High vis doesn’t mean highly believable

Politicians from all sides need to stop cosplaying as ordinary, dinky-di Aussies. We see through the high-vis vests and meat pie-eating, writes Karen Brooks. Just give us good government.

Riddle me this: When is a big blue bus tour of Queensland not a big blue bus tour?

Answer: When the person taking the tour doesn’t ride on the bus.

This is precisely what our PM, ya know, that blokey good fella’ ScoMo did last week when he embarked on a four-day jaunt around Queensland — well, he went as far as Townsville.

Apart from a short time aboard the self-dubbed “ScoMo Express” emblazoned with his face and political slogans, the PM actually flew on a Royal Australian Airforce VIP jet at taxpayers’ expense to various locations.

Which begs the question, why bother with the Wigglesque bus?

What purpose did it actually serve?

This is precisely what one journalist tried to ask with mixed results. In an interview many initially thought to be satire and later likened to a Clarke and Dawes skit, the PM refused to either confirm or deny he was on the bus, preferring to emphasise that he needed to spend more time listening to Queenslanders.

“When I can be on the bus and go from place to place on the bus, that’s great,” he said. “But I’m not going to sacrifice time with Queenslanders, listening to them and hearing them and talking to them about what’s important to them just to satisfy the media’s interest in the timetable for the bus.”

Australians don’t care if you eat meat pies and wear a cap. We care about policies. Picture: Dan Peled/AAP

Denying he was electioneering despite only going to marginal seats, ScoMo did what so many of our politicians these days seem to think voters want to see and hear: he posed for selfies and photo-ops, chugged beer, chowed down on a meat pie, exchanged his peaked cap for one from Rip Curl and, in a terrible video, thanked Mick Fanning’s mum, and basically ticked every stereotypical, tired and cliched box in what mostly came across as a desperate attempt to be one of the “boys”.

Politicians, including the PM, have lost their gravitas and become performing seals — really Aussie ones too, oy, oy, oy.

From the moment he became leader, ScoMo has made a point of trying to prove just how humble and “ordinary” he is; a “daggy-dad” from the Shire.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really sick of these so-obviously engineered attempts to appeal to the masses by holding tools, rolling up sleeves, putting on high-vis vests and hard hats/soft caps and all the accompanying empty gestures that are somehow meant to “prove” authenticity, genuineness, and an understanding of the everyday Australians’ lifestyle and concerns.

If we’re not being fed three-word slogans, it’s having our ears and eyes assaulted and our intelligence insulted by someone pretending to be what they’re not: fair dinkum. You see, it doesn’t matter how many times you say this (on the contrary, then it’s a case of “I think he doth protest too much”) or try to emulate the lingo (who can forget Rudd’s cringe-worthy “fair shake of the sauce bottle”?) or manner, you come off looking not like a true-blue Aussie bloke everyone can relate to, but a poor-man’s Crocodile Dundee.

It’s not only ScoMo who engages in this kind of faux “everyman”, over-the-top “good onya” crap, but most pollies (less said about the onion-eating, the better). They clearly think we’re incredibly stupid and gullible.

Kevin Rudd, pretending he’s familiar with manual labour.

Do they really have such little respect for their constituents that they believe this embarrassing and really bad play-acting persuades people and changes minds?

In so many ways, ScoMo’s big blue bus with its slogans became a metaphor for the state of politics and politicians in our country.

Empty, hollow, all surface and no core. All paint and polish with no guts. Trite, meaningless catchphrases and beaming images without any substance.

Worse, as the vacant bus drove over hot, often pot-holed Queensland roads, passing by the very Australians — with their mortgaged homes and struggling businesses, drought-affected farms and overcrowded schools and underfunded hospitals — ScoMo purported to be interested in listening to, he flew above them. If that’s not a symbol of a politician being literally out of touch, cruising high while a vacant bus he pretends to occupy is on the ground, I don’t know what is.

Far from being a political success that showcased the man, the “Slo-Mo Express” (the bus representing, as one pundit claimed, that which Morrison threw Malcolm Turnbull under) became a cutting internet meme, whereby ordinary Australians had the opportunity to reflect back to the PM and his entourage the contempt it seems he has for them.

Just like ScoMo’s vacant Muppet-bus, we’re tired of empty gestures, bad performances, and hollow promises and see them for what they are: distractions to stop us examining what’s really at stake.

If things don’t improve and soon, ScoMo and other politicians from major parties will be told to get on the bus, and to not bother coming back.

@KarenBrooksAU