Julia Gillard's photos in The Australian Women's Weekly are beautiful. The soft cover image gives an impression of an attractive, warm and open person, with an appealing vulnerability the photographer says he detected during the shoot.
The 13-page spread for the Weekly's 2 million readers is electoral gold, especially when much is being made of the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott's, supposed lack of appeal with female voters and reports of a "gender gap" in the polls, highlighted by Channel Nine's ridiculous pink "female" worm during the debate.
So moronic were the kneejerk responses of the pink worm, one senior journalist confessed to shouting at his television: "How stupid are women?"
Well, we're not stupid, and the responses of the hand-picked market research audience that stacks Nine's Willoughby studios on such occasions do not represent the political views of women.
But it is our first prime ministerial contest between a man and a woman - and a very masculine man and feminine woman at that. So gender is an integral part of the campaign, and no one really knows how it will play out, except that it is unlikely to go according to script.
In the Weekly, Gillard spoke of having felt "wistful" about her choice not to have children, though she does not regret it. "I suppose I had to recognise that this is not a life of infinite possibilities - that at some point . . . your choices have all added up to one fundamental life choice . . . And I suppose you could say I was wistful about what could have been.''
That is as eloquent an explanation as any of the position many women of her generation have found themselves sleepwalking into. It is more honourable to acknowledge that women can't have it all - or not all at once, as the Governor-General once said - than being a sub-par mother whose all-consuming career takes precedence over her children. Still, Gillard's decision not to include her de facto partner in her campaign may cost her. A candidate's family situation has been part of traditional politics for as long as it has been practised. It helps the electorate see what makes them tick.
The suggestion advanced on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week that the Opposition Leader was somehow doing the wrong thing by "playing the family card" and taking his wife Margie and 21-year-old daughter, Louise, on the campaign trail, is absurd. They are a great asset, especially for a man tagged as having a problem appealing to women. That is not an attack on Gillard's marital status or childlessness. It has nothing to do with her.
The gender gap in the polls, in any case, was less a reaction against Abbott than a rush of warm sisterly support for Gillard. Few women would not have appreciated the symbolism of Australia having its first female prime minister. But the novelty effect was only ever going to be short-lived.
While last week's Nielsen poll showed a significant percentage of women favouring Gillard, the Newspoll taken last weekend shows Labor's female primary vote dropped from 44 per cent to 40 per cent, while the Coalition's rose from 37 to 40. No doubt the questionable way in which Gillard rose to the top job has truncated her honeymoon with female voters.
The subsequent revenge game of Kevin Rudd and who knows who else - from cabinet leaks to Rudd's smiling refusal to endorse Gillard and his expunging of any mention of the ALP from his campaign material - are all karma coming back to bite the ambitious party powerbrokers and bumptious troublemakers who installed Gillard in Rudd's rightful place.
Not only have they treated the office of the prime minister with disrespect and forever weakened its authority, they have damaged Gillard and burnt up one of her key advantages. She could have won fair and square but she is now suspect.
They have spoiled the historic moment of Australia getting its first female prime minister, because she was foisted on us, nice and impressive though she is. They have cheated women of a legitimate victory. Women can no longer vote for the first female PM with a rush of euphoria and girl power. There is little symbolism left in the election, as there was when the US voted for Barack Obama. Women hardly got to celebrate what happened a month ago. We were cheated of the right to toss out Rudd and the right to go to the ballot box and pick Australia's first female leader.
Gillard goes into this campaign with a crippling handicap, and it is a testament to her political skills that she has managed so well. She has had no time to establish herself as a credible leader, or to erase the stain of having knocked off a prime minister for no good reason, it seems to most of the electorate, other than because of some vague assertion the government had "lost its way". Her three nominated examples of where Rudd had wavered - mining tax, asylum seekers and climate change - have not worked out well for her in the short time she has been in office.
The ALP-union boys club that runs the party are burning through Gillard on a punt. If she wins, they win. If she doesn't, she's finished - and that's all the better for Bill Shorten or whoever else among the ex-union heavies jostling to get to the top. They have put enormous pressure on the best female political operator in living memory. They have made her look insincere, superficial and scheming. She has lost the mantle of legitimacy and authority which, as the first woman leader, she especially needs to reassure voters.
The fate of the party is on her narrow shoulders. While she is valiantly battling through, something in Abbott's demeanour on debate night says he has her measure now, that his initial dismay at her ascension has dissipated. If Gillard fails she has gone down in everyone's estimation. She will be just another woman outsmarted. What a waste.
devinemiranda@hotmail .com
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