Turnbull relying on Australians seeking stability during a time on [sic] unrest in Europe is the headline of Malcolm Farr’s précis of the LNP election campaign launch, held yesterday.
The problem with the word stability is that far too often, particularly in politics, it’s taken to mean “everything staying the same” regardless of whether that “same” is desirable or not.
According to Turnbull we need to avoid changing government at all costs, and we need to avoid a hung parliament at all costs. We need to stick with the stability (read sameness) of the two-party system, despite the profound lack of stability within both those parties, publicly demonstrated over the last six years.
Admittedly, the ALP seems to have pulled itself together and united behind its leader, achieving temporary internal stability. The same cannot be said for the LNP as Turnbull attempts to straddles the chasm between himself and the right-wing of his party. Revenant-in-waiting, Tony Abbott, continues to grimly stalk the Prime Minister and although he has been muted during the election campaign, it’s unlikely he’s relinquished all ambition to heal his pain by overthrowing Malcolm and reasserting himself as leader.
If it’s stability you’re looking for and you choose the LNP, you’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
It takes strength of character to weather uncertainty and instability, which together are the very substance of change, and, as Dylan said he [sic] who isn’t busy being born is busy dying. A politics with which we have become very familiar is in its death throes: look at Brexit and look at Trump in the US. This isn’t a time of stability it’s a time of change, and if we don’t get busy birthing the change we’ll get busy burying the dead.
Turnbull’s call for stability is a cynical and opportunistic attempt to co-opt the Brexit decision to his very unstable cause: governance by a party that is cataclysmically divided, and therefore incapable of providing the country with that which the government itself so conspicuously lacks.
The LNP will undoubtedly ramp up the emotional manipulation with its faux assurance of stability in an unstable world: Brexit is the best thing that could have happened for them at this time. Brexit could well be Turnbull’s Tampa: create fear, then offer yourself as the only protection from the terror you’ve manufactured.
It’s not about the policies, stupid. It’s about the emotion.
This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.
