More Than Just Red Hair....!

I should really get this posted before Julia Gillard, Australia's Prime Minister, unleashes the Dogs-of-Discrimination against me. Ms Gillard, now that she has eliminated the moderate Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, plans laws against Free Speech so absurd and draconian that she has united the Left and Right of politics to take a stand. Nicola Roxon, Attorney-General and partner in crime, looks like taking the Finklestein Report to try and legislate morality into it's citizens. It could go as far as if you were giving a political or personal opinion around the office watercooler and someone took offense or felt it was being insulting, they could make a complaint and land you in court for discrimination. Of course the media would be prime targets from the present paranoid government we have for their reporting on Gillard and Party's misdeeds. So here goes.

What you were matters less than what you are, so it can't hurt Julia Gillard to admit her past -- and reject it. Then why won't she?  Fact: for at least eight years this redheaded Labor leader was an official of the Hard-Left Socialist Forum. No wonder she got along with another Hard-Left government leader, Barack Hussein Obama. Like two peas in a Commie Pod!  Here's how Melbourne's University's archives describe her group: The Social Forum (SF) was established in 1984, initially by disaffected members of the Communist party of Australia (CPA). Its membership included Australian Labor Party (ALP) members and political activists. Its stated aim was to contribute to the development of democratic socialism in Australia."

And one of its unstated aims was to help former Communists join the Labor Party. Back then, Julia had no trouble admitting to that communist influence, writing in a Socialist Forum pamphlet: ''Around 45 of the Forum's members left the Communist Party of Australia in the division of a year ago...'' She'd know of course. She not only wrote such pamphlets for the SF's 200 or more members, but worked until 1993 -- when she'd already become a lawyer -- as its organiser and then on its management committee. The policies she pushed were the usual sandwich-board stuff: scrapping our U.S. alliance, super-taxing the rich, introducing death duties, blah blah. But here's a novel one: twinning Melbourne with Leningrad -- renamed now, post-communism, St. Petersburg.

Of course, most of us grow wiser with experience and -- not well, young radicals -- leave such heady but ruinous Leftism behind. But has Gillard?  It's a fair question to ask someone, especially when she's part of a Labor team of which some 70% are Marxist leaning and ex-union officials. And far from repudiating her past radicalism, she refuses to even admit to it. Here, for instance, is part of her interview on ABC's Lateline program:
          Gillard:  I was a full-time university student and had a part-time job for an organization called Socialist Forum, which was a sort of debating society.
          Interviewer:  It wasn't a front organization for communists?
          Gillard:  Certainly not! It was an organization where people who identified themselves as progressives, some in the Labor party, some outside the Labor Party, would come together and talk about ideas. I did clerical and administrative work.

The Way I See It....Julia has good skills with the political airbrush. Gillard -- a long-time official and a leader of a group created by communists -- is transformed. In her new version, she becomes just a part-time typist in her ''student days'' for ''progressives'', who merely debated stuff. Her communists become simply people ''outside the Labor party.'' That's neither frank nor, I suggest quite honest. And when asked a direct question:
          Interviewer:  Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?

          Gillard:  Tony, I think that question shows how silly all of this is getting, though I suspect in this interview people could think you're the dangerous radical. After all, I'm only from the Labor party, you're from the ABC (chuckle).

A ''no'' would have been shorter. But more importantly, can Gillard ever own up to her past radicalism, and explain how and if she came to reject it?  After all, shes still of the Socialist Left and with another election due in the latter part of the year, will the Australian people stand for a leader that fostered anti-democratic feelings in her past. Maybe that's why she's against Free Speech. She certainly has some reassuring to do.