Alan Jones and Julia Gillard's love-in

Alan Jones and Julia Gillard provided information, not ideology   ALAN Jones is back on Sydney radio station 2GB, and yesterday he celebrated a welcome return from sick leave by bowling up hard questions to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It was a tougher interview than her boss has ever endured on Rove, or with any of the comedians who host the breakfast shows on FM radio he enjoys. Jones produced bouncers about the way the government is treating a whistle-blower and the widow of a soldier killed on active service. He sent down curly questions about spending on school construction, and he bowled straight on workplace reform. Ms Gillard would have done well to play a straight bat, to have got through an uninterrupted 30-minute interview with her temper and credibility intact. She did more than that. She listened to the questions and answered them. Certainly she challenged Jones when she thought he was being too tough, but she was unfailingly polite and informative, without, as Jones informed his audience, any notes. "She is not frightened of the questions and whatever they are she takes them," he said. You do not need to agree with Ms Gillard's policies to be impressed by her performance. She dealt with specific questions about her portfolio - school spending and how changes to industrial awards will alter employment for weekend workers in the retail and hospitality industries. She was well-briefed to address other issues, and when she could not answer a question - whether a capital gains tax on the family home would come out of the Henry tax review - she politely explained why, suggesting we wait and see what the inquiry proposes. It was an interview aspiring politicians could learn from. Ms Gillard demonstrated that ministers and their opposition equivalents need not fear the fiercest of interviewers if they know their subjects and understand how to explain them. It was also an exchange many interviewers should study, especially those who think their job is to express their own opinions, thinly disguised as questions. Certainly Jones raised issues that interested his audience but there was none of the sermonising common among interviewers who assume what they think matters most. He was interested in eliciting information rather than point-scoring. Yesterday's interview was a robust exchange but it was free of ideology. While Jones wanted answers, he did not try to browbeat Ms Gillard into agreeing with him. Nor was it an example of the exchange that occurs when an interviewer agrees with the politician they are talking to, such as the way ministers regularly get a soft go from the Canberra press gallery on climate change. But there was one question Jones did not ask Ms Gillard, one that a journalist put to her later - why Kevin Rudd does not go on the radio with Jones? It was the only question she ducked all day. The Australian Like that other right-wing death beast Andrew Bolt, I am not so secretly in love with Julia Gillard. Even when I disagree with her I can't help but be impressed with her at the same time. She just oozes an almost sexual, (don't worry, I'm not on the turn), combination of genuine strength and confidence. Can't say the same for her prissy glass-jawed boss.

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