Thuggish GetUp losing its sheen

Nicolle Flint’s offices were attacked during the 2019 federal election campaign.

Painted by its true believers as a bastion of truth and justice, GetUp has lost its allure to all but the starriest-eyed innocents. The behaviour exhibited by GetUp members and supporters can be extremely aggressive. On Sky News this week I interviewed Nicolle Flint, a single woman who is the member for Boothby in South Australia. She has been subjected to a pretty vicious campaign of harassment that she has obviously found to be quite unnerving. There are two ways to look at this. You could pursue the line that if it’s too hot in the kitchen you should get out. The alternative is to tough it out. To look the enemy in the eye and declare “the lady is not for moving”.

Politics is not a pleasant occupation. No one can remember who the Marquess of Queensberry was, let alone what his rules might have been. I have been a fan of Angus Taylor, the member for Hume, but watching him this week my admiration has withered somewhat. Declaring your financial interests is a duty parliamentarians must take very seriously because your opposition and the media will be all over you. A failure to declare all looks dodgy, and being pursued in question time day after day means continued media coverage. In this age of openness only the fullest declarations will be accepted.

Playing the man sadly works in modern politics. In the tit-for-tat pettiness of politics the public is often left wondering where the adults are in our parliaments. Taylor’s additional burden is that he is being relentlessly pursued by Tony Burke and this bloke is the master of the house. Burke’s knowledge of the rules of parliamentary debate is up there with Tony Smith, the Speaker. The shameful bias of Bronwyn Bishop when she was Speaker is thankfully fading from our memories.

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Parliaments function well only when there is some harmony and it will always be the role of the Speaker to ensure some decorum prevails. I am a big fan of Smith. He has a very happy knack of supporting his team but not to the point where ministers are able to trample over the rules. He has pulled up the Prime Minister on several occasions.

I can recall that back in the Whitlam era, the Speaker was a fellow named Jim Cope. He was a product of the rough and tumble of Labor politics in the inner-city areas before they were gentrified and while there was still a working-class base living there. Cope had the temerity to pull Gough Whitlam into line and was immediately dumped from his post.

While some people yearn for the British system where the Speaker is unopposed in their electorate, the aggressive, combative style of our politics makes it unlikely to be replicated here. In the US and Britain, the Speaker is a much bigger deal than in Australia. Enormous prestige is attached to the position in those countries and we should continue to elevate the importance of this position in Australia. The major parties will have to do their bit by not putting forward the more belligerent or aggressive among their members. It is fortunate for our democracy that only three men and a dog watch question time. The puerile nature of the proceedings would confirm the very low esteem in which the public holds politicians.

If you want to improve parliamentary debate you improve the quality of those debating. It is a near impossible task to lift parliamentary salaries. At $200,000 they are multiples of what most people earn, yet for the really successful people you would like to attract to a life in politics this is just not enough.

The worst example of gerrymandering in the Australian political system is the Senate. There is no logical way to explain how 400,000 people in Tasmania can have 12 senators, the same number as NSW. The population of Tasmania is roughly the same as Newcastle and this appalling imbalance was created to prevent Sydney dominating the commonwealth. Somewhere along the line a sick joke was perpetrated on the great majority of Australia’s citizens and only a referendum could change it. That would be a futile exercise because Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania almost never support constitutional change. The requirement for a majority of states can therefore never be achieved.

Into this system we have now injected GetUp. This organisation is the big bully in the playground. GetUp has been a strong supporter for Labor but I wonder what price it will demand for that support to be continued. The tactics used by GetUp against Flint were disgraceful and Labor should be particularly wary about getting too close to the thuggish behaviour GetUp has often demonstrated that it is more than capable of dishing out. It is an organisation that can do an important job in raising awareness of vital issues but it must guard against its tendency to be both judge and jury. Noble intent means nothing if the use of brute force is required to implement it.

It pays to be wary of groups whose leadership is not easy to find. Paul Oosting is the public face but I wonder who is in the room when decisions are made about who to support and who to oppose.