Julia Gillard wishes she had concentrated more on school toilets than literacy and numeracy

The Blowfly cant help but think that all the reaction to the My School website is but a ‘storm in a shit-bucket’.( He realises that the normal turn-of-phrase is ‘storm in a tea-cup’ but when you are a blowfly you have been more used to a ‘shit-bucket’ than a ‘tea-cup’)

He finds himself this Sunday morning adorning the shoulder of the Deputy PM and Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion.

It’s quite a treat to have a little perfume around and much preferable to the rather tawdry odour of those testosterone-laden men he’s been haunting lately.

Julia is engaged in her favourite Saturday pastime of reading ‘The Age’. She first got into the habit while she was working for Slater And Gordon during the late 80’s. She used to scan the pages looking for causes she could wheel up to the partners for commercial advancement.

Now she is firmly engrossed in John Marsden’s article about the My School website.
She is all rather serene until she comes to the bit where Marsden suggests that parents need to be a little more subtle and, perhaps even devious, when assessing a school’s suitability for the bearers of their genes.

When Marsden suggested that a quick foray into the toilets to see how clean they were and then a subtle visit to , or standing outside, the staff room during morning tea or lunch to get a feel for the happiness of the teachers.
Her eyes roll back in her head!

“Shit”, she thinks to herself, “why didn’t I think of that ? …………….Those bloody boffins of mine told me that parents were only interested in hard facts…………..but Marsden is right!..............Toilets and staffrooms……………Shit! Shit! Shit!...............it cost a fortune to construct that site and get the data onto it………I can barely understand it myself…..………..and I have an Arts/Law degree………………and then there’s the issue of selective schools which I completely overlooked………….we didn’t factor that in………….of course they are going to perform better…………..we have selected the better students to attend them………….oh dearie me this life is a bitch!”

She ponders her lot in life for a moment.

Then she moves onto the story regarding the 6 youths who have been sacked from their after-school jobs at a Victorian hardware store because the Fair work Act wont let them work less than 3 hours per day.

“Jesus H Christ!” she thinks. “ How do I defend this ?............. Don’t tell me my boffins have let me down again………….I didn’t know this was going to happen…..these kids will be voting at the next election……….shit!..............it’s this year……….God, I hope Kevin can come up with a line to diffuse this…………..those 19 marginal seats could be affected……..I wish I could work an hour and a half each day…………………That would be heaven………..instead of these damn hours that Kevin expects us to keep……………oh God!”

“So many difficulties and so many contradictions…………… I was probably a bit hard on my parliamentary-luvver-boy last week ! Poor old Tony Abbott......................here we are trying to get parents to take their role more seriously and then I go out and ridicule the ex-priest about valuing virginity………..we should be honouring those who keep their virginity and abstain………….maybe rates of sexually transmitted diseases would decline…………and maybe if there was more monogamy the society would be better off……………..how do I overcome my guilt at sticking the knife into the ex-priest?...........................................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”.

It is simply too much for her poor darling red-headed brain to absorb. She receives a visit from the Sandman. And I might add that The Blowfly was none too excited by the thoughts of the afternoon. He nods off as well.

Sometimes being in power is so bloody boring. All that keeps one excited is a new hair-style!

She recalls the words of ANOP’s final brief to Bob Hawke before the 1990 election campaign as quoted by Paul Kelly in his book ‘The End Of Certainty’------“The swinging voter mood is disillusioned, despondent and cynical. Many would genuinely like a change of government but some are not changing their vote because they lack confidence in the Opposition”