One thing you have to admire about Greg Sheridan is that – like Donald Trump – he sticks to his ideas and doesn’t allow them to be influenced by reality.
Of course the whole reality thing is subjective… so much so that people can hold one view on a topic while holding a totally contradictory view on a different topic.
Take the concern about people waving Hezbollah flags at a recent demonstration. They shouldn’t be doing this because Hezbollah is a banned, terrorist group. What determines who and isn’t a terrorist group? Well, there are many different views on this and some people would tell you that the United States is one, but such people have no official status and it’s government’s who have the power to determine which ones are worth banning and which ones are able to bomb people with impunity.
I don’t have a problem with this because we can’t let groups who are aiming to cause mayhem and who are spreading propaganda trying to radicalize people just have a free hand. And I was all for banning swastikas and other Nazi symbols.
However, it seems that some people who are calling for Albanese to be tougher and insist that the police prosecute these people are also the same ones who have a serious problem with any sort of misinformation laws.
Now, I’m not asking you to agree to letting terrorist flags fly or to agree to a totalitarian government shutting down all dissent as misinformation. I’m just pointing out that there IS a bit of a different reality going on when you warn of the dangers of too much government power while insisting that the government prosecute certain people for waving a flag.
Take Peter Dutton. Please. I certainly don’t want him and I’m pretty sure Australia doesn’t need him as PM when he doesn’t understand the basic principle of the separation of powers which means that while the government may make the laws, they’re not the ones who are in charge of enforcing the laws. When you don’t have a separation of power the path to corruption is pretty obvious: “Yes, it’s true that the Minister misappropriated several million dollars but we’re not prosecuting because he’s in our party and anyway he’s the brother-in-law of one of our biggest donors. Besides it’s not like the recent prosecution of the Leader of the Opposition who fraudently removed a pen from Parliament House without permission!”
Given he was once a policeman, it’s probable that Dutton does understand the separation of powers and he just that he finds them an unnecessary impediment to the administration of “justice”. Of course it’s also likely that any criticism of Albanese is just to make a political point and not because he actually thinks that government should be telling the police who to charge… And, as I wrote the other day, that’s the trouble with politics today: too much focus on making the other guys look bad and not enough focus on trying to find solutions.
I mean I recently saw a post from Dutton which said that we needed a STRONG leader in these troubled times. That seems self-evident because I can’t think of a time when anyone needs a weak leader, but there was no extra information about what this strong leader needs to do. I seem to remember that when Tory Tony was Opposition Leader, we had a lot of similar rhetoric about needing a strong leader because Julia was PM and, obviously a woman, so we needed someone who could strip down to their speedos and fight a fire but Dutton is a little less clear on the need for strength…Exactly what is required for this strong leader to do? Apart from be strong, of course. Do they have to lift weights or arm wrestle? Or is he talking about mental strength and suggesting that he’s exactly the sort of leader that we don’t need.
Whatever, that’s the problem lately. Even when the Greens say we need to make changes to negative gearing, they’re not suggesting a specific change, so it means that Labor doesn’t want to negotiate because they’re afraid that, if they agree to any change, the Greens will say either that it’s good and it’s all thanks to us OR it doesn’t go far enough and we’re going to vote against it… leaving the door open for Dutton to say that if we had a strong leader like him, there’d be no agreeing to anything and he’d stand firm and insist that he was right and everyone should just agree… which, according to some, is what Albanese is doing, except in his case, he’s just being stubborn.
It would be nice to think that politicians of all sides could get together and admit that nobody has any simple ideas about how to solve particular problems and we should be thrashing out possibilities until we come up with something worth trying.
And yes, I am ignoring Matt Canavan in saying that. He has lots of simple ideas!
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