JUST before his ministerial responsibilities were significantly reduced, Peter Garrett made one of Australia’s great political understatements.
The former Midnight Oil frontman said of Labor’s insulation program: “We’re seeing a relatively small number of complaints in the system, given the scale of the system, about 0.5 per cent of complaints given the totality of the system. It has been a very successful program . . .” Two weeks later he was demoted and the program was cancelled.
As Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne pointed out last week, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd …

THREE weeks ago I wondered if there was something wrong with the Canberra press gallery. Despite a growing list of problems in the programs for which she has been responsible, their infatuation with Julia Gillard seemed to know no bounds.
A remarkable demonstration of political acrobatics last week by the Deputy Prime Minister proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. First was the backdown on youth allowance, an admission that country kids can’t be expected to live at home while attending university. Then there was the duck-and-weave on …

JULIA Gillard is the darling of the Canberra press gallery. This makes some sense: she is erudite and sometimes funny in question time, a welcome break from the tedium of our Prime Minister’s mangled bureaucratese. She is also “the woman most likely”, a potential female prime minister in a city obsessed with the symbolism of such potential.
But increasingly concerns are growing in the education sector that she may be out of her depth when it comes to delivering in her very large portfolio areas. On last week’s Q&A program on …