Gillard's broken promises

Peter Wilkinson of The Independent Australian writes:

Gillard is untrustworthy, true to the traditional ALP ‘whatever it takes’. However, in these days of the media concentrating on the moment, public opinion is fickle and tends to forget broken promises. Unless there are more stuff-ups like the Carr fiasco the ALP will improve before the next election. The Coalition has had it too easy, too early.

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Broken Promises

To satisfy the Greens Gillard had to break her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. (There is no evidence that she is a liar, it is entirely credible that she was not going to introduce a carbon if the ALP had a clear majority, given her efforts to get Rudd to drop his ETS.) This site has argued for a carbon tax, but at a lesser level. As a result of Greens pressure it has been set too high.

Before the election she made it quite clear she was opposed to homosexual marriage. When the crunch came at the ALP conference she did not speak against the motion that made homosexual marriage ALP policy. Instead she slid away by getting a deal done to make a vote a conscience vote.

Conscious of a swelling public disquiet with Rudd’s Big Australia policy with record immigration, before the election she said she did not believe in a big Australia. However the Government quietly budgeted for a 20,000 increase in 2011/12 over 2010/11. So the Government is canceling out the effect of the carbon tax and more by increasing the population by not much short of 200,000 pa. There is no creditable scenario which has Australia reaching the target of 5% reduction by 2020 of the energy consumption in 2000 with Gillard immigration policies. Abrupt dumping of schemes to reduce household consumption, such as the pink batts and the solar hot water schemes, show that Gillard’s long term vision is not 2020.

She made a deal with independent Andrew Wilkie to do something about problem gamblers. As soon as she had inveigled the then Coalition member Peter Slipper into the Chair and didn’t need Wilkie’s vote, she shuffled off the simple plan of lower value feeds or slower spin in favour of a ridiculous trial of letting problem gamblers set their own limits.

Somewhere there was talk of amending the Constitution and a select (carefully selected!) group has made over the top recommendations. All too hard, quietly postponed.