By Michelle Grattan
JULIA GILLARD is engaging in some strong personal branding, increasingly holding up the ''Labor'' stamp, and putting her reform agenda in the context of the way ''Labor'' does things, with an emphasis on fairness and equity. As Australia moved to a low carbon future, she said recently, ''we won't leave business and workers and unions to manage on their own. That is not the Labor way''.
Gillard's critics like to attack her for not being a conviction politician and question what she really stands for. One of her problems since becoming Prime Minister has been that many voters have found it difficult to get a handle on her. They thought they knew her as deputy prime minster, but once she had the top job, they started to wonder, not least because of the way she got it.
In her Gough Whitlam oration in Sydney on Thursday, Gillard dismissed ''existential angst'' within Labor about its identity as ''bunkum''. She said she was ''absolutely clear'' what it stood for, and outlined Labor's values and approach, starting with its commitment to ''fair access to opportunity''.
A lot of what she said reminded of how she has defined what she personally stands for, such as the value of hard work, setting your alarm clock early (Paul Keating was never in that tradition!) and ensuring your children are in school. It was perhaps unsurprising to learn Gillard personally drafted much of the ''Labor'' section on the plane trip from Perth to Sydney a few hours before its delivery.
More surprising is how scathing Gillard is now being about the Greens. This started when recently she described them, in the carbon debate context, as at one ''extreme'' of politics. That was a relatively mild flick (and Bob Brown took it as such) made for political show because she is under pressure over the Labor-Green alliance.
But on Thursday she was both scathing and scornful. The Greens were ''a party of protest'', with some ''worthy ideas'' and ''good intentions'', she said dismissively. Then this: ''The Greens will never embrace Labor's delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, in our cities, suburbs, towns and bush, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation.'' Precisely what this means is anybody's guess. Brown has promised to quiz Gillard, perhaps when they next get together for one of their regular meetings. He described her comments as ''amiss'', ''gratuitous'' and ''not becoming'', and said they would come back to bite her. The ''values'' remark certainly seems a very strange observation to make about the party she's willing to include on what is almost a cabinet committee. Despite their tetchiness, the Greens are likely to keep insults in perspective - they know their relationship with the government potentially delivers them some core wins.
By emphasising her ''Laborness'' and associating herself with earlier Labor leaders who promoted change, Gillard is strengthening her own reform cred. And indeed she has quite a bit of reform on her plate, with the carbon tax and now the welfare changes. On the latter - at least in her aim to get people off welfare - she finds herself on the same page as Tony Abbott. That could be slightly awkward when you're saying how ''Labor'' you are. On the other hand, perhaps not. The Labor reform agenda of the 1980s had more than a little in common with the views of John Howard, opposition leader for some of that period. When it comes to reform, neither side of politics has had a monopoly.