Federal election 2019: Politicians? They don’t give a toss about us

Our politicians treat voters with absolute contempt, writes Dennis Atkins. They are arrogant and don’t care beyond wanting our tick on the ballot paper. Unless we make our voices heard, this toxic behaviour won’t end.

There used to be a time when we had elections in Australia that were fair contests fought between opponents who shared a common cause to strive to improve the nation.

While the policies were different and good men and women could have robust disagreements, at the end of the five or so weeks of campaigning everyone could assume their respective positions and get on with looking after the national interest.

The elected government would go about implementing their program and the opposition would hold them to account and apply reasonable scrutiny.

In a fiery exchange on the campaign trail in Boothby, @billshortenmp has avoided questioning on the cost Labor’s emission reduction target would have to the Australian economy.

MORE: https://t.co/XDlvROtOqW #kennyreport pic.twitter.com/PZOXpU7Gsp

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) April 16, 2019

Somewhere during the past decade this all went by the wayside.

Now it is not enough to beat the other side, you have destroy them.

Elections now are a zero sum game which must result in the complete and utter thrashing of the vanquished.

It has grown out of the kill or be killed internal battles we’ve seen in politics.

Bill Shorten and a group of Right Wing Labor MPs from Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland — backed by some seriously boofy trade unionists — didn’t like Kevin Rudd and thought he was on track to lose the 2010 election.

Cue a coup in the backrooms and Julia Gillard became prime minister.

This toxic game became de rigueur in Canberra.

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Rudd later toppled Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull toppled Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton challenged Turnbull and Scott Morrison emerged as the new prime minister.

All of this happened without the slightest hint of a reference to one member of the public.

No-one had a say. The votes they did cast — in 2010, in 2013 and in 2016 — meant absolutely nothing when the powerbrokers of both Labor and the Liberal parties swaggered their way into the back rooms and wielded the sword.

Our politicians treat voters with absolute contempt. They go about their bloodthirsty backroom business and shrug their shoulders if anyone questions whether the public deserve a say in all this.

Meanwhile, we watch the behaviour of our politicians become more and more arrogant and uncaring.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the campaign trail. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

In the weeks leading up to this election — called just under a week ago, although it feels like we’ve suffered through a much longer period — senior ministers in the Coalition Government spent your money like they were drug crazed gamblers on the Sunset Strip in Las Vegas.

They tossed millions of dollars into the advertising industry, a splurge reckoned to about $600,000 a day, to tell us how they were doing their jobs for us.

The Government even advertised a tax cut plan that not only has an horizon spreading out to a decade in the future but also hasn’t been legislated for.

While they were splurging on advertising with one hand, these same ministers were signing dozens of new appointments with the other.

Looking at these appointment, there’s an aspect that will surprise no one.

A sizeable number — about one in five according to published analyses — were former Liberal and Nationals politicians or staffers who had worked for the Coalition.

Some jobs that were handed out were very lucrative, such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal where a member can earn $384,000 and the president takes home $458,000.

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This high handed and arrogant behaviour is compounded when ministers are asked questions.

They simply refuse to give direct answers, and there many senior Labor politicians are just as bad.

They either stonewall, repeating their lines in a rote fashion, like monkeys fed by computer programs, or talk about something that has very little to do with what was asked.

If you ask a Liberal politician about a health issues, for example, they will attack the Labor opponent of choice.

Likewise, a Labor MP will change the subject to whatever the Liberals are doing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a smart alec answer, dismissing any questions he doesn’t like as being something that’s “in the bubble”. This is his way of saying it’s a “Canberra-centric” question.

Warren Brown’s ‘The start of a new week’ for The Daily Telegraph in 2016. Picture: Warren Brown/News Corp Australia

In fact, people find these contemptuous answers insulting, especially women.

Focus group research says references to the “Canberra bubble” is seen as talking down to voters and not being interested in what regular folk feel and have an interest in.

“I just think he’s rude to dismiss conversations as being in some ‘bubble’,” one woman said in a recent Brisbane focus group.

“We are adults and have a right to be included in grown up conversations.”

The sad fact is, our politicians have trashed democracy. They don’t care about the voters beyond wanting a mark on a piece of paper on May 18.

So they’ll just push on — lying, cheating, seeking to destroy their opponents and changing leaders — unless voters make their voices heard.

If you’re not yet enrolled, you’ve got until 8pm Thursday April 18.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor

@dwabriz

Don’t miss Dennis Atkins and Malcolm Farr’s politics podcast Two Grumpy Hacks, available free on iTunes or Soundcloud