Sexism, Lies, and Low Double Standards.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...livers-on-a-debt/story-e6frg6z6-1226656503988

DAVID Feeney is the faceless man with a face.
A large, round face that can turn from hilariously happy to bitter-sad in less than a sentence.

So it was when he was in Kevin Rudd's Canberra office in late 2009 when the then prime minister turned viciously on the Labor senator during an argument about MPs' printing allowances.

"You can get f . . ked," Rudd spat at Feeney, before asking, "Don't you f . . king understand?"

Feeney was with several other MPs, including the right-wing South Australian powerbroker Don Farrell, when Rudd pulled the wrong rein.

He underestimated Feeney's capacity for revenge and, more importantly, his ability to carry it out. Barely nine months later, Feeney and Farrell were at the epicentre of factional positioning that saw the end of Rudd and heralded the start of Julia Gillard.

.

..The decision to back Gillard has proved to be an unmitigated political disaster. It is stamped in red ink on Feeney's CV.

Feeney and others will go to the September election - almost four years to the day after Rudd's explosive attack on Feeney became public - as the architects of a deeply flawed leadership coup.

In a lengthy political career, Feeney's backing of Gillard has been his biggest, and worst, call.

But before the electoral axe falls on Labor, one of Gillard's last political favours has been to offer her backing for Feeney to win preselection in the northern Melbourne electorate of Batman, at nearly 25 per cent the nation's safest.

The resignation from federal parliament of long-time Labor minister Martin Ferguson cleared the way for Gillard to reward Feeney at the same time as clean up a messy Senate preselection.

Feeney had been languishing at No 3 on Labor's Victorian Senate ticket, meaning the 43-year-old would almost certainly have lost his position after the September election.

At the same time as delivering for Feeney, however, Gillard is opening the way for an almighty battle in the electorate and the Victorian Labor Party over a man who is a great polariser.

Gillard also has further undermined Labor's affirmative-action agenda.

The Prime Minister is wide open to the charge of hypocrisy and the accusation she is beholden to her factional masters.

Nearly 20 years after Labor backed affirmative action for preselections, Gillard appears prominently on the EMILY's List website, declaring: "Affirmative-action targets made the Labor Party look around and canvass for women candidates."

Almost as quickly as it became clear that Feeney was the clear frontrunner for the seat, Gillard's female ministerial colleagues howled from the expensive seats.

Families Minister Jenny Macklin was strongest.

"I am very concerned that if a woman is not preselected for Batman, the ALP in Victoria will have only 27 per cent of candidates in held seats who are women. This is well short of the 40 per cent required by the national rules," she said.

Finance Minister Penny Wong urged electors to get behind a woman, as did Health Minister Tanya Plibersek and Regional Services Minister Catherine King.

Brian Howe, a former deputy prime minister who held Batman for Labor for two decades, also has stridently backed the Left's candidate, Mary-Anne Thomas, 50, who has emerged as Feeney's main opposition.

Howe reportedly said he was disappointed to see Gillard involved in the preselection.

"It's quite counterproductive for her to be involved. This is not about the election - this is about the future," he said.

The affirmative-action debate is a problem for Feeney that will play out over the next six weeks, when the final vote is held for the preselection.

A senior right-wing source said that Feeney would be well aware of the blowback if Labor does not endorse a woman.

"David's not dumb, it's being talked about and it's a problem for him," the source said.

"He is in front - no doubt - but it is too early to say that the seat is his. There are a lot of locals on the ground of the progressive variety."

Feeney's bid to win the safest of seats has also reopened many old wounds, with the Left desperately trying to defeat him.

Feeney is a creature from the murkiest depths of the ALP.

He is almost universally loathed by the Left faction.

Then again, for historical reasons, Gillard is loathed by many in the Left as well.

When he was dumped as Victorian ALP secretary in 2002, factional opponents infamously posted a death notice in Melbourne's The Age.

It read in part: "Your stacks of friends will mourn your passing. Those left will never forget. 'Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand'."

That was 11 years ago this month, but if anything the bitterness has escalated.

At the time, Feeney dismissed the attacks against him as the political equivalent of Pearl Harbour: "And I got to play the role of an American sailor."

Also a victim of the factional realignment in 2002 was now federal Labor minister Bill Shorten.

The pair are old mates but, a decade on, the partnership is not without its complications, even if Shorten is backing Feeney in this preselection.

While Shorten quickly recovered from the 2002 factional blow-up executed when the right-wing National Union of Workers formed an unlikely alliance with the Socialist Left, Feeney had it less easy.

He punted around Victorian Labor for a while, ran the ALP's successful 2006 South Australian campaign and ventured to the ALP's federal office before falling into the Senate.

All the way, he was his humorous, divisive self.

One South Australian Labor figure remembers getting a terse call from Feeney during the 2006 campaign.

"I just thought, 'what a c . . t'," the party member recalled recently.

In simple terms, the Victorian Right is split between the Short-Cons, headed by Shorten and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

On the other side of the Right is the shop assistants union and the National Union of Workers.

Feeney's old powerbase of the Health Services Union has exploded and he benefits from the shop assistants' numbers but is not as strong numerically as if he were in the mainstream Short-Con Right.

Indeed, Feeney's strident support for former HSU official Kathy Jackson as the union self-destructed - and his role in the inner machinations of the nuclear war within the union - weakened his standing in the parliamentary party.

It also left him exposed on the No 3 position on the Senate ticket.

Throughout this period, he has fallen in and out of love with many of his old mates, Shorten included.

The reason for this is as complex as Feeney's hot and cold personality. Depending on which day you speak to him.

"There is no doubt the preselection issue has weighed on his mind," a friend said recently.

"It has hardened him. I think that while Bill (Shorten) forged ahead, Feeney struggled for a long time. That changes people."

Victorian politics can also be exceedingly cruel.

He is married to Melbourne lawyer and sometime ABC contributor Liberty Sanger.

Sanger's media appearances were described yesterday by one observer as the work of a "shameless Leftoid".

Labor thinks Sanger has a future.

There were rumours recently that she would be drafted, with the Socialist Left's support, for a safe Labor seat.

This would have served two purposes: it would have helped Labor's affirmative-action quota and - at the time - left Feeney languishing in an unelectable position and his wife in the parliament.

There were Feeney enemies who were looking forward to this.

As late as last week, sources said that Gillard was being counselled against publicly intervening in the Batman preselection.

With the Socialist Left demanding a preselection ballot, the look would have been horrid. Gillard would have been rolled.

This sparked deep concern that the Prime Minister's detractors were working behind the scene to throw another knife in her back.

Not so, says a senior Labor figure intimately aware of the machinations leading to Feeney's endorsement.

"This is more about the Left hating Feeney than it is about any hate for the PM," he said.

"The Gillard issue has passed. We're not going to win but some think they can influence the future."

The Left powerbrokers desperately wanted ACTU president Ged Kearney to run.

This would have sent a strong message to the many hundreds of party members on the ground in Batman.

Getting Kearney to run was all about the position; a powerful woman against a faceless factional manipulator would have been a powerful message. Even if that faceless manipulator was in fact the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence.

Yet, just as The Australian reported from the outset, it never did look like Kearney was ever going to run.

It didn't take long for the ALP to channel its inner Quentin Tarantino, referring to the 1994 crime movie Pulp Fiction.

"Ged's dead, baby, Ged's dead," one onlooker noted after Kearney had withdrawn from the race.

This has effectively left the relatively low-flying Mary Anne-Thomas as the faction's great hope to snare the seat.

Thomas has some runs on the board.

She is the executive manager of children's development agency Plan International and is a former bureaucrat.

But few could pretend that she has the experience or the strategic background to overshadow Feeney, notwithstanding his dopey backing of Gillard.

As it stands, Feeney will win the preselection, which will be finalised in the next six weeks.

The only person who can stop that, it seems, is Feeney himself.

To that end, his critics argue that he has overstated the on-the-ground support in Batman, which runs in a narrow band through Melbourne's inner north and northeast.

One senior factional operator said that Feeney had failed to lock in 50 per cent support among local branches but would have a majority on the central panel, suggesting the vote could be tight.

Final numbers will be influenced by ethnicity, religion, gender and ideology, as well as deeds both good and bad.

A decade after being thrown out of the state secretary's office, Feeney is looking like being one of the last of Gillard's faceless men to be left standing.

He survives because he backed Gillard in 2010.

No more, no less.

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The quality of female ALP nominees will never advance under the "quota system". Real women don`t need quota systems, all they need is equal opportunity. To deny a man of opportunity, simply on the basis of his sex, is piggish sexism, nothing more.

Julia Gillard, is the most sexist PM in our history, but she owes Feeney and Co for the Rudd backstab. Gotta get your priorities right Jules, your own ego comes before, "progressive" sexism.

 

Looks like no one wants the ignominy of trying to defend the indefensible. The ALP needs to drag itself into 2013.

 

Massive reason why these parasites need to be replaced ASAP.

 

How can they howl for sexual equality, while opposing the selection of a male, solely on the basis of his sex? ---- Piggy WHO ?
How can their improve the low standard of the ALP, while not even attempting to follow the agenda of selection on merrit ?
Will they get the Macquarrie dictionary to reshuffle the meaning of the word "equality" also ?

 

CD, if you tell me the year of your birth, I can tell if you are a woman hater, or not.
If you post Julia Gillard a well used pair of your old undies, she can read the skid marks, and tell your fortune. Then she`ll forward them on to Wayne Swan, as the basis of his budget for next year. Then he`ll send them on to Bob Brown, who`ll just keep em.

 

Didn't you know mate, the plump oinker is a GOD - GOD's can do anything

- - - Updated - - -

 

Notice how the loyal worshipers at the alter of the goddess of delusion don`t have any answers?

 

Obviously, there is no logical way to contradict the OP. Or even an hysterically illogical way. The Komrades are very quiet. PMSL

 

No need to contradict, it's probably true..... So what!

 

Which part do you need explaining to you this time?

 

Which part of what I said dont you understand?

 

I just can`t understand how anyone could think that the actions of the ALP, as described in the OP, were acceptable. How anyone could fail to condemn these stupid double standards etc etc. This is paramount to an admission of retardation. LMBO.

 

Double standards in the loopy minds of those who are anchored down in the ugly past and blissfully deny it, but affirmative action to those that recognise and acknowledge institutionalised discrimination that led to inequities in the first place. If you can't understand that, book yourself in and get that prefrontal lobe checked!

 

Read the OP, TV. The topic here, is the institutionalised discrimination, and ugly double standards of the ALP. You have so far, completely failed to address this issue. Wishy washy, and meaningless blather, dosen`t do the job.

this is like shooting fish in a barrel

 

This is like getting a feed from a beached whale! What on earth is "affirmative action" Aussie?................ Now put this in context to the crap that you are feeding yourself. You have failed to get a bite from anybody, I suppose because they probably know what a simplistic argument it is and couldn't be bothered responding to such delusion! Gotta get out a bit more aussie, there is much for you to learn!

 

Poor old TV. What is "affirmative action", you ask. Affirmative action, in this case, is a simple little catch call to help simpletons feel heroic about sexism and double standards . Isn`t the ALP on the skids enough already, without handicapping their own "talent pool", by sexist policies?

 

Nope, I still don't think pauline Hanson would make the cut even with affirmative action! Well the libs obviously used affirmative action in favour of the mentally incapacitated, just take a look at abbott, the bumbling baffoon and his evil eyed deputy! Don't go throwing stones while you're living in the proverbial!

 

Abbott and Julie Bishop are going to wipe the floor in the upcomming election, and you still don`t get it. hilarious

 

What, because of their talent!....lol! Mr "No" and Ms " suspend standing orders".

 

Mainly because of the most arrogant, sexist PM we`ve ever had, the dumbest treasurer on earth (the last person on the planet to recognise that the much promised budget surplus wasn`t going to happen), and the brain dead spin believers that hang on to the ALP.

 

If some of these people actually travelled more, then they would instantly realise they are being fed a pack of lies about Australia’s so-called good economy verses other countries.


Do a Google search for yourselves people. You will discover a tiny little country like Papua New Guinea actually did better than Australia through the “big bad” GFC.

This was not the only country that did better than Australia through the GFC by the way.

I simply cannot believe how dumb and stupid some Australians are - its staggering.

 

Thanks for this in-depth enlightenment!.......lol! The international treasurer of the year and the prime minister who has overseen the greatest policy implementation ever! Swear she's got balls....good way!

By the way, PNG is one of the worlds leading economies......lmao!

 

Apparently major rumblings in the ALP as we speak. Watch this space.

Party big boys very angry with Gillard re man hating speech today. Possible straw that has broken camels back.

Either the dumbest thing she has revisited or she is smoking out the back stabbers. Watch with interest.

 

I saw part of the speech. Very odd.

 

You really are backward and slow - were you home schooled?

“… PNG had enjoyed a decade of positive economic grow at over 6% since 2007, even during the Global Financial Crisis years of 2008/9.”

The quote is in the economy section of the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea

You want to dispute information and facts in wikipedia do you genius?

Yes. PNG did better than Australia through the GFC, you piggish little tranny, and so did many other countries.