Julia Gillard tires to excuse her lie with another lie:
JULIA Gillard has admitted she promised there would be no carbon tax during the last election but said circumstances had changed.
The Prime Minister today qualified her comments made a week before the August 2010 poll, when she ruled out a carbon tax, arguing her government had wanted to legislate for an emissions trading scheme.
”Yes, I did say that and circumstances have changed,” Ms Gillard told the Nine Network today, following mounting criticism that she has broken a promise reported in The Australian.
“What my vision was, was to be elected as prime minister and to introduce an emissions trading scheme, which is not a carbon tax.”
False again. Gillard is clearly implying that these changed “circumstances” forced her to do what she had explicity promised not to.
INDEPENDENT MP Andrew Wilkie says the Prime Minister is "trashing our democracy".
He is right, of course.
Consider: Julia Gillard won the last election with a lie - or false promise - to voters.
"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead," she vowed days before the polls.
And she became Prime Minister with another lie - or false promise - to Wilkie, in exchange for his decisive vote in parliament.
Here's how Wilkie described the deal: "The Prime Minister has agreed with me to implement pre-commitment technology on every poker machine in Australia by 2014."
She'd pass laws by May.
Gillard has now welshed on both promises. Voters will get a carbon dioxide tax this year, and Wilkie will not get his pokies changes.
These aren't minor breaches of Gillard's word. They can't be shrugged off as "just politics".
For one, these broken promises decided an election and the selection of a prime minister. The consequences could not be bigger.
But more, they are an assault on our democracy, because "democracy" does not mean simply that we get to vote. It means the majority of us get to decide.
Here's how Oxford Dictionaries define it: "Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives ... control of an organisation or group by the majority of its members."
But what control do we have of a government when we vote it in to do one thing but it then chooses to do the very other - when it wilfully breaks its most solemn promises on the biggest issues? No longer are voters in control. No longer does the majority rule.
Instead, the politicians please themselves, in defiance of the public will.
This is not what we mean by "democracy".
Yet what is astonishing is how little fuss has been made by the Canberra press gallery over Gillard's deceits.
She "won" an election on a lie (or fake promise) and took power with another, yet we've heard more about her cleverness than dishonesty - a dishonesty that undermines public trust in how we are governed.
Here, for instance, is Sky News presenter David Speers on Gillard's ditching of her pokies promise to Wilkie: "What it does is take the heat out of this issue ... At the moment the numbers aren't there for this reform ... In the long term it may be the smarter political move."
Similar excuses were made for scrapping the carbon tax promise. The tight numbers in parliament forced Gillard's hand, we were told by commentators who largely approved of Gillard's tax, sharing her faith that man is heating the planet dangerously.
But the excuses hold no water. Of the 150 members of the lower house, just one campaigned at the election for a carbon tax.
Every MP from Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals campaigned against it - making Gillard's promise the easiest any PM could honour.
And Gillard made her pokies promise to Wilkie knowing the numbers in parliament already.
She hasn't tested those numbers since with a vote in parliament, and for a simple reason. Many of her own Labor MPs thought her deal with Wilkie was suicidal, given the anger of punters in their own seats.
So Gillard broke her word - not because she had to - but because she chose to.
There have been other broken promises, too - to hold a "Citizen's Assembly" before implementing any big carbon-cutting scheme, to pay cash for clunkers, to set up an East Timor detention centre and more.
Still to come is the breaking of Gillard's key promise to bring the Budget back to surplus next year.
There is a pattern of deceit here. Gillard has broken her promises so often that even independent Senator Nick Xenophon, not a partisan player, protested this week that "a written, signed agreement with her is as worthless as her word".
Some will argue that Gillard is not dishonest, but incompetent.
She makes grand promises she can't keep because she lacks not integrity, but judgment.
That's a generous call, given how shamelessly Wilkie was cheated.
But ask me if I'd prefer my prime minister to be a bungler or a liar, and I'd say: can I have an election instead? Can I take back control?
I doubt I'm alone.
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