In these bland, conservative times we have visionless politicians to match as factions rule the roost | Peter Goers

If it’s true that we get the politicians we deserve, this country is truly stuffed, writes Peter Goers.

If it’s true that we continue to get the politicians we deserve, we are truly stuffed. Let’s hear it for the visionary politicians – both of them.

We live in dull, conservative times and have politicians to match. Where is vision? Where is nation building? It dies in the party room. Where is consideration of the future beyond spending trillions of dollars on the possibility of building really big submarines to annoy our biggest trading partner?

We have two centrist major parties fighting for the lowest common ground. Federal electoral success is dependent on confecting fear. In South Australia, the Liberals have become a non-party and were punished for the success of the Marshall Government.

Senator Pauline Hanson during Question Time in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Labor Government is sports and development obsessed and retards social reform because it’s in the thrall of right wing conservatives.

The last Liberal Government was, oddly, more left wing than the current Labor Government. All is widdershins. Now the Liberal Party is being hijacked by its ever-ravening, noisy right-wing faction.

Factions rule. Factions seem to be more important than the parties they belong to. Factions are a clandestine, self-serving disintegration of democracy. The pernicious dominant faction in the last Adelaide City Council was ruinous.

Yes, factions are inevitable in every group of people but the factions at your local netball, football or Probus club are not running the state, the nation or the world. If members of political parties can’t agree among themselves how can we have confidence in them?

The Liberal Party in SA has been riven by opposing factions for 50 years and it all relates to the ancient feud against the Playford gerrymander – the great stain on the Playford Government. Get over it.

‘Pollies are very well-paid to be disrespected’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Pollies are very well-paid to be disrespected. It’s an increasingly unenviable gig even for a dreary, seat-warming hack. The major parties are failing those pollies and their constituents. Micro parties are useless and too often pollies leave those parties to become independents which should be illegal.

Political parties are adversarial – often just for the sake of it. We are fooled by populists. Pauline Hanson wins votes by being an anti-politician yet she is really the most experienced politician in Australia.

For some politicians the job seems to be a punishment. The cocky from Buckleboo, Rowan Ramsey nearly lost his blue ribbon Liberal seat in 2016 and said publicly “If I do lose my seat, the thing that happens from day one, is I get my life back”. Now he’s retiring at the next election, although perhaps he might have a rest and stand again like one of his erstwhile colleagues.

Where is policy? The failure of The Voice referendum cost us any sense of nation building and it will stymie any constitutional change for the next 25 years.

Meanwhile governments watch climate change kill the world and do too little too late to stop it. The poor get poorer, the rich get richer, we all get more insular and selfish, we live to be offended, we are screwed by banks and other corporations (supported by governments), royal commissions achieve nothing, Aboriginal people are despised and King Charles III rules over us. Happy and glorious?

‘Pauline Hanson wins votes by being an anti-politician yet she is really the most experienced politician in Australia’. Picture: Bethany Westwood

Worst of all is that one in seven Australians no longer vote and would rather be fined. How can that lead to change? But can we blame these non-voters? What’s the point of voting? The bland are leading the bland and the bland are opposing the bland. The only politicians who truly stand out are offensive.

The only thing we can be sure of in politics is that when politicians publicly support a leader, that leader is a goner.