Happy families

Again with the Julia Gillard! Can't you just let it go?! Yeah, sure, just after this. I can't get out of my head the one tiny tell-all moment in that Australian Story profile (see posts below), the thing that every documentary maker dreams of getting. We follow Julia into Kim Beazley's office for a brief conference. (Kim, incidentally, remains seated while Julia stands at his desk.) Despite the businesslike tone and stagey bonhomie, the tension is palpable, although it might be charitable to ascribe this to the presence of a camera crew. As she prepares to leave, there is some uncertainty over a file, and who should deal with the - apparently fairly minor - matter it involves. For a few seconds, the file is passed back and forth between them, until Julia declares that she will handle it, and takes the file. Beazley's dilatoriness is all there in this little miniature: Julia's tone, as she takes the file, is that of the long-suffering wife who, having assigned her husband a task, acknowledges that he won't do it properly anyway, and snatches it back from him.