Scott Morrison’s premiership will be remembered for the way that this week has played out but I think that the reaction is over-the-top, and could be harmful. Leave aside questions of mental health (we’ve seen with the treatment of John Barilaro in New South Wales that Twitter doesn’t really care about “people” per se) the frightful and predictable dealing by the prime minister just shows how hidebound and fearful the Labor Party really is.
If you criticise as illegal something that was just unconventional you basically short-circuit imagination in government, and if our era needs something is certainly needs politicians to think outside the box. The old “left” vs “right” paradigm that Anthony Albanese grew up worshipping is not very useful in an era when polarisation can take such extreme forms as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Trump attempt to take the Capitol by force in order to reverse the election result of 2020.
We need politicians who are willing to do things that are unconventional. We need far-sighted politicians, not drones who get up at the despatch box and lambaste the Opposition on account of their own weaknesses. What we don’t need is a Labor Party that is small-minded (think Julia Gillard vis-à-vis marriage equality or the Greens in respect of the 2009 carbon price law).
We can see the electorate reaching out for alternatives, and we’re blessed in Australia that our system of government allows small parties and independents to thrive despite low funding rates. The teal movement is one aspect of this, and I have hopes that as a new generation comes through the ranks of the majors that more points of view will animate the formation of policy. Yet even the present crop of Laborites is utterly conventional and myopic.
We see this in play as Albanese rejects the ABCC out of hand, appeasing its main backer, the union movement. We see it in the transport strikes in NSW where the union is hell-bent on toppling the Liberal-National coalition which is due to go to the polls in March. Visionary government by Gladys Berejiklian has meant new roads and rail links in Sydney, something that Labor under a succession of premiers was unable to even begin to achieve. But visionary government is hard when you have a culture that is more concerned with stopping criticism than it is in good ideas.
I saw someone recently putting down Morrison on account of the Liberal Party’s attempt to dismantle institutions, but it is institutions that are the problem. We’ve got how many departments and charities in the country dealing with housing but still we have people homeless sleeping in parks and begging on the street. How about doing what needs to be done to fix the problem. To do so we need to take risks, risk drawing the ire of new outlets such as the Murdoch mastheads. We need politicians with guts, not party functionaries loyal to the old paymasters.
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