Opinion: Why we’ve had enough of #Libspill

THERE have been pages and pages of commentary about the Liberal leadership spill, but no one has said this yet. Which is odd, because we’re all thinking it.

OPINION by Jenna Martin

I woke up yesterday morning with a sickening sense of deja vu.

Just as, I assume, did everyone else in Australia.

“Here we bloody go again,” I thought.

I downed a coffee and flipped on Sky News, where their “Countdown to Spill” was in full swing.

“42 minutes to go!” the ticker on the bottom right hand side of the screen proclaimed excitedly.

It was theatre of the highest order. Or rather, theatre of the highest Canberra: There was the gaggle of journos jostling for position. There was the catwalk of lesser pollies and hyped- up backbenchers strutting into the party room, proudly marching beside allies and smiling while snubbing foes.

There was Turnball, cool as a cucumber, who didn’t need a posse, just his mobile in one hand and his latte in the other. Chilled as, bro.

And then, finally, there was Good Ole’ Tony, in his Best Blue Tie, flanked by two women (perhaps to remind us that he is their minister, if nothing else) and followed by his merry band of underlings.

It was like the class nerd bringing his bigger, geekier brothers and sisters as back up to confront the school bullies.

In short, it was Christmas morning for the political obsessives, but for the rest of us, it was like Groundhog Day.

And then, after the hours of counting down, the days of hype, the weeks of speculation, it was over. Business as usual. Abbott survived and the country lives to snark another day.

Which is the problem. We hate this stuff, but we also love it. We hate the uncertainty but we love having an enemy and we love having a whinge, because most of the time, and compared to a lot of places in the world, we have it pretty good.

This doesn’t for a second mean that we should relax. We should stay angry about all the things our leaders lack and we should expect more from them. But I think we do need to take a step back and see the bigger picture.

I feel like we love this political circus all the more because it’s a distraction and because it gives us something to be angry about when we feel helpless to fix the really big problems. And don’t get me wrong, we certainly have some flaws as a nation, in spite of our incredible good fortune.

And, in turn, I think that’s why the pollies perpetuate it. And why we seem to be in this continual loop where people are great at being in opposition, but lousy at governing. It’s much easier to rage and pick holes and call names and knight princes than it is to actually sit down and do something.

I dislike Tony Abbott as much as the next mouthy leftie feminist. I expected him to blunder his way towards his second term and lose re-election through his own arrogance and stupidity. (I totally didn’t pick the Prince Phillip thing, though. That was a corker.)

But I am, bizarrely, willing to give him a go because I just want this to stop.

I wanted K-Rudd to stop smarting about how accomplished he was and actually BE great.

I wanted Julia to stop trying to being the leader we all thought she could be and actually BE it.

And I want Tony to forget how long he was in Opposition and stop looking for a fight at every opportunity.

And at the same time, I want Twitter to tone it down. A hashtag can make some noise or it can change a life. Or break a career. Sometimes, like, a child having a tantrum, we all just need to sit quietly, alone, in a room and contemplate if we’re going to be cross about this tomorrow

We’re well past the era of thinking a pre-requisite of a PM is an ability to down a schooner in one go, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could just get back to the days where the most we get riled up about is Howards’ eyebrows or Julia’s pants suits (While vehemently defending her right to wear whatever she damn well wants) and just accept that while we might disagree with our leaders, we trust them.

So can we make an agreement? Between the people and the Pollies?

Maybe if we stop panicking, they’ll stop panicking.

Maybe if we back off — not a lot, just a bit — they’ll back off with each other. Maybe they can get some stuff done rather than just whinging about all the things they’re not able to do because people have no faith in them. Because their party has no faith in them.

Maybe they’ll start fighting for things that matter rather than just fighting for airtime.

In pains me that I suggest we start this with Abbott, but we have to start somewhere. When you’re deep, deep down in the depths of a murky heap of rubbish you either give up and die or you gotta start digging a way out.

Jenna Martin is the Author of Driving Under the Influence. You can follow her on Twitter @MsJennaMartin