Truth is, Gillard didn't lie

A POINT of order, to the woman who asked the Prime Minister on Wednesday at a Brisbane shopping centre: "Why did you lie to us?" This well-spoken member of the public was doing no more than reflecting, of course, the charge levelled at Gillard by every shock jock with access to a microphone across the land. But where exactly was the lie? Was it because Gillard said on the day before the election: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead"? Listen, for that to be a lie, it would need Gillard to have known all along that she intended to bring in the carbon tax and to be just waiting to win the election before she did so. But does anyone, even the most rabid, really believe that to be the case? Of course she didn't. As she replied to the woman in question in the shopping centre: "Circumstances changed." Those circumstances are that she wasn't able to form a government in her own right, meaning deals had to be done, just as Tony Abbott would have had to have done deals if he had been able to form a government. One of those deals, in Gillard's case, was with the Greens to bring in the carbon tax, in return for their support. Simple as that. At worst, she can be accused of breaking a promise but saying she lied is simply inaccurate. This won't stop the battalions of bully-boy shock jocks for half a second - whip it up, you heroes, and you can explain it to your children later - but it needs to be said. The true mystery is why the Prime Minister and her minions have not made this point more clearly themselves. They have allowed the "Ju-liar" slur to go on for weeks now, substantially unchecked, and need to address it.

They said it

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David Letterman: "The Pope is now on Twitter. The Church is really trying to connect with young people, in a way that doesn't involve hush money."
Answering machine gag doing the rounds: "Hi, I am afraid I am unable to answer my mobile phone at the moment but if you leave me a message, the News of the World will send it to me later."

via smh.com.au

The fact that Julia was forced by a dithering electorate to form a minority government with the Greens thereby conceding a carbon tax and emmissions trading scheme as a contingency to forming government does identify the breaking of her pre-election promise not to as something less than a lie. This is all so blatantly obvious that they apparantly see no reason to point this out. The ALP demonstrates a continuous inability to defend itself and its policies against misinformation and scare campaigns. They seem to think that, because the substance of the misinformation is so obviously untrue or the distortions are so self-evident that they do not need to be refuted because it is assumed that anyone with common knowledge and the ability to think rationally will see straight through them. This is a false assumption. In many areas the only source of information is the Murdoch Press and this information is so biased that it severley biases the common knowledge. In this particular instance this the very asking of this question demonstrates an ignorance of how our democracy works.
The answering machine gag is also mildly amusing