Julia Gillard might be human after all
So, I know I’ll cop it for this, but how come pollies aren’t allowed to change their minds?
We are…
You promise the kids pizza, but, after a quiet natter with your wife, decide Sumo Salad might be better…
Isn’t that just good parenting? Or are you a liar – an inauthentic fake, who can’t be trusted!
Alan Jones thinks so.
You and Ju-liar Gillard.
Over the past few weeks, Ms Gillard has copped some serious flack for her ‘political gymnastics’ on the issue of a carbon tax. She went into the polls saying she wouldn’t implement one and now it’s back on the drawing board. Tut tut! Traitor!
Really?!?
Cut her some slack…
She believes in human-affected climate change. She wants to protect our future. She thought a market based mechanism for pricing carbon to help lower our emissions was smartest. Initially, she thought an ETS was a better idea than a Carbon Tax. Things changed – negotiating the demands of the greens, independents, business and god knows who else, and, I’m sure, taking into account the effects of stuff that just ‘popped up’ like the QLD floods – and, realistically, a Carbon Tax was the most likely mechanism to see the light.
Fine.
That’s not inauthentic. It’s pragmatic.
It’s not insincere. It’s life.
What brat gets what they want, when and how they want it these days?!
We’re pretty much negotiating as soon as we get out of bed – “If you eat your muesli there’ll be a packet of chips in your lunch”, “If you do the dishes all this week, I’ll do em next”, “If I have to sit through ‘Two and a Half Men’ you better make me a cocktail”. And circumstances, well they’re always changing – sudden redundancy, flat tire, flat mate, flat out, rain, track work, shops closed, sprained ankle, locked keys, lock jaw, locked password etc.
Life is inevitably about compromise, and as John Lennon said, it’s what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
That doesn’t make us inauthentic, it makes us human.
Instead of getting dirty in the ‘he said, she said’ crap of tomcats like Alan Jones, Jules’ should’ve stuck with the explanation she gave channel 9 – ‘circumstances changed’ – and told us simply and honestly, what those circumstances were.
Most of us would’ve got it, or at the very least, respected her for trying to do the right thing.
We’re not petulant children.
I don’t want a mindless leader who isn’t nimble and humble enough to react to change. Or, too proud to rethink, reconsider and rearrange. ‘Cause I said I would’, should never justify nationwide policy change! I want my leader to assess and reassess their decisions, inform and re-inform themselves and be humble enough to admit what was right yesterday, may not be today.
To me, that’s what being an authentic leader is all about.
