A bear pit one day, a catfight the next

• December 6, 2008
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FEDERAL Parliament observes some of the same rituals as other workplaces when the holiday season approaches. This week, on the last sitting day of the year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull rose to offer each other and their families best wishes, and no doubt each man spoke in all sincerity. Anyone tempted to think that the Christmas spirit had entirely extinguished the atmosphere of the arena, however, could not have failed to notice the barbs in Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's festive offering. Ms Gillard conjured up not the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future, but the cast list of a Batman movie, with Opposition frontbenchers given roles that were not entirely flattering.

She suggested that education spokesman Christopher Pyne, her antagonist on the national curriculum bill, would be perfect as Robin the Boy Wonder, and more pointedly, that Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop should be Catwoman. Ms Bishop, who

earlier in the week had mimed a cat's-claw gesture at Ms Gillard, laughed along with the rest of the House. But the Deputy Prime Minister had made her point. She was implicitly inviting the members, and Australians generally, to reflect on which of the two deputy leaders was the better performer. And she clearly didn't think it was Ms Bishop.

The parliamentary year, in the House of Representatives at least, has partly been defined by duels involving Ms Bishop, first with Treasurer Wayne Swan in her role as his shadow, and more recently with Ms Gillard.

In neither clash did she emerge as victor, although Mr Swan appeared to share her lack of confidence and, at times, shaky grasp of the finer details of fiscal policy. It is a strange symmetry between Government and Opposition that, at a time of global financial crisis, on both sides the person responsible for the senior economic portfolio fails to inspire.

For the Government that has been less of a problem because, in and out of Parliament, the Prime Minister clearly leads the team and the team hangs together. The Treasurer may have faltered occasionally, but no one in this Government has fallen in its first year in office, an achievement in itself. The Rudd Government's only notable embarrassments have been the extra-parliamentary gaffes of backbenchers, such as the nightclub antics of NSW MP Belinda Neal and the bizarrely apocalyptic interpretation of the financial crisis given by her Queensland colleague James Bidgood. Continued...

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