I read John Lord’s article, ‘What your own say about you’ (17th August) the other day while suffering a slight case of jetlag, and replete with matters European still swirling in my head.
It struck me that the quoted comments John listed from various members of the Coalition were all about themselves, nothing about government, nothing about what they were really there for; it was just about them.
Even Barnaby Joyce agreed saying of the internal squabbling that most of his colleagues would rather put the nation at risk than build a stronger nation.
And they are still at it. Not even a razor thin majority has caused them to stop. Which tells us that politics, wherever you are, is the same. It sucks. Democracy is dead and has been so for perhaps the last thirty years.
We live in a plutocratic world; government for the wealthy, by the wealthy. Politicians everywhere are merely pawns, already compromised before they are elected.
This upcoming 45th parliament is going to be a rocky road for the Turnbull/Joyce Coalition. Labor’s Tony Burke has set the tone reminding Malcolm Turnbull of the tactics of Tony Abbott not providing pairs when in opposition. Turnbull is about to get the same.
What goes around comes around and the Coalition are about to experience what Julia Gillard experienced in the 43rd parliament. The problem is, their negotiating skills are not a patch on Julia’s.
How long will this parliament last? It’s anybody’s guess. I give it between one and two years. It’s not just the razor thin majority Turnbull has to shoulder.
Tony Abbott is now leading the conservative wing of the parliamentary party and keen to make life as difficult as possible for Turnbull.
It won’t be long before some very nasty bits of infighting become very public, causing a degree of disunity that John Howard once described as the death of a political party.
When that happens, as it will, we will see how much they care about us. Good government will be a pipe dream. It’s been so long since we had any, we probably wouldn’t recognise it anyway.
Long before a local candidate tells you he/she cares about you, he/she has sold their soul to the highest bidder. It is so endemic, we have come to accept it as normal.
They will tell you whatever you want to hear, but do not delude yourself they care. That would flatter us all. We know this because once they are elected, they change. The rhetoric deviates ever so slightly to mean something else.
How much governing will there be in this 45th parliament? Not much! How much of the promised ‘jobs and growth’ will we see? Again, not much. And what about the economy? The latest employment figures give us no reason to be optimistic.
Read Bill Mitchell’s assessment of the latest wages growth estimates and you will see the revenue projections for the forward estimates are already in trouble. Scott Morrison’s first budget is already in tatters. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Politicians are a miserable lot. Even after they break promises, they insist they haven’t. When they are taken to task they have a ready answer prepared by the party machine.
Being overseas for a few weeks helps restore one’s balance. Australia rarely gets a mention. There is so much real news happening daily, even hourly around the world, it’s clear we have nothing to contribute. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One thing we can be sure of though, is that in Canberra they really don’t care about us? You only have to look beyond the rhetoric, the false promises and the internal bickering to see the evidence.
Michael Jackson nailed it.
