David Penberthy: Australian politics has become a disgraceful insult
GREED and hatred have become the motivating forces in Australian politics. Meanwhile farmers are shooting sheep and super funds are ripping off retirees. A pox on them all, writes David Penberthy.
IT is now 14 years since an Australian Prime Minister was allowed to serve a full three-year term.
Today’s indulgent events in Canberra were merely the latest demonstration of the extent to which politics in this country has parted company with the will of the people. Politics has deteriorated into a personality-driven parlour game and a self-interested arse-covering exercise.
John Howard saw off Mark Latham in 2004 and continued as Prime Minister until 2007. The end of the Howard era that year ushered in the end of stability as we knew it. Since then we voted for Rudd and got Gillard, voted for Gillard and got Rudd again, voted for Abbott and got Turnbull, voted for Turnbull and almost got Dutton, and will probably still get Dutton anyway as the vultures pick away at the Turnbull carcass over coming days and weeks.
A challenge to a sitting Prime Minister used to be a rare and remarkable thing. As one wag said yesterday, it is now a handy reminder that it’s time to change the batteries in your smoke alarm.
Constitutional pedants can rest assured that I am fully aware that it is the parties and not the people which are responsible for electing leaders. But in noting that fact, a greater truth should also be acknowledged, which is that voters embrace a party not just because of its policies but the character and style of its leader.
In that sense it is fair to regard general elections as a contractual arrangement between the parties and the people, whereby voters should be allowed to assume that the person who is leading the party of their choice on polling day will still be there after an election occurs. This is especially true as our election campaigns become more presidential, more framed around the leaders themselves. The past decade of political life in this country has been one miserable, extended flipping of the middle finger by Canberra’s political class in the direction of the poor sods at the ballot box.
There are two simple reasons for this and without getting too fire-and-brimstone about things, both of them can be found in the Old Testament. Greed and hatred. Greed in terms of the parties being less interested in the proper use of power than the mere retention of power, resulting in them necking leaders midway through the cycle for perceived short-term political gain. Hatred in so far as the actors in these battles are motivated less by any sense of ideology, rather but the purest desire for vengeance against those who did them wrong.
How did we get to this?
The short and obvious answer is the Gillard-Rudd coup of 2010. It is often said of struggling or poorly regarded politicians that if everyone had the opportunity to meet them their popularity would go through the roof, as the public would get to see how genuine and likeable they actually were. In poor old Kevin Rudd’s case the opposite were true.
The 2010 leadership coup was a crushing plebiscite on Rudd’s personality, driven by the fact that most members of Caucus had come to regard him as an abrasive if not loathsome weirdo. Whatever its motivation, the public saw it as an act of theft by Caucus, whereby the man who had been installed by the majority of voters in an absolute landslide was cut down midterm, with the reasons for his execution not fully explained at the time.
Whatever those reasons were, they would never have been enough to erase the public’s sense of indignation at the manner in which Labor acted on that evening in July. The voter view was: hang on, when it comes to prime ministers, we do the hiring and firing around here. It is the principle reason that Bill Shorten — our probable next prime minister — remains so disliked by voters in the approved PM ratings, as like a moth to a flame he was up to his neck in every squalid part of the machinations during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.
Bizarrely, for all the valid and robust criticisms the Liberals made of Labor over its self-interested leadership conduct, no sooner had the conservatives won government that they picked up the Labor template and started knifing themselves.
Like Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott clearly had his problems as PM, but the decision to knock him off did nothing to stem the Liberals’ low standing in the polls after Malcolm Turnbull limped across the line at the last election. And again like Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott has become a bitter and twisted figure, a rogue wrecking ball smashing his leader and his party’s chances at every turn, as he tries to put right what he regards as a great wrong.
Abbott fibbed when he said he wouldn’t become a wrecker, and he fibbed again this week when he said this has nothing to do with personality but policy. Turnbull could open 10 coal-fired power stations, 20 detention centres and give Prince Phillip another knighthood, and Abbott would still want to knock him off.
There is a saying that’s become so common as to be a cliche now in federal politics: we have seen this show before and we know how it ends. The problem is that it isn’t ending. The cynicism has become cyclical, and will remain thus forever more unless we can find some leaders with the character of the Howards and Hawkes who can stick to their principles and ride through the highs and lows, and unless the Party Room and Caucus can become mature and responsible enough again to stay true for that ride for a three-year term.
Meanwhile, in Australia, farmers are shooting their sheep, small businesses and retirees are still getting ripped off by their banks and super funds and the shipbuilding workers at the ASC are wondering if they’ve still got jobs.
What a disgraceful bloody insult all this juvenile nonsense is to every one of these people.