Joe Hildebrand: Perrottet’s ‘Big Dom Energy’ leaves him legacy to be proud of
For a man who is apparently dead in the water at the next election, Perrottet’s ‘Big Dom Energy’ seems to be very much alive and kicking writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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A lot of people say Dominic Perrottet is a write-off at the next state election. The only problem is nobody seems to have told him.
Because for a bloke who is apparently dead in the water, he seems to be very much alive and kicking. You might call it BDE – Big Dom Energy.
The Premier’s plan for universal early childhood education is groundbreaking. While it will take a generation to realise its full impact, it will be nothing short of life-changing for disadvantaged kids.
His move to divert low-level drug users out of the over-clogged court system and into rehab is no less revolutionary – just don’t call it decriminalisation.
And when he walked into national cabinet last week with his call for an end to Covid isolation splashed across the front page of Sydney’s major metro papers, many dismissed it as “Let-it-rip Dom” on another libertarian crusade.
But hours later, the PM and all states and territories unanimously backed his position and we will finally be shaken free from the last rusty shackles of Covid restrictions.
Not bad for a dead man.
And even if Perrottet does lose the election in six months, the legacy of his short time in office will be enormous.
I have great personal affection for all seven of the premiers that preceded him this century, but even a political tragic like me would struggle to rattle off three landmark reforms by each like those just outlined above.
But what is even more interesting about Perrottet’s record is that for a politician who has been labelled a hardline conservative, his big moves have proved him the very opposite.
His early childhood revolution was crafted in close conjunction with Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, who simultaneously announced a virtually identical policy.
Likewise, his drug policy is something that would have been considered radically progressive just a few years ago.
And his push to end Covid restrictions, while still resisted by some urologically challenged somnambulists, was endorsed by a Labor PM and the Labor premiers of Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and WA.
This is perhaps the ultimate real-world proof of one of my most cherished and long-held political beliefs, which is that as long as smart and decent people are in charge all governments are the same.
Why? Because if presented with the same problems most smart and decent people will end up landing on the same solutions.
In many ways, this is simply a glass-half-full version of Blair’s Law, as coined by my beloved colleague Tim Blair. This is defined as “the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force”.
The archetype of the latter – confirmed by no less a source than the Urban Dictionary – is radical leftists offering sympathy to hardline Islamists. A more recent example would be that the two most outspoken opponents of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament are One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and the Greens’ Lidia Thorpe.
Yet just as extremists on both sides always end up docking with one another, so too sane people end up coming together in the middle.
And being the positive rainbow-catching cherub that I am, that’s what I like to see.
The only catch is that the two sides finding more and more common ground are the old sworn nemeses of Labor and Liberal, who are each under attack from their left flanks by the Greens and the Teals, respectively.
It is only a matter of time before Labor comes under direct attack from the Teals too, who have already run against the ALP in winnable seats, such as Boothby and North Sydney.
The Teals are also taking on the ultra-marginal Victorian state seat of Caulfield, which Labor also hopes to win. Assuming there is another Danslide, does that mean the Teals will take on Labor at the following election? Or will they continue to target only Coalition seats while at the same time echoing the Life of Brian mantra that they are all individuals?
Either way the jig will be up. And combined with Labor’s brutal loss of three Brisbane seats to the Greens at the last federal election – without which it would be sitting on 80 seats – there must come a time when Labor and the Liberals consider preferencing each other ahead of affluent urban activists.
This would once have been unthinkable, yet it is not as crazy as it sounds. The ALP receives no benefit from preferencing the Greens in inner-city electorates they already hold or will take at Labor’s expense, never to be returned.
And if the Greens seek revenge by not preferencing Labor or even preferencing the Libs then let them wear it like a crown of thorns.
Left-wing voters will always put Labor ahead of the Coalition anyway.
The Perrottet-Andrews bromance and the fact a Labor-dominated national cabinet endorsed a quintessential “small-l” liberal article of faith is proof that politics is shifting from a battle between the Left and the Right to a battle between the smart and the silly.
But the eternal question still remains: Which side are you on?
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