JULIA Gillard has just one response to allegations of impropriety - evasion.
Having asked for standing orders to be suspended so she could force Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to "put up or shut up" she again failed to address the substance of the argument he made about the now notorious AWU Workplace Reform Association slush fund.
Unwilling or perhaps unable to deliver a point-by-point rebuttal, she ignored the charges made by both Abbott and his deputy Julie Bishop that she had provided false information to the WA Corporate Affairs Commission and retreated into the stonewalling performance she has now rehearsed at two Canberra press conferences.
Abbott's argument was based on a transcript of the tape recording of Gillard's 1995 exit interview from Slater & Gordon, which is being released in bits and pieces by her former law partner Nick Styant-Browne. Abbott said she must have known after her interview that there was an abundance of problems.
He pointed out it was at that point she ended her relationship with Wilson - that it was known then that funds had been stolen from the fund. He said her silence meant the fraud could continue. She was, he said, a dodgy and unethical lawyer, and a dishonest and untrustworthy PM.
When Abbott surrendered the questions to Bishop, a former senior partner in a major law firm, she barrelled Gillard with the sections of the WA Criminal
Code. She rattled off the section numbers 170, 409, 558 and section 43 of the Associations Incorporation Act, to boot.
Watching Gillard respond was like sitting through a pirated video of The Exorcist as she twisted and writhed and sneered and spat "negativity, sleaze and smear" across the chamber. She had earlier released a statement in which she accused the Liberals of running a witch hunt - a discredited smear campaign - and of having "nothing".
"So, the Prime Minister wrote to the WA Commissioner?" the statement read. "So what? She did what lawyers do. Act on instruction. Provide legal advice.
"So, the Prime Minister can't remember writing one letter from 20 years ago. So what? Lawyers write thousands of letters in their careers. And what does the transcript show? That the PM said the association wasn't a union. So what? It obviously wasn't."
This is what Gillard - who on Monday was bemoaning the loss of a Liberal of the stature of former prime minister John Howard - believes passes for prime ministerial civility and dignity.
So what, you may say.
Well, on October 5, 2005, Gillard told parliament: "The Labor Party is the party of truth-telling. When we go out into the electorate and make promises, do you know what we would do in government: We would keep them.
"When we say them, we mean them. That is the difference between you and us. If I were minister for health it would be my duty to implement lock, stock and barrel - word for word -exactly what we had promised in the election campaign."
Re-reading her quotes and watching her performance and listening to her evasive, obfuscatory declamations, one wonders what happened to all that truth-telling. And its not just me. Early on Thursday I received a message on my blog from regular contributor, a dyed-in-the-wool Labor supporter who uses the name Judith. She wrote: "I must now eat humble pie. I have put some time into reading as much as I can about this sordid affair. It hurts me to the core to say this but Julia Gillard must step down.
"There is too much stench in the air. She must step aside. I can only hope that she makes this decision herself either today or at least before Xmas. She should take this action for the country more than for the Labor Party.
"As much as (I) have stood by Julia Gillard there is a point at which even the rusted-ons like myself have got to say enough is enough. It is beyond farcical and it is all about the PM herself.
"I urge Gillard to relinquish her grip on the office of PM despite the ramifications for Labor. The country is bigger than the party."
Gillard may believe the country is sick of this saga but the nation will never tire of striving for good governance and her performance on this issue has been abysmal.
Try as she might to hide behind feel-good announcements like the NDIS (without any funding), or the NBN (off the books and without a cost benefit analysis), Gillard looks like she is floundering. Her strident toughness is a facade.
Even her own side looked bleak as she thrashed around at the despatch box, the smiles were tentative, the cheering hollow.
Friday night drinks at Kirribilli House should be a real hoot.
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