Election 2010: the week that was

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Poll

Who is your preferred Prime Minister?

This poll ended on 05 September 2010.

Julia Gillard

27%

Tony Abbott

49%

Bob Brown

5%

None of the above

8%

Bring back Kevin Rudd

9%

This is not a scientific poll. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.

Poll

Who will you be voting for in the federal election?

This poll ended on 05 September 2010.

Labor

27%

Liberals

43%

National Party

8%

Greens

12%

Family First

1%

Independent

2%

Other

3%

This is not a scientific poll. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.

OPINION:  DOES it matter if a prime minister is childless? Ringless? Godless? No.

Clueless? Yes.

Julia Gillard is far from clueless, so there all of these matters should rest.

But they probably won't.

The novelty value of Australia's first boy-versus-girl federal election campaign is one thing, but the preoccupation with it is another.

The quicker we get over it and move on - sorry, move forward - the better.

Gender could well have become a campaign issue this week, but it didn't, thanks to Gillard's decision to show herself as a human being rather than a political robot.

A cabinet leak can be very damaging to a childless career woman with a live-in boyfriend if it shows she argued against the generosity of a paid parental leave scheme and a pension rise.

It could have painted her as family-unfriendly, especially at a time when her opponent Tony Abbott was bobbing up here and there displaying things Gillard doesn't have, namely a spouse and children.

It could have portrayed the Labor leader as selfish and heartless - "deliberately barren" was a phrase coalition backbencher Bill Heffernan once used in a notoriously cruel, unfair and irrelevant insult.

But Gillard threw away the script and got passionate.

In doing so she looked more of a leader than all the spin doctors between them had made her look previously.

Of course she closely questioned the cost of measures that were going to chew up $50 billion in the next decade, she said; that was her job.

But she did not oppose them.

In terms of personal damage to her, the issue was defused, though it cropped up again when former Labor leader Mark Latham accused Gillard's predecessor Kevin Rudd of being the leaker.

One newspaper, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, digitally aged Gillard on its front page, giving her grey hair and wrinkles alongside a story saying Australia's grey army was angry over her opposition to a $30 pension rise on the grounds that "old people never vote for us".

But the image jarred and missed the mark.

Gillard, meanwhile, was looking far more glamorous in a 13-page cover story and photo shoot for the Australian Women's Weekly.

She engendered empathy by explaining to the magazine's two million readers how she was comfortable with her choice not to have children, but also felt "wistful about what could have been".

"I suppose I had to recognise that this is not a life of infinite possibilities - that at some point you run out of possibilities and your choices have all added up to one fundamental life choice," she said.

She spoke of the "exquisite irony" of childlessness being seen as a political vulnerability, yet said if a mother with three kids under 10 presented as a prime minister, people would say: "How on earth is she going to give the job the focus it's going to need?"

Out on the campaign trail, Gillard was asked if she and boyfriend Tim Mathieson were going to get married.

All sweetness and reason, she said that apart from that being a personal matter, it was not something one person could decide alone.

Voters have no doubt forgotten, because it was so plain boring, that the week started with the televised leaders debate in which Tony Abbott said: "My wife Margie and I know what it's like to raise a family, to wrestle with a big mortgage, with grocery bills, with school fees."

If it was an attempt to differentiate the two competing brands by contrasting personal life styles and life choices, to turn Gillard's perceived advantage of femininity against her, it failed.

The TV worm - or worms, for this time there were male and female wrigglers - scored it to Gillard, although on the count of "fair dinkums" used, Abbott won eight to four.

But more Australians watched two guys cooking off in the MasterChef final, which says a fair bit about politics.

So what did Australians learn this week?

Not much, apart from the compelling fact that Gillard is to ear lobes what Abbott is to ears, that she will be the first PM to live in The Lodge in a de facto relationship if she wins on August 21, and that she's not so hypocritical as to pretend a faith in God that she doesn't feel.

The really big campaign news was what didn't happen to inflation.

The government got the best figure in three years, meaning there's suddenly little prospect of a mid-campaign interest rate rise next week, one of the factors which helped sink John Howard three years ago.

In short, Gillard received terrific economic news, she dodged the one bullet that was fired, which came from within her own ranks rather than the opposition's, Abbott failed to land a punch or gain any real traction, and every time that happens is a week lost.

It was a neutral week, which means it went to the incumbent, Gillard.