Vikki Campion: Campaign marked by trivialising serious policy that has profound implications on lives
Statesmen were not out to be liked but to make their nation stronger. This campaign is marked by trivialising serious policy that has profound implications on people’s lives, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
In the quest to get in with the cool kids, both parties are neglecting the generations that built this country.
In their turn towards the biggest millennial and Gen X vote, we are playing a dangerous game: one that excludes grandmas and grandpas, or grandparents in waiting, to play bogus generational warfare.
It is pandering to the less vulnerable at the expense of those who have worked hard their whole lives. Older people who stay in the homes they have paid off are being treated as hoarders.
Labor wants to talk about young people getting into a home but not about older people getting kicked out of them. Before Nan and Pop end up demonised unless they trade their backyards for bunk beds, let’s remember that due to Labor policy, seniors who want to live in aged care face two-year waiting lists due to onerous regulations forcing 24/7 RNs into regions that cannot attract them.
But it’s not just the policies that leave the average person born before Abba in the dust; it’s how we spread the word.
If you can’t get your policy out in one breath, it’s too complicated. In this world of ephemeral glitzy rubbish, we have lost the major attribute of leadership: Gravitas.
I don’t want my PM to be cool; I want you to be competent. Would Dwight Eisenhower be seen dead doing TikTok dances?
Would John F Kennedy have given anything but absolute attention to every stanza in every speech?
I don’t want influencers as politicians; I want politicians who can get into the weeds of complex policies and explain them. And they need to understand a crucial thing.
The punters don’t need to like you. They must believe you can run the country, be strong enough to be disliked, and do the right thing. And then you have to trust in the people to see that.
From Julius Caesar to Winston Churchill, what made them statesmen was not to go out to be liked but to make their nation stronger. That’s why they still write books about them.
Instead, this campaign is marked by trivialising serious policy that has profound implications on people’s lives.
It’s not so much that so many people like them but the making of a leader can be the many people who don’t. Instead, we are filling sound bites because people’s attention spans are so short.
For example, you won’t find aged care mentioned much recently, but you will find Annika Wells, the federal aged care minister, on podcasts talking about how she deals with misogyny.
Now she is filming herself in slow motion, taking off her sunnies and flicking her hair to the chorus, “That’s why I am easy, easy like Sunday morning”.
And we have to take her seriously. Otherwise, misogyny. What was a once a studious journey to parliament has become a puerile quest for likes.
Millions of dollars are being pumped into internet advertising for politicians, while the second biggest issue in the country right now is communications, which is also being ignored. The 3G shutdown has been a nightmare, with those who can afford it now putting mini Starlink in their cars so they have coverage, yet the pensioner on the back road gets nothing and can’t afford Musk’s work.
Critical policy is too hard, while both majors engage in bogus generational warfare, pitching boomers against zoomers.
The Australian Labor Party’s clandestine engagement of Diamantina Media, the podcast network linked to the satirical Betoota Advocate, to orchestrate Labor’s podcast strategy risks alienating older voters.
It is the election for the wealthy and the young at the expense of the vulnerable. The stupidification of the campaign has been geared to those glued to an iPad, doomscrolling around the clock, not to areas lacking internet coverage.
The forgotten Australian is a different beast now. Young people don’t care about defence because they have never been involved in a war.
We care more about funding packages for people who are not truly disabled than defending our nation.
The young want net zero. The vulnerable want cheap power.
So many politicians have gone from wanting to run Australia to wanting to be Australia’s next big influencer. One wonders what they were talking about while doing live fire exercises. While they are practising, we are talking about intermittent power, gender ideology and what’s trending on TikTok.
The voter is searching for answers yet gets no solutions. Lest we forget the OGs who made Australia more than a trending hashtag.
ALBANESE PARADES REDISCOVERED FAITH, BUT WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
When Anthony Albanese was first signed in as the Prime Minister, he declined to use a version of the oath that mentioned God. Now, when the Pope died, he instantaneously became a full-blown Catholic and paused the entire election campaign on the day after his death.
Jesus himself might’ve had a word, quoting Matthew 6:5-13 about praying secretly, not turning your faith into a press release.
A true believer might reference a guy named Jesus, who was written as saying in a very old bestseller: “And when you pray do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and street corners to be seen by others”.
The problem is not that he went to St Pat’s for Mass in Melbourne but that his staff told the press pack he was going so the cameras could be sure to catch him mournfully walking into the church. So, the story is less about Pope Francis and more about devout Anthony, who had a not-so-subtle spiritual glow up on the same day the polls opened.
Many of us have complex relationships with faith, yet didn’t have a sudden change of heart from refusing to mention God to crying in front of the cameras.
Maybe he has had a spiritual awakening. If he has, I’m sure he will come down on those in his party trying to cancel the Lord’s Prayer from being said before parliament resumes each day.
When a Pope dies, if you believe in Christ you believe in salvation and the next stop after Earth is Heaven, which is not something to be terribly sad about someone heading to.
Or as Jesus said in Luke 9:60: “Let the dead bury their own dead but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God”.
In other words, the dead can look after themselves, we have to look after the living.
It is clear to see the beneficiary of such footage in the wake of a cancelled campaign – and it wasn’t Pope Francis or the five million Australian Catholics.
LIFTER
The volunteers handing out at prepoll for two weeks in rain and sun. It’s election day not election season and two weeks of polling is ridiculous.
LEANER
The kid who bashed the elderly man in a MAGA hat because he had different ideas at the polling booth tied with Monique Ryan, who labelled attendees to a candidate forum who were punched by her volunteers as “right-wing bullies”.
More Coverage
Where there’s real trouble for Liberals unless they can convert
Liberal strategists are aware that to win a majority next week they need to win over a key group of voters – but that doesn’t appear to be happening, argues James Campbell.
Why do we keep letting monsters out?
How has this happened? How are we here again? Another young woman dead. Another life destroyed in the most brutal and terrifying way. And once more at the hands of a man who was a known violent predator.