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Prime Minister’s response to Julian Assange pleased USA, not the Australian public

She sought to placate the wrong audience and said what the American government would have wanted to hear, not what the fractious left in Australia wanted to hear.

PM tanks at home, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Dec 10, Gillard’s ill-advised judge and jury comments convicting Julian Assange alienated a swag of Labor supporters for good.THE WikiLeaks revelations have been an immense political disaster for the Gillard government. All it took was two sentences from the Prime Minister during a radio interview nine days ago, as the first of the 250,000 US State Department documents held by the website were published in overseas newspapers: “I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website. It is a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do.”

With this, especially the declaration of illegality, Julia Gillard offended the sensibilities of hundreds of thousands of Labor supporters, many of whom won’t be coming back to the ALP. It was Gillard’s opening comment on a massive international story which has deep links with Australia and it provided the framework for the public’s assessment of the government’s handling of the issue.

Because WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a Melbourne native, the controversy was always bound to entangle the Australian government. Gillard also knew when she gave the interview that the documents included the material that has this week been published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which included US embassy interactions with, and assessments of, the Labor government…………

She sought to placate the wrong audience and said what the American government would have wanted to hear, not what the fractious left in Australia wanted to hear….

PM tanks at home

December 11, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics, Wikileaks