, as a relatively young woman (I don’t know about you but 51 is looking younger and younger all the time), she’s lost her career, along with so many others in the Labor party. These are people who devoted their life to the joint and probably started out with some grand ideas and are now unceremoniously cast out. I guess they get to keep their parliamentary pension, a bit of super, and some can land a book deal or hop on the speakers’ circuit if they are interesting enough. But it is a shame that our political system and the 24 hour news cycle doesn’t allow politicians a little breathing space and we are all the poorer for it.