Editorial: Bad taste of inequality

While many may be celebrating Kevin Rudd's ousting of Julia Gillard as Australia's Prime Minister, I feel a bit sorry for her.

This may surprise some people, given that she did exactly the same to Mr Rudd in his first term.

Make no mistake, the coup was dirty politics at its best and superb political theatre, but one just gets the sense that Ms Gillard received harsher treatment because she is a woman.

While she pushed through some good reforms, she could have been attacked solely for her leadership of a shaky minority government and also for breaking an election promise never to introduce an unpopular carbon tax.

However, her opponents (inside and outside her party) were hellbent on discrediting her as a woman and because she was a woman.

There has been innuendo and conjecture about her sexuality and that of her partner, Tim Mathieson, even before she took over. There was also the disgraceful menu at a Liberal Party fundraiser that ridiculed her and mentioned parts of her body in a derogatory fashion. You could not imagine any of Ms Gillard's male predecessors being subjected to such abuse.

Some strides towards equality between the sexes in Australia were taken when Ms Gillard was appointed to the top job, but the vicious attacks on her have left a bad taste.

Mr Rudd has inherited a poisoned chalice and now has the difficult task of uniting a fractured Labor Party before an election in the next couple of months.

As a reader pointed out to me yesterday, the Australian voters will have to decide which is the lesser of the two evils - Mr Rudd or Tony Abbott, leader of the Opposition (Liberal Party).