PM will rue yet another bad call

BY:DENNIS SHANAHAN, POLITICAL EDITOR From: The Australian October 10, 2012 12:00AM

PETER Slipper has demonstrated better political judgment in apologising for his actions and resigning as Speaker than has in digging in to defend him.

Only hours after the Prime Minister voted to keep him in the chair and launched a ferocious personal attack on for misogyny, she sat as a stony witness to Slipper's tearful resignation for the same failing and degradation of women.

Rather than taking the initiative and leaving Slipper to fall on his sword, Labor went to full- blooded battle and tried to make political gains in its obsessive war on the Liberal leader.

When it was obvious to everyone that the new trove of degrading sexual texts unearthed in court meant Slipper's career was over and that Labor should take the lead in his removal to justify its high moral stance on sexism and denigration of women, the Prime Minister dug in.

Labor's defence of Slipper involved an offensive launched against Abbott as being as bad as the Speaker when it came to attitudes towards women.

Although there was no moral equivalence with Slipper's sex texts to his adviser and jokes about jars of "pickled c . . ts" and an ignorant bitch of an MP, Anthony Albanese and Gillard threw the allegations against Abbott to deflect the 's efforts to remove the Speaker.

Blind to public concern and outrage, Labor tried to hold on to Slipper to back its brilliant coup last year in getting him to defect and keep that precious one-seat buffer it lost when Tasmanian independent dropped his guaranteed support after being dudded on a deal over limiting poker machines.

The now faces the prospect of going back to holding a tenuous and brittle margin of just one vote in the House of Representatives after providing a new Speaker -- the put- upon -- from their own ranks.

The parliamentary agony is set to resume with the same intensity and uncertainty it had last year.

Regardless of what happens in his civil court case over sexual harassment and the continuing investigation into travel fraud claims, Slipper faced a new set of insurmountable hurdles to regaining his place.

A new body of evidence, which Slipper's apology statement last night confirmed and authenticated, has arisen through the sexual harassment case that prevented Slipper from acting with dignity in parliament or having respect from MPs, even the Prime Minister. The government offered a spurious cover story on not wishing to comment when court proceedings were underway; Slipper himself recognised the political legitimacy of the issue and dealt with it without public rancour.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's own interventions made a mockery of not making a comment during the court case. Labor was defending the indefensible and fighting the inevitable.

Gillard's parliamentary presentation was brilliantly ferocious, emotionally stirring and evocative of a wronged and injured party.

But the substance and argument fell well short of an acceptable political strategy and risked only alienating more voters disenchanted with the grubby, hypocritical and personal abuse from both sides of parliament.

The alignment of Abbott with Alan Jones's remarks about Gillard's father's death and the "ditch the witch" placards of the anti-carbon tax rally will entrench the Liberal leader's perceived "problem with women" amongst some Labor supporters, but the government risks putting off many more over the defence of Slipper.