Let’s give these poor pollies a break

In the pandemic, character assassination has become a type of proxy warfare.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is held up as an incompetent fool, a crazed ideological warrior with no sense of “reality”. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ David Crosling

One of the things most people hate about politics is the way so much of it is about the politician rather than the issue. I say most people — but not members of the free-for-all comment­ariat of the internet. They love to have a go at the person­ rather than the issue. Even in the most respectable of forums there are always those who think they know, really know, the person as well as what he or she might stand for policywise.

At the moment, this boils down to being either for lockdowns and automatically fans of Daniel And­rews and Annastacia Palaszczuk as benign, brave leaders of their governments or — if you are against the restrictions — they are the personification of arrogance, cruelty and cowardice.

In the case of Sarah Caisip, barred from seeing her dying father­ in Queensland, Palaszczuk was accused of hiding behind her Chief Health Officer and claiming bullying victim status.

The Victorian Premier is held up as an incompetent fool, a crazed ideological warrior with no sense of “reality”, careless of the econo­mic devastation cutting a swath through his state, and adopting totalitarian methods of control.

These two premiers have become symbols of ideological warfare that preceded the pandemic. many attacks directed at them have nothing to do with how well, or badly, they are managing to control the spread of the virus in their states. It is a type of proxy warfare. The border closures and even the economic versus fatality arguments are an extension of the ideological warfare that apparently cannot be halted even in times of national emergency.

For people who see everything in political and ideological terms, these two warriors of the left symbolise all that is bad with the left, and they are bereft of personal qualities. I have even heard one television commentator remark that Andrews might be trying to make himself look more tired and “messy” at his daily press conferences. She didn’t seem to think he might indeed be very tired and, consequently, messy.

Perhaps we would do well to remem­ber that premiers are not generally asked to get into life-and-death situations. The burden of life-and-death issues is something a prime minister has to face. Prime ministers can send people to war, but premiers can’t. The current situation, aside from 1919, is almost unprecedented. Although keeping people safe in a pandemic has many parallels to the situation of wartime, unlike wartime the left-right paradigm is being used to crack open borders and collapse the whole edifice of consensus.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

I am not a fan of the policies or the politics of either of these two premiers. I am vehemently against Andrews’s bizarre and dangerous “Safe Schools” program. I am opposed­ to Victoria’s euthanasia legislation but, as far as the renewed­ vigour of the state’s virus control, it seems to be succeeding in controlling the virus, and the economic advantages will follow once it is under control. It is a simple­ matter of putting the horse before the cart. And to give Andrews­ credit, unlike some, he does not talk in terms of cost versu­s lives lost.

Likewise, I am not a supporter of the Palaszczuk government’s policies on abortion and euthan­asia, but she has done her job, which is to keep her state reasonably free of the contagion.

As a politician­ facing an election next month, she is hardly free of the ethical contagion that goes with the job. Trying to flick the blame for the Caisip episode to Scott Morrison was pure politics, as was saying she would rather lose the election than have Queenslanders get sick.

Politics and corruption of the moral parameters go hand-in-hand, but so does corruption of ethics with involvement in ideological warfare. In Australia we are very lucky. Generally our politicians are men and women of quite high calibre and good character. (If you don’t believe me, look at the two contenders for the American presidency.) We have no tolerance for corruption and our lives, despite temporary curfews, are free.

However, politics is becoming more personal, and personality bias is a favourite weapon of the knowing commentators. Disliked John Howard’s policies? Then he is just “Little Johnny’’ (and worse), despite his successful government and his personal popularity. Julia Gillard’s government was dysfunctional? She must be a terrible woman, but she was actually very charming, and a capable education minister. Kevin Rudd a control-freak weirdo? Perhaps he was just working his guts out and many people didn’t like him, even though he could speak Mandarin. Malcolm Turnbull was awfully charming? Pity his policies were such a dud.

But if you had to choose the champion of infamy, no one copped as much as Tony Abbott. Although it is water off that duck’s back, lately he has even been insulted by English female politicians, who probably have never met him and know nothing about him except what they have read. Abbott had many good polic­ies, but was kicked out because Turnbull wanted the job, and ­ some aspects of Abbott’s per­son­ality got in the way of the pub­lic’s ability to evaluate Turnbull’s qualifications to head the government.

That doesn’t mean I have agreed with Abbott on everything — his paid parental leave policy and his view on pandemic border closures, for starters. It was easy for him to be portrayed as too overbearing, too monarchist, and out of sync with the Australian zeitgeist, where “captain’s calls” don’t go down well.

Yet, whatever one thinks of his policies or his “style”, Abbott is a man of impeccable character. He is not the sort of man who says he is a feminist, or wears a ribbon for every disease and social problem. I have known him for 30 years and he is an old-fashioned, unreconstructed, Chris­tian gentle­man who lives in the real world, not on a cloud of ideological purity.

If character is a real political issue, then commentators should indeed go for politicians’ charact­er. But as we are talking not about organised crime, but a viral infection, and since we don’t live in, say, Belarus, character is unlikely to be the issue. So, if the issue is the job they are doing to control a viral infection­ under very difficult circumstances then please, give them a bit of slack on their character.