It appears a few definitions were changed last night. Like ‘debate’.  Apparently debating no longer involves actually engaging your opponent, addressing their points, and countering with your own argument. Or ‘good’. As in, ‘this has been a good debate’, ‘yes, it has been a good debate hasn’t it’. Good now means fruitless, pointless, stupefying and I want the last hour of my life back.

Nothing that Abbott said last night surprised me. The fact that my husband has taken to calling me “toots” and keeps asking me what I’m doing out of the kitchen has helped my resilience somewhat, so now when I see him on TV I can resist the urge to run at it full tilt and try to knock the offensive off the screen.  ”You know, when Tony’s Prime Minister, you won’t be able to tell me to make my own damn dinner anymore” he tells me. “Tony understands a woman’s place”. Bless the man, he has a real taste for sardonic humour.

But enough about Abbott (please!)  I’m more concerned with Julia.

What happened to her? Her rapier wit and ability to reduce Tony (and most other politicians) to a gibbering heap of bumper sticker phrases? In the past Abbott was only able to ‘beat’ her in an argument by shouting over her. Now, she is letting him get away with making any claims he wants while she stands grinning and looking constipated. It seems that the very act of making someone Prime Minister renders them incapable of maintaining both a personality and an opinion. It happened to Rudd, and now it’s happening to Gillard.

It was obvious by the way the worm dipped violently towards ‘do not want!’ every time someone mentioned boats, that hardly anybody wants this to be an election issue, let alone a major one.   Despite that, it was inevitable it would come up. They both just repeated their commercial scripts, and pretty well ignored each other.  Gillard totally neglected to mention that Naru shouldn’t be an option for Australia, because they aren’t a signatory to the Refugee Convention! It’s a major point people should be aware of, and the reason Australia has such a shithouse human rights track record in the eyes of the world.

She wouldn’t talk about Rudd. C’mon, like she didn’t think that would come up? Look over here Australia, yes, that’s right, look right at that blinking light…. *flash* good. Now, Kevin who you say? Great, it worked.   Seriously, she’s a politician. She did what politicans do. Own it, explain it, and people will either agree or not, and everyone will move on. Not wanting to discuss it makes you look like a backstabber Julia, even if you aren’t. And hell, even if you are, you’re a politician, people are cynical enough about your profession to get over it by Friday.

Abbott/Liberal is promising to cut spending and introduce no big taxes. Excellent. Now, why for the love of pete did Julia not ask him how he planned to do it? Cut infrastructure spending? Public service, programs, can improvement projects perhaps? Instead she veered her trainwreck to the right and started a one-upmanship gamble by vaguely insisting they would cut spending also. It was like watching the Budget special of “Deal or No Deal”.

I really, sincerely hope Julia gets her groove back and stops behaving as though she exists merely to justify herself to Tony Abbott.  He’s representative of all that’s wrong with this country – a middle-aged white man with no grip on reality, no true idea about how ‘average’ people live, and no true vision of the future. He described stay-at-home-mums as ‘housewives’ for sobbing out loud. Surely she realises how far above him she is?

Meanwhile the best part of the Debate was Bob Brown’s tweets, which were also incredibly depressing because the politician making the most sense and displaying the most actual, proper policies, has to do so via social networking because the PTB don’t have the vision to involve him.