May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Ms Gillard please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Ms Gillard please stand up?

'Cause she's Ms Gillard, yes she's Ms Gillard
All you other Ms Gillard's are just imitating
So won't the real Ms Gillard please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up?

The incumbent has pledged to get 'real'. The campaign book has been thrown out the window. She's going to take some risks. So, who have we been seeing to this point? And could she please stand up?

There is nothing that engenders trust in people like honesty. Perhaps this is why politicians are less trusted than real estate agents - they aren't real. Well, not 'real' in the way we need them to be. They backflip. They change policies. They come undone when scrutinised.

Over the course of this election, we have seen this in a variety of policy spaces - climate change, industrial relations, paid parental leave, same sex marriage. On both sides, the leaders are changing tack, denouncing policies they helped engineer, contradicting themselves.

This is nothing new from our pollies, but in the last year there has been a growing momentum towards those hallmarks of good governance - transparency and accountability. We did, of course, see both Kevin Rudd and John Brumby issue their own mea culpas earlier this year. (There was also Mr Rudd's famous apology, but that, I think, was seen by most people as a good thing). We now have an incumbent promising to bare her soul.

So what?

All this sentiment means nothing without an internally consistent policy position. Any attempt to expunge past flaws or distance yourself from scripted re-election campaigns can only ever be incremental, successful at the margins. Without a set of first principles, an articulated position statement, the voting public are less and less likely to place their trust in you. The core of the campaign needs to be strong, otherwise the remaining political muscles will be unable to support themselves.

So, would the real Ms Gillard please stand up? Or is she unsure what she is standing up for?

Marty Bortz
Masters Student
School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Melbourne