Looks like we are going to get a new Prime Minister of Australia. On Saturday, the longest election campaign in our history (excluding the hundred years war that is the American election) will very likely see the election of Kevin Rudd. Unless a miracle occurs and these do happen occasionally, I have heard.

Mr Rudd has promised to sign the Kyoto agreement immediately. He also said he will get rid of the “hated” Industrial Relations Laws. He will create an education revolution. All well and good, but first things first, Mr Rudd. Should you be elected, please, please hire a stylist for your wife!

Mr Rudd’s wife is known as Therese Rein. She is a very accomplished woman who has created a multi-million dollar enterprise. But to look at her, you would be forgiven for thinking that she has never visited a hairdressing salon in her life. Therese sports the tousled frizzy look, a hairstyle in search of a comb.

Her taste in clothes is, well, absent. Yesterday, for example, she appeared on some TV show sitting next to her husband. Therese was wearing a very short skirt which almost disappeared when she sat down and her ample thighs took up most of my 40 inch TV screen. The top she was wearing was tight, as are most of her clothes and over it she had donned a bright cyclamen jacket with frills around the neck and sleeves. With respect, frills and Therese should part company. There should be a farewell to frills forever funeral during which all her frilly clothes are laid to rest.

Today, for another example, she wore a very magenta coloured jacket with big Hawaiian flowers in green and brown festooned all over it. I think the brand of the jacket was ” A Disaster Original.”

Am I being catty? For hissing out loud, why did God give me talons if not to scratch?

Now I freely admit that one should never judge a book by its cover, but where would that leave bookjacket designers? How many of us pick up a book thinking “Geez this book sure looks boring but how about I read it anyway?” So perhaps the real truth lies in that other famous saying, “Clothes maketh the man” or in Mrs Rudd’s case, “the woman.”

The world is a superficial place. “First impressions”, as Jane Austen originally called her most famous novel, do matter, even though they are notoriously unreliable. Sadly, though, it’s all about appearances.

After all, “all the world’s a stage.” There I go quoting somebody famous again.

A little part of me, that bit that says “be yourself, Therese and hang public opinion!” wishes that Therese Rein would continue bucking the system and wear whatever she likes. It would be refreshing wouldn’t it? Quite frankly, what we don’t want are clones of, say, Nancy Pelosi and her perpetually stunned expression.

But politics is all about impressions and Therese could soon be strutting the world stage as our First Lady. She is a very intelligent person when she speaks but her style of dress does her an injustice. She is even pretty in a Wal-Mart way.

If Hillary Clinton could be turned into a presentable First Lady in spite of Mother Nature having been less than generous to her, then surely Therese Rein can be turned into a silk purse as well.