Gillard demonstrates "stability" by complaining of treachery Two very strange things about this latest scene from the Leader's bunker: A furious Julia Gillard yesterday turned on her own MPs for leaking, accusing them of destroying the government from within in remarks later described by several as "bizarre" â¦ Ms Gillard told her MPs that journalists had complained to her that when they returned from leave they had messages waiting from MPs offering "negative assessments." First, if the Prime Minister strategy with last week's election announcement was to project "stability" and "certainty," why follow it up with bound-to-leaked accusations of white-anting against her own MPs? But second, did Gillard really say journalists were "complaining" about having Labor MPs tell them how bad she was? Are indeed some journalists "complaining"? If so, it seems either that Gillard has a bizarre notion of the proper relationship between journalists and her government - or that some reporters do. Maybe it's the same sense of entitlement that led her to this complaint to caucus yesterday: There was even a frustrated and exasperated observation during the defence of parachuting sportswoman Nova Peris into the Senate that it had "even" taken Gillard "10 years to get here." Ghastly, how Labor didn't instantly give Gillard a seat the moment she expressed interest. Gillard was first elected in 1998. How could Labor have failed to see the obvious talent in her a decade earlier - when she was just 27, an organiser of the far-Left Socialist Forum and a solicitor so shaky that seven years later she was effectively edged out of Slater & Gordon for registering a dodgy slush fund for her then conman boyfriend without informing her partners. Her work for that boyfriend is now subject to a police investigation (although Gillard insists she did nothing wrong). How could Labor not have instantly seen young Gillard's worth? More "stability": Retiring Senate leader Chris Evans also called for unity, warning the caucus that the worst damage was inflicted by the "enemy within." Henry Ergas: Yet it would be a mistake to write Gillard off. There is in her that streak of granite, along with a remarkable combination of scorn, repartee and courage. Ergas says Gillard's latest stunt - naming an election date in September - is an attempt to shift responsibility from the government: Gillard's gambit is as objectionable as it is ill-conceived. Although she flatly denies being in election mode, her whole strategy is to shift the focus on to the opposition, as would happen in a campaign, without imposing on her own government any of the constraints the caretaker conventions require... Those conventions serve to reduce, for the period of the campaign, the enormous asymmetry between government and opposition that characterises the Westminster system. That system gives the government, embodied in the cabinet, undisputed control over, and sole access to, the executive, in return for the government taking full responsibility for the executive's actions. The consequence is that it is the government, and the government alone, that has the data and other resources required to develop and implement policy.