Letter from Sydney: ‘Ju-liar the witch’ is ditched after three torrid years

Voters have just witnessed an unprecedented Australian political train wreck. Watching it unfold live on national TV was like watching an unstoppable pile-up on the M1 in the fog.

The only ones who didn’t see the catastrophe coming, it seems, were the now-dumped prime minister Julia Gillard and her back-room crew. It has been obvious for weeks to almost everyone that, as the September election looms, the people’s choice for an Australian Labor Party prime minister was Kevin Rudd.

Popular and charismatic Rudd was the prime minister so publicly knifed by his deputy, Welsh-born lawyer Ms Gillard, in a coup three years ago. The Australian public never forgave her for grabbing the top job without their mandate.

With each unpopular policy, each Gillard government bungle and fiscal “black hole”, the public resentment and distrust of her grew. She was branded “Ju-liar” after pledging: “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,” and going back on her word after the 2010 election, which left her facing defeat in a hung Parliament unless she cosied up to the Greens and a handful of independents. Opposition leader Tony Abbot was photographed at an anti-government protest in front of a “Ditch the Witch” banner.

Ms Gillard soldiered on through it all, completely out of step with the community. As the ALP’s support plunged to record lows, she seemed deliberately out to lose the election she herself called for September. A picture in Australian Women’s Weekly of her knitting a toy kangaroo for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s baby was panned as PR spin. Many readers cancelled their subscription.

Her stubbornness and overconfidence finally became her undoing yesterday. Love her or loathe her, one had to admire her stoic performance as she continued to stick up for the nation-changing policies she introduced into law.

English former Fleet Street journalist Frank Thorne has been reporting from Australia and its regions for 20 years.