By 2353NM
In the next 12 to 18 months there are a number of elections coming up across Australia. Presumably, in amongst the cries of ‘you’re on mute’ in the socially distanced meetings called by all the political parties to plan and strategise their marketing, they are trying to work out how to convince you that their candidate is the shining light of goodness and rationality in the competition and their opponents are the devil incarnate.
To those who don’t belong to political parties, it can seem at times that candidates are picked by some arcane processes similar to inspecting chicken entrails, consulting oracles and reading the tea leaves. Regardless of what really happens, the preselections by a ‘representation’ of the party faithful sometimes seem to produce people that would be far better off in some other field of endeavour. The scary thing for the people paid by the political parties to convince you and me that we should vote for their particular side of the political fence is that the candidates that do get elected choose the ‘leaders’ of the party.
The leader then relies on the support of these elected candidates, something that can probably be demonstrated by Morrison shutting down criticism of Liberal Party backbencher Craig Kelly despite statements promoting the use of the discredited drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment, which was subsequently shared online by former TV chef and current conspiracy theory promoter Pete Evans. We have no evidence to suggest Morrison called Kelly and effectively told him to keep his opinions to himself as he has no relevant medical experience or qualifications (and by the way, neither does Pete Evans).
Most people, let alone politicians, will claim they want to improve the circumstances they and those around them live in. The advertising executives hired by the political operatives will be ‘creating’ marketing statements such a ‘A strong economy, a better life’, to convince you and me that that even though the local candidate might be a complete tosser, the ‘leader’ is worth voting for. The slogans are pure drivel and tell us nothing. Motherhood statements involving the words ‘stronger’, ‘better’, ‘security’, ‘great’, ‘supporting’, ‘making’ generally imply a lot but really tell us nothing. And in real life, the train that’s going to run the country down is at the stop before yours.
If you think about it rationally for a minute, the expectation that anyone can guarantee exactly what they will do in the next three years is delusional. A perfect example is Morrison going to the last federal election promising strong economic management — even to Federal Treasurer Frydenberg announcing the budget was already back in the black a year before it was scheduled to happen. COVID-19 put paid to that aspiration. This century alone, we have had a global financial crisis appear out of nowhere to derail most of the aspirational targets promised by Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election campaign and a pandemic doing the same to Morrison’s 2019 campaign.
That’s the problem. Life is full of unfulfilled promises. It’s far easier to tear down a political opponent by latching onto some detail and make the case that the opponent should not be elected because of a flaw in their targets or aspirations than to develop, publicise and argue for alternative policies. It was far easier for Morrison to suggest Bill Shorten was ‘the Bill you can’t afford’ than to discuss his and his team’s vision for Australia’s future should the Coalition be re-elected.
A number of years ago on The Political Sword, we discussed that the only ‘industry’ that could get away with blatantly untrue advertising in Australian media is politics. Regretfully, the situation hasn’t changed and there is still nothing wrong in the eyes of the law with Morrison implying Shorten would introduce excessive taxes with ‘the Bill you can’t afford’ or the ALP claiming at the previous election that the Coalition might scrap Medicare. What the political parties are doing is telling us why we shouldn’t vote for their opponents, leaving a vacuum in policy development in this country and arguably all of us are poorer because it’s safer politically to promise nothing and deliver likewise.
It’s about time that political parties determined that most of us do have two brain cells to rub together and we are actually interested in a discussion around why we should vote for your party, rather than why we shouldn’t vote for the other parties. There is a good reason that most businesses in Australia aren’t using negative advertising to detract from their competition — it’s either illegal or breaches advertising standards. Negative political advertising demonstrates two things — they either have targets they don’t want to talk about should they win the election or they are desperate. Either way, the political parties that employ the ‘strategy’ should be questioned on how they would do it better.
What do you think?
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There seems to be little of original thought and purpose in the liar from southern Sydney, our own PiltDown Man, our Putrid Mentality, our own Poxed Misfit, (P M for short) . He spouts half raw plans in the form of wishywanty dreams of superstitious fantasies, of which he is drenched, consumed. Any fantasising idiot who live in another world that never existed, based upon cycles of sin, forgiveness, selfrecovery, sin, forgiveness, self blessing, sin.., ad infinitum, is a ridiculous and rotten mental misfittery of merdiness, enabling the devotee to say and do anything, i e, LIE and AVOID, and spit out DOGMA, and PROPAGANDA, and PROJECTIONS of inner idiocy and stupendous stupidity. The world is suffering from a poxing plague of these energetic self incandescent fixated idiots, all ambition, lust, drives, theft, alterations, distortions and utter LIES. With Morrison’s cuddled up team of inferior cheats, lies, donor driven drongos, sluts for money, notice, position, power, vanity, superficiality, career, incrowd insurance for future looting, rooting, shooting, freebooting, mental abluting and skiting tooting, the nation is stuffed until we GET RID of the blockage, the sin, the oppression. How good is a reeking, lying turd in the top spot. YUKKO!
Four letter word describes him: SCUM.
Meanwhile, regarding Zoom use, maybe we all need to make signs to hold up that say ‘You’re on mute’, which might save some time and irritation
Well actually, they cant do it better. Nobody can. They are both entrenched, afraid of putting a foot wrong and all too willing to crucify the other side. Who ever does a better job at scaring the stupid wins. The fact is, the economy needs a reset based on a Plan, an engineering plan, not an economist plan. This is what we want, this is the way forward. But as is always the case it will be ideology and politics that runs things and then we wonder why it fucks up, NBN anyone? And then we wonder why china is a powerhouse. You have to admit, Chinese planning works a whole lot better than our shambolic crap.
People actually want to believe the false promises.
That the promisors have a long history of failing to meet their promises is incidental; they want something to believe in.
Ergo – the successes of religions.
“Suffer now for a promise of eternal life and leasure.”
Sorry to harp on (pun intentional) but “hope” is a moral failure in so many folk.
If I were to stumble across a would-be Parliamentarian who actually had a moral compass, I might be persuaded to listen.
Look, Labor tried to lead with thorough policy developments at the last election, and they lost the election they couldn’t lose. The average Aussie is politically illiterate and that is why it’s all sound bites and catchy marketing shit come election time. It works on the average idiot.
” Regardless of what really happens, the preselections by a ‘representation’ of the party faithful sometimes seem to produce people that would be far better off in some other field of endeavour.”
The key point here is; ”REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PARTY FAITHFUL” rather than ”REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AUSTRALIAN VOTERS”.
Australian politics appears to be controlled by unelected political hacks who control pre-selection of the most malleable and unprincipled candidate willing to prostitute themselves the most for the benefit of personal access to the Parliamentary Allowances Scheme and politicians superannuation scheme and other perks of office including being able to influence policy for personal pecuniary interests. The opportunities for corruption are ;legion and all may be exploited while ever there is an ineffective Opposition.
Think Nazional$ stalwarts Barnyard Joke, Gassy Taylor and NSW Deputy Premier Giovanni Porkbarrello.
The political hacks follow the usual corporate game rules by forming alliances within the party, recognising the current dominant factions and especially faction leaders then ingratiating themselves for long enough often to become the preferred nominal candidate.
In other cases it is simply a matter of vote rigging of the branch membership by any of the known methods, including buying the party branch by enrolling all the town, with or without their personal knowledge or consent, and paying the necessary nominal party dues.
It takes a very strong and well-known individual to stand as an Independent candidate against the party machines. That is before any attempt to formulate policies or identify community needs.
This next 2021 election will be critical to the survival of the Australia we have known in the past because a return of the COALition will set the nation on a course directly and quickly into the 19th century as the worst third world export economy in the OECD, with the profits form our natural resources going directly into the profit lines of foreign owned multinational corporations rather than
NEC: “…Australian politics appears to be controlled by unelected political hacks…”
“Appears” is not the right word where such activity is a well established practice of political Parties around the world.
Glenn K,
_ if that is what you honestly believe of the Parliamentary Labor party, I almost envy you in your simple gullibility.
Drake …I’m with Glenn….we (I am a member) took a comprehensive suite of policies to the electorate. We lost in 2016 by a whisker, and a bit more in 2019, as the result of a mind boggling array of misinformation and a few other factors (thanks Bob Brown!). If you don’t like our policies say so, but ‘we’ spent years coming up with a suite of policies designed to improve the lot of virtually everybody, as well as tackling global warming among other things. There are several aspects of our policy that I would like to see improved, and I do my bit to try to move them along. Have you ever met a member of the FDLP?
NEC,The business of politics is the getting of power and privilege without having any personal merit.Self interest,swollen ego and shithouse rat cunning,schmoozing,hypocrisy and manipulation,and being able to lie like a pig in shit are all highly regarded in the
“profession” of politics.If you happen to subscribe to a bizarre, money loving cult,well, so much the better,you can wall yourself in with the selection of like minded acolytes.The Liar will get his comeuppance,but he’s going to take a lot of us with him.
Elsewhere, everything is just tickety-boo.
Frank Zappa suggested that “politics is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex” and it increasingly seems to be true.
The current media pile-ons against State governments are little more than distractions from the growing list of Federal bungles, any of which would have the press foaming at the mouth if the ALP was in power.
An increasingly disaffected public that is addicted to outrage and personal offence simply makes it too easy for politicians to distract from the main game.
That should be FPLP.
John Boyd,
Yes I have met several members of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party in the past as well as a number of those in WA Parliament.
I very much take the ‘spectators’ viewpoint, observing carefully, but not engaging in, the machinations of Party politics since I find the levels of debate to frequently be emotional, irrational and distinctly ‘tribal’, as, indeed, they are at almost every level of community affairs.
The level of condescension from some of the Members was indicative of the presence of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome where they considered themselves to be substantially better intellectually equipped than they actually are.
Additionally, I was not one of their clique and therefore any input which did not reflect their existing stances was dismissed out of hand.
There are others, of course, but the fact that some of them could actually be accepted as members of a democratic socialist institution gives rise to much doubt as to the sincerity of the Party as an organisation.
The Member for Hunter is a prime example of someone whose motives are particularly questionable and who should perhaps be a member of the traitorous federal National Party.
John Boyd and Glen I agree with you both. Bill Shorten and the Labor party had some very progressive policies at the last election. Franking credits, tackling negative gearing, climate policy. Its also true that the LnP would love to trash medicare. They can’t do it openly as people would protest but they do it by stealth by starving the health system of money. My Aged Care is a prime example of cost shifting so that private providers benefit and don’t even get me started on the NDIS and the hoops people have to jump through just to attempt to get the care they need. And in some cases can’t get the services they need. Then there is the total lack of oversight in Aged Care which has lead to many deaths from COVID 19 with Abbott suggesting it is too expensive to care for older individuals who contract covid.