THE Gillard government faces a choice between doing a deal with Tony Abbott to bring back the Pacific solution or bowing to the demands of its stirring Left faction and scrapping the overseas processing of asylum seekers altogether.

The stark contrast emerged yesterday after the government released its written legal advice, which says last week's High Court decision that ruled the Malaysia plan invalid also rules out the Pacific solution locations of Nauru and Manus Island.

Claiming the government was looking for an excuse to abandon offshore processing, Mr Abbott offered to help pass legislation amending the Migration Act to circumvent the High Court ruling and allow processing on Manus Island and Nauru.

Sadly it could be a very long time before another woman aspires to be prime minister of this country. I can't remember a time when a prime minister in Australia has been so relentlessly vilified, humiliated and demeaned, not only by the media but also by commentators, bloggers and rally-goers, whose visceral attacks are merciless and personal.

From the moment Julia Gillard became prime minister she has been viewed with suspicion by many who were just waiting for her to trip up, and those same people have been increasing the attacks ever since, bent on her downfall.

Some argue that her government is incompetent, but there have been incompetent governments before run by male prime ministers who were never vilified as cruelly as is Gillard.

It is so disappointing that, in 2011, this widespread and deep-seated misogyny is making it very hard for a woman to hold the highest office in the land without being destroyed in the process. Hardly encouraging to young women who aspire to great things in the future.

Judy Hungerford Crows Nest

Greens leader Bob Brown has demanded the dismissal of senior Immigration Department bureaucrats who believe onshore processing of asylum seekers will lead to social unrest similar to those of Paris or London.

ABC News Online understands the public servants have told the Government that should offshore processing be dumped, Australian detention centres would be quickly overwhelmed by a flood of people.

The bureaucrats warn that asylum seekers would then be placed in the community, risking social disharmony.

Describing the bureaucrats as "turkeys", Senator Brown said it was a mistake "when some of them were kept on from the Howard era".

Senator Brown, who believes all asylum seekers should be processed on Australian soil, said the officials should be sacked.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-08/brown-calls-for-immigration-sackings/2876942

There can't be many people even in masochistic Melbourne who went from watching a numbing Bell Shakespeare production of Julius Caesar to the experience of looking at At Home With Julia, the much-dreaded (but Truly Dreadful) homage to our own imperatrix.

Julius Caesar at least had Alex Menglet's richly Russian Caesar and, against the odds, the actor channelled some ancient tradition of Russian classical acting, so that he put the rest of the cast to shame. Caesar, alas, is killed at half time. Julia Gillard in this horrible TV homage to her unloveliness is killed in the first five minutes and so is the reputation of the ABC for producing firecracker political satire and a high level of TV comedy.

You may think that Julia Gillard is the most hapless Australian Prime Minister since Billy McMahon. You may think that she has presided over the demise of a once great political party out of nothing but a lean hungriness for power and that she believes in nothing.  You may even think that her assassination of Kevin Rudd had little to do with the viability of the Labor Party or the Government of the Commonwealth: it was simply that, like Cassius, she could not behold a greater than herself and if the troops marched under her and not unlovable Kevin Rudd - well, what price knives and conspiracy?

You may believe all this and more. That Julia Gillard does not really care about a carbon tax or genuinely oppose gay marriage. You may take the dimmest possible view of a Prime Minister who can attempt to ship children and poor harried seekers of refuge to be flogged and desolated in Malaysia (the country that hanged Barlow and Chambers, the Australian drug dealers, an action Bob Hawke, then in power, described as "barbaric").  You may abhor the way she attacked the Chief Justice when the High Court of Australia rebuffed her on the Malaysia solution in a resounding six to one decision.

Even so, taking the dimmest possible view, Julia Gillard did not deserve this and nor did the nation. At Home With Julia is inane drivel of the most idiotic kind. Had it not been so long in the planning it would look like a blatant attempt to arouse compassion for a Prime Minister whose support had fallen to 25 per cent in the polls.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2877228.html

see comment above: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/13298#comment-16842

A few days ago I proposed that the government should provide the transport for the asylum seekers... There must be something in the water...:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3313602.htm

At Home With Julia was powerfully unfunny. You might have scraped together a 30-second comedy sketch from it, but as a half-hour of television it was stretched way beyond breaking point.

To do political satire you need to know your target intimately, then slice it as finely as prosciutto. Max Gillies got this right with his memorable vivisection of John Howard as a sort of suburban golf club manager, and Bob Hawke as the Silver Bodgie. But Julia had the cutting edge of a packet of frozen peas. Whoever waved it through at the ABC must have had a very long lunch that day. Best to bin the remaining three episodes to save embarrassment all round.

The real live Julia show is not doing much better, although it's more Greek tragedy than chirpy sitcom. With every opinion poll showing her about as popular as Bashar al-Assad and heading south, she is probably now beyond redemption. The fates beckon, and they are not kind.

This turns accepted political wisdom on its head. The economy is in world-beating shape. As a people, we've never been better off. Gillard is pushing her bills through Parliament smoothly enough, and the carbon tax will get up and eventually be recognised for the good it does and the harm it does not. The national broadband network hums along, and the government has churned out some generous Labor policy on health, parenting, and the aged and disabled. Despite the howls of the shock jocks and the Murdoch press, the schools building program also delivered. The only unmitigated catastrophe has been the so-called Malaysia solution, which was entirely self-inflicted. And yet the Prime Minister is dead in the water.

There are many reasons for this, but two stand out.

1. The putsch that put her into the Lodge was an epic piece of treachery from the NSW ALP right and its hangers-on, those same dolts who destroyed three Labor premiers in Macquarie Street. This taints her leadership with illegitimacy, as Malcolm Fraser's was after the 1975 Kerr coup.

2. She has dismal communication skills. Warm in private, sharp in Parliament, in the wider world she comes over as the Ice Queen. She grinds along in the cliches of management-speak, devoid of any emotion, words plonking from her lips in a jarring cadence as monotonous as bricklaying. At their best, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Rudd could inspire. Gillard just bores. It's as if she uses her set-piece speeches and answers at media conferences to fend off the Australian people rather than to connect with us. So we have stopped listening.

This cannot go on much longer. "The caucus is a tinderbox," one senior minister told me this week. Eventually Labor will work out that its only faint hope of salvation lies in the resurrection of Kevin Rudd, as the opinion polls suggest. If that means the humiliation of the NSW Right, then hallelujah, bring it on.

But to pull that off without splitting the party, Rudd would need the saintly forbearance of Nelson Mandela returning from Robben Island.

Mike Carlton

Labor, stick with Julia...

"Lazarus" Rudd would only demolish the tenuous hold that Labor has with the independents who made their deals with Julia, not Labor exclusively... This would of course push the annoying Abbott to the fore and, after ten minutes of rejoycement in the media, Australia would suffer another ten years of misery... And the country would loose extraordinary opportunities to move forward with many excellent policies despite one doozie on the boat people. If you call communicative skills what Abbott does, it's rabid lies after stupid lies after demonic lies that the media reinforces as gospel because the media loves Tony — since the media barons want Tony to give them bickies. It's about time the media be burned to the stakes.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard's meeting with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on the government's plan to reinstate offshore processing of asylum seekers has ended after just 15 minutes this afternoon.

Following the meeting, Ms Gillard said the federal government had strengthened human rights protections in its proposed migration law changes in a bid to win Mr Abbott's support.

"I have provided him with a new set of draft amendments," Ms Gillard told reporters after the short meeting.

"This new set of draft amendments has the same ultimate legal effect - that is it would enable executive government ... to make the arrangements it needs to or believes desirable in relation to offshore processing."

Mr Abbott was unusually silent after the meeting, declining to make any comments to the media as he left the Prime Minister's Parliament House office.

The new draft amendments explicitly require the Immigration Minister to have regard to the national interest and consider whether or not the third country met the principal obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

"That is, the obligation of non-refoulement, which means people should not be returned to a place where they would face persecution, and secondly that their claims would be processed," Ms Gillard said.

Mr Abbott was now considering those new amendments, she said.

The government needs the opposition to support its changes so it can proceed with its controversial Malaysian people swap deal and put other offshore processing beyond legal doubt.

Ms Gillard said advice from the Solicitor-General found the government's amendments would survive a test in the courts.

The High Court has ruled the asylum-seeker swap deal with Malaysia to be unlawful.

"Our advice is that these amendments are legally sound," Ms Gillard said.

She dismissed as "complete nonsense" a suggestion the government had overlooked some basic human rights issues in the draft changes it released late on Friday.

"We have worked with our legal advisers throughout this process, always on the basis that this nation would honour its refugee convention obligations, always."

Ms Gillard said there was more than one way to draft the amendment.

"There is rarely one way to draft a piece of legislation, there is always a number of ways of drafting a piece of legislation."

The Opposition Leader had not ruled out the new amendments, Ms Gillard said of their discussion.

"Mr Abbott said he would consider the amendments I presented to him today," she said.

The amendments would not discharge the government's responsibilities in protecting the rights of asylum seekers, Ms Gillard said.

"This government always, nearly always, honours its obligations under the refugee convention."

First and foremost the changes would put the decision as to where offshore processing took place in the hands of the elected government, Ms Gillard said.

The Migration Act had sections that required the minister to assess other countries "but it was believed until the High Court case that those matters were not capable of judicial review", she said.

"What will come before the Parliament is this concept that is should be the decision of executive government, not the courts."

It would allow the government to effect its Malaysian solution and the Coalition to pursue offshore processing in Nauru, were it elected, the Prime Minister said.

Ms Gillard said the government planned to introduce the legislation on Wednesday.

Gillard, Abbott asylum meeting lasts just 15 minutes

In the end, At Home With Julia is nothing more than a comedic fantasy of what life at the Lodge might be like. It’s not reality — it’s not even reality TV.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen. I just hope they can keep it up.

Some Coalition MPs and senators are unhappy about a sex scene in the satirical ABC TV show At Home With Julia.

The satirical show will tomorrow air a scene depicting Julia Gillard (actor Amanda Bishop) and her partner Tim Mathieson (Phil Lloyd) draped in an Australian flag after having sex in the Prime Minister's office.

The issue flared in the Coalition's joint party room meeting earlier today, sparking some calls for a rethink of ABC funding.

Nationals MP John Forrest said the scene was "sick" and argued the Coalition should take a stand on the issue.

"Having sex in the Prime Minister's office under the Australian flag is the last straw for me," he told the meeting.

"It is sick, I'm offended, and we should take a stand."

The MP later told Sky News the ABC should take the show off the air.

"Or at least (it should) make it more tasteful or more appealing to Australians - it's not even funny," Mr Forrest said.

He said MPs were "fair game" when it came to TV programs, "but this is over the top".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-20/mps-angered-over-gillard-satire-sex-scene/2908158

Yep, I agree, whoever's on top is over the top... The ABC should be hung and quartered...

Earlier today, Mr Abbott told the Nine Network that community release had been taken to a ''what looks like a whole new level of luxury'', following reports in News Ltd tabloids today that asylum seekers were given ''welcome packs'' worth thousands of dollars, including DVDs and plasma TVs, when they were released into the community.

''I can understand why millions of Australians would look at [that story] and think something is just not right in our system,'' Mr Abbott said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/minister-attacks-abbott-over-asylum-seeker-comments-20120217-1tcs7.html#ixzz1mbkYJanM

The man Abbott has no heart, no brains and lots of populist shrills... All the time... Non-stop... A crappy little petty man who is always twisting the reality to engross his bodgie budgies......

An Indonesian official has accused Australia's Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, of promoting an arrogant policy on asylum seekers.

Ms Bishop has been in Jakarta for meetings with top officials including the deputy chairman of Indonesia's parliament, Hajriyanto Thohari.

Mr Thohari says the Coalition's policy to send asylum seeker boats back where possible is unfair on Indonesia.

He says he told Ms Bishop that Australian policy on asylum seekers should be more humane and he has accused her of being arrogant in explaining the Coalition's position.

"In my opinion, that view is a view that is solely focused on Australia's perspective, without considering Indonesia at all as the country that experiences the negative impacts of the illegal immigrant issue," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-03/indonesia-targets-bishop-over-asylum-policy/3986562

Julia Gillard has singled out the ABC in an interview about the misogyny weathered by female heads of state, calling its decision to finance a comedy about her leadership bizarre.

Gillard was interviewed for a feature about the “age of public misogyny” that would be ushered in with Hillary Clinton’s presidency, published in the Atlantic and written by Michelle Cottle, a contributing editor.

Gillard spoke to Cottle in some depth about the sexist attacks she weathered while serving as prime minister from 2010 to 2013, saying that she was surprised they worsened over time.

Julia Gillard urges Americans of all parties to defend Hillary Clinton against sexism

“I expected the maximum reaction to my being the first woman prime minister to come in the first few months,” she said. “What I found living through the reality was that the sort of gendered stuff actually grew over time.”

Gillard singled out the ABC’s decision to fund a four-part sitcom titled At Home with Julia, which parodied her relationship with her partner, Tim Mathieson.

read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/19/julia-gillard-attacks-abcs-decision-to-finance-sitcom-at-home-with-julia

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOPsxpMzYw4

See toon at top...