AUSTRALIA
The Age
October 22, 2018
By Jacqueline Maley
A survey of our recent prime ministers’ whereabouts on Monday: Kevin Rudd, in Canberra, promoting his new memoir by dripping out criticisms of his former colleagues. Malcolm Turnbull, in transit from his exile in New York, blamed for the Liberals’ trouncing in Wentworth. Tony Abbott, on the backbench of the House of Representatives, his expression blank, but his leg jiggling madly as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten addressed the victims of institutional child sex abuse.
Then there was Julia Gillard, who came back to Parliament House, where she was dealt (and doled out) some brutal treatment during her prime ministership, to be there for the national apology.
Gillard’s last act as prime minister was to order a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, and its political culmination was on Monday.
She was not the politician doing the apologising, but she was the only one the survivors really wanted.
There was applause for her on the floor of the House of Representatives and in the public galleries when Morrison acknowledged her. She was sitting in the seats for distinguished guests on the floor of the House, with the revered campaigners Chrissie Foster and Hetty Johnston .
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