Pollies are drawn to TV cameras like flies to a barbecue, no more so than in our stormy summer
Politicians are drawn to television cameras like flies to a barbecue, and never more so than in summer. This is because summer means storms and the possibility of cyclones and havoc, all grist for the political mill and endless opportunities for shameless self-promotion, writes Mike O’Connor.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
POLITICIANS are drawn to television cameras like flies to a barbecue, and never more so than in summer.
This is because summer means storms and the possibility of cyclones and havoc, all grist for the political mill and endless opportunities for shameless self-promotion.
Voters have right to transparent government
Our new political personality age
When it comes to grandstanding, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has few equals.
At the first hint of extreme weather, she leaps into the government car and barrels out to the State Disaster Co-ordination Centre.
Once the cameras are rolling the Premier, wearing her sternest look, warns us of the perils that threaten.
The professional people who actually know what is going on and how best to deal with it are often to be seen in the background while the Premier does her tap dance, until they’re invited forward for a word.
These are golden moments, designed by her entourage of advisers to portray her as the woman in charge, the person to whom we can turn when stormclouds threaten.
Behind her, assorted cabinet minsters take their cue and nod furiously in dumb agreement, in awe of the towering wisdom of the Supreme Leader.
Sometimes, carried away by the import of the occasion, they forget to stop nodding when the Premier ceases speaking, their heads continuing to ratchet furiously back and forth like budgies in a feeding frenzy.
On occasion, the Police Commissioner tries to edge into camera shot and gain a glorious moment or two in the spotlight.
He’s got no chance. This is the Premier’s report.
Viewers from Coolangatta to Cairns and beyond hang on her every word and the state’s top cop is quickly edged away from centre stage.
Be it fire, flood or pestilence the Premier is there, the state’s emergency services a symphony orchestra awaiting the direction of her baton.
Why television stations continue to bore their viewers rigid with this theatre of the absurd remains a mystery.
Will someone please put a stop to this sad and infuriating attempt to gain a few political points from threatened natural disasters?
People lose homes, livelihoods and tragically on occasion die when these events unfold and we don’t need the unedifying spectacle of politicians climbing atop their soapboxes and attempting to gain some political leverage from their misfortune.
This has never been more obvious and lamentable during the recent bushfires.
When townships and lives are threatened, we want to hear from professional firefighters, not politicians feeding their egos.
Leave it to the experts to handle the situation and let the Premier get back to the business of governing where there are any number of issues to which she may care to direct her attention.
Instead of appearing to be the state’s highest paid weather girl, the Premier might instead go on television to tell the state’s school teachers to get back to the business of teaching.
Last week they threatened to walk off the job in 2019 if their demand to do away with more than 200 independent schools was not met.
The teachers union hates these schools, perhaps because they can choose their own teachers.
Not unnaturally, they tend to hire ones who are actually good at teaching and avoid the duds which is why parents love sending their children to independent schools.
Is the teachers union running the state’s education system, or the Government?
Take a wild guess.
As well, rather than seeming to appear on TV only to deliver bad weather updates, the Premier might instead front the cameras to explain why chaos and dysfunction continues to be the norm in the state’s railway system.
To address out of control overtime payments, ongoing driver shortages and de facto control by the unions or talk about the weather?
The weather, of course, wins every time.
If it occurs to anyone in the Premier’s extensive media entourage that perhaps people view these disaster grandstandings as cheap politics, they keep such career-ending counsel to themselves.
Politicians, invariably, end up believing their own publicity. Surrounded by professional lackeys and a public service that tells the Government what it wants to hear rather than what it needs to know, the cult of the Supreme Leader flourishes.
It would be unfair, however to suggest that the Premier is alone in her fascination with the limelight.
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk’s visage also adorns countless publications and television advertisements proclaiming his wondrous works, political advertisements funded by the ratepayers and disguised, ever so thinly, as newsletters and information updates.
The Supreme Civic Leader’s wish is the council’s command as witnessed by his determination to leave a monument to his tenure in the form of the Mt Coot-tha zipline.
Thousands have objected but it is a pet project of the Lord Mayor and so a zipline we will have.
Our politicians think that we just can’t get enough of them and their egos.
How wrong they are.
Rory Gibson reveals the one thing women should never do
I know we are in holiday mode, but if you don’t mind I’d like your opinion on an issue of great importance before we all clock off for the year.
Think outside box with Olympic bid
Today readers have their say on Queensland’s bid for the 2032 Olympic Games, the volcano tragedy in New Zealand and an inquiry into veterans’ suicide.