IN my carport are two signs, handwritten, which were once nailed to a power pole.
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They are two of a series that appeared after the 2010 federal election, apparently nailed to the pole by someone who was not a Julia Gillard fan.
I don't have the "Ditch the witch" sign that appeared with a drawing of a red-haired, black-frocked female figure on a broom, although the red-haired woman is in one of my signs, along with the words "Our facist [sic] dictator" and a Bible reference. Ephesians chapter six, verse 12.
And before anyone brands our anonymous sign maker sexist, let me tell you about my second sign. It has a fanged Treasurer Wayne Swan with the number "666" on his forehead, above the words "New world order commie!"
Our sign maker wasn't necessarily having a go at Gillard because she was a woman, despite the "witch" reference. He or she just didn't like Labor, and wanted the world to know.
A few people have asked me about the signs, how I got them and why I've kept them. I picked them up one day while walking my dog. They were in the dirt not far from the power pole, presumably thrown there by someone who objected to them.
They're a part of history, for me. They're proof of a divisive period in our political history, when extreme views carried weight in mainstream discourse and people gradually, and then overwhelmingly, switched off politics, often without even really knowing why.
All this week the Labor leadership has dominated the news, again, because the penny has dropped for even those Labor MPs in "safe" seats who thought they'd survive a September 14 election rout. Too many won't.
What we're seeing now is fear and self-interest driving talk of an 11th hour leadership challenge, overlaid with a veneer of concern for Labor's future.
And into this death rattle of a debate strode Gillard on Tuesday, with a speech at a Labor "Women for Gillard" event. And in that speech she raised abortion, of all things, and the cry that "we don't want to live in an Australia where abortion again becomes the political plaything of men who think they know better".
No, we don't. But in Australia we also instinctively recoil when an issue like abortion is thrown into a debate by a politician from out of nowhere and in a suggestive way to attack the Opposition. It was an extremist statement in a speech that did raise serious issues. And it wasn't the only extremist statement.
"On that day, 14 September, we are going to make a big decision as a nation," Gillard said. "It's a decision about whether, once again, we will banish women's voices from our political life."
With those statements Gillard - a woman I admire for calling a royal commission into child sexual abuse, for disability support reforms and attempts to reform education funding - showed why so many people have disconnected from her, her party and politics in general.
To say that women's voices could be banished from "our political life" is a nonsense, and demonstrably so. But I sympathise.
Gillard is a woman leading a party established more than a century ago, by men. She is Prime Minister in a country where the political systems, government and institutional structures, private business processes, cultural norms and ways of doing things were established more than two centuries ago, again by men.
Thus Australia's first female Prime Minister has risen to the top in a system established by men, and played to rules - primarily adversarial - set down by men. She has led this country against an Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, whose rise to the top has been facilitated by knowing those rules and playing them harder than virtually every other male around him.
Which is why I hope Gillard remains Prime Minister until September 14, Labor is decimated, and Abbott leads this country for a while. He says he's reformed. Let's see.
I'm a process person. I think history will show that Gillard was the female Prime Minister Australia needed to have, and from a party that needed reform. Clearing the decks is a good way to start.
Abbott has played extreme politics. It's been aggressive, divisive, disrespectful and successful, which says a lot about us if we care to think about it. The problem is that we don't.
Kevin Rudd has also played the game, after men from his own party found him so hard to stomach they turned to a woman to save them.
I looked up my anonymous sign maker's Bible reference. Ephesians 6, 12, the King James version: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
That's one way of describing a democracy, I suppose.