"Call it for what it is?" - Scomo I could not agree more

So what happened exactly last Friday night in Melbourne? At the time things were going down I was about 150 metres away from where the action was, standing in our local with a couple of work people having a beer or 17. I do recall getting an SMS at about 6:15pm which purported to be from Victoria Police describing an incident nearby and which came from a number ending in “444444”.

I’ve had enough to do with Chinese people over the last couple of years to understand that represented 6 good reasons to stay away from wherever the problem was, but then I figured the police must have everything under control and there was no reason to stop from proceeding to beer number 18. Certainly the 200 or so other people in the bar (who I assume got the same message) didn’t seem too concerned. So I shrugged my shoulders, had beers 19, 20 and 21 then poured myself into a cab and went home.

It was only the morning after when I woke up the next morning that saw the perpetrator of the incident was a Sudanese Muslim. And that’s when I started to feel a little bit crook in the guts. Because I knew EXACTLY what was about to happen. And true to form, the media and politicians didn’t disappoint.

“TERROR IN MELBOURNE” screamed the Herald Sun headline. Daniel Andrews and Scott Morrison were all over the news channels doing their best to scare the living crap out of everyone even though the lone perpetrator had been shot dead by the police about 12 hours earlier. Even the ABC news channel which is normally more inclined to put things in proportion broadcast hours of footage of what had again become an unexceptional CBD street corner to the exclusion of all the other interesting things going on at home and abroad, including Remembrance Day commemorations and Trump making an ass of himself in Europe. Then later in the day came the recriminations by the usual suspects in the government and media against Muslims and how they were all criminals who should be shipped off to Alcatraz or Guantanomo Bay.

But the line that really stuck in my head came from the caretaker PM Scomo where he told the leaders of the “Muslim Community” to “call this attack for what it is” and to “take more responsibility” for these sorts of attacks.

Well, while not being Muslim, that was a challenge I had to take up. What indeed was this incident and the subsequent hysteria all about? Was this really some meticulously planned, politically motivated and clinically executed attack hatched by some Al-Qaeda terrorist cell operating out of Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs? And should we be concerned there are more of these attacks coming? When you look at the facts, hardly.

What happened here fits neatly into the sorry pattern of similar incidents in the past. Some mentally disturbed individual with a history of violence, a criminal record and an ice addiction finally snaps and decides to go out in what, to their deranged mind, is a blaze of glory. The only difference between this and the idiot who drove his car down the Bourke Street footpath is that this time, there was a Muslim involved. And to the government and media, that is a big difference. Because there is a lot of mileage to be gained from painting incidents involving Muslims as insidious terrorist attacks and thereafter, beating up on Muslims as a whole.

First of all, governments of all colour like the populace to be terrified about something, whether it’s this sort of thing, the prospect of job losses or falling house prices. A terrified electorate is a more compliant electorate and will be less questioning of what the government wants to do. A great example is the unfortunately named Patriot Act passed by George Bush in the aftermath of September 11 (which I acknowledge WAS a meticulously planned and clinically executed terrorist attack) which circumvented habeas corpus and allowed the indefinite detention of anyone the government thought looked suspicious. There is no way any right minded government of a supposedly free country would get away with passing a law like that under normal circumstances but at the time it got waved through Congress with barely a dissenting vote.

While I don’t think the Andrews government necessarily has a bent against Muslims, it’s not above creating a bit of hysteria for the hell of it.  Andrews himself is responsible for one of the most stupid things to come out of a politician’s mouth when he said during the Lindt Café siege in Sydney: “Don’t worry, the gunman poses no threat to Victorians”. As if the deranged dipstick who took those people hostage was so cunning and Machiavellian that he could kidnap some more people from 900km away.

Also, what’s the deal with giving a state funeral to the Pellegrini’s owner? It’s a terrible thing that happened to him and he was desperately unlucky being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but at the end of the day, he was just another ordinary business person. State funerals are meant to be for people who make a significant contribution to public life which with all due respect to he and his family, Sisto Malaspina did not. If he had instead died in his sleep or in a car accident, would he still have been afforded a state funeral? Of course not. The whole thing to my mind is a cynical and opportunistic stunt by Andrews to keep the story in the media for a few more days. Not to mention a bloody expensive one to the taxpayer.

As for Scomo, well, it’s pretty obvious why he is having a crack at the Muslims. He needs to keep the support of the xenophobes and bigots on the far right of his party and to beat One Nation in a grubby fight to the bottom on race relations. I always find it curious how politicians call on leaders in the so called “Muslim community” to take responsibility for these lunatics’ actions. In reality, what do they expect? And what exactly is, the “Muslim community”? Australia must have Muslims living here originating from over 50 countries, does the government somehow think that once they get here they all just band together into one big happy bunch and hold hands every weekend? God knows the Christians don’t so I don’t know why Muslims would be different. The simple fact is that while building communities can help keep people on the straight and narrow, keeping law and order is the responsibility of the police – and in this case, they clearly failed by letting a convicted criminal skip bail and run amok in the CBD.

This is not to say that all Muslims living here are saints or there aren’t serious problems with gang violence and other crimes perpetrated by recent arrivals, particularly from Sudan. But if you are going to be serious about stopping these people becoming radicalised and desist from doing stupid things like just what happened in the city, surely the narrative coming out of the media and government has to change? If you’ve just got here from Syria and every day on the TV or newspaper you are being told what terrible people you are, wouldn’t you get resentful and angry about Australia? I know I got mighty angry at New Zealand when I went there just after Ansett collapsed and the paper was full of vitriol about how Australians had stitched up Air New Zealand. So imagine putting up with that 24/7, if you put yourselves in their shoes it wouldn’t be fun.

However with elections looming both federally and in Victoria, I can’t see the messaging changing. All one can do is register one’s objection at the ballot box. Which I will be doing by not voting for either Andrews or Scomo.

The Sensible Party (Part 2)

And so here we go again. A Liberal party room spat about a policy that pretty much did nothing except try and make sure the lights stay on this summer has escalated to the point where the fourth prime minister in 10 years has been given the boot by his own party. And for what? Some misguided notion on behalf of that halfwit Abbott that most Australians agree climate change is crap? Some lame attempt to move to the right and re-engage with the bigots and homophobes who've been voting for One Nation and Bob Katter? The mind boggles, but whatever the motive, they've now made sure that Labor are going to govern for at least 6 years. I hope they and their enablers in the shrill Newscorp media are pleased with themselves.

I suppose this moment was inevitable from the moment Turnbull made his Faustian pact with the crackpots in the party to adopt some of their more insane ideas in exchange for the leadership. But it doesn't make it any less galling that yet another highly capable, intelligent and for the most part well-meaning individual has been swallowed up by the Canberra cesspool. No doubt Turnbull will go back to his Sydney mansion and lick his wounds for a week or two, then re-emerge to take up any one of a number of board position in the private sector. And that's just the thing, in the private sector a man of Turnbull's skills will be highly sought after. Could you image that being the case with any of the other key players in this debacle such as Abbott, Mr Potato-Head Dutton or Sco-mo? Of course not. Which is probably why they're so fearful about crummy poll numbers, it's straight off to Centrelink for them if they lose their seats.

But it did get me thinking about the current set up in Canberra, why it's not working, and what can possibly done to change it so it does. Apart from the place being more or less entirely populated by career politicians who've never held down a normal job in their lives, the thing that strikes me the most is the lack of unity or willingness to compromise in any of the main parties and the effect that has on proper policy making or the ability of the mob in power to focus on what they should be doing. It's all very well to have differing voices in a party but when one faction starts to prove intractable or has a disproportionate say, then that prevents or impedes good decision making.

As most of us would know, this sort of thing just doesn't happen in other fields, for the very good reason that nothing would ever get done. Many is the time I've been involved with business discussions which started with the parties at polar opposites, but yet after a few rounds of meetings and some full and frank exchange of views, transactions usually get done. Anyone who carried on like Abbott and deliberately tried to de-rail the negotiations would get shown the door pretty quickly.

Of course, it wasn't always this way. For example, in the 1980s against the wishes of the unions Labor made a concerted push to capture the middle ground in Australian politics and were able to boast an impressive list of achievements by time they got the boot in 1996. Similarly Howard was able to get through some distinctly non-Liberal measures like the GST by building consensus within the party. True, he had to go beat up on refugees and Aborigines as a payback to keep the loony fringe happy, but to give him some credit, he too managed to get stuff done.

The problem today is that achieving this type of consensus within the two major party system is no longer possible. Whatever the cause, be it the aftershocks of the GFC or a fragmenting of the media, in the last 10 years there has been a worldwide shift in voter sentiment away from the centre and towards the fringes. You just need to look at things like the election of Trump, the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a credible Democrat alternative, Brexit, or closer to home, the reinvigoration of One Nation on the right and the Greens on the left to see this is true. No wonder electoral polling has become more like a crap-shoot than a science, the landscape has got a lot more unpredictable. And no wonder political parties are finding it impossible to reach consensus as they keep getting tugged towards the margins by their own people.

That said, there is clearly still a solid core of people who occupy the middle ground, who are prepared to change their vote from time to time and listen to arguments on both side of the fence. I think in order for this mess in Canberra to get fixed, this group needs to have their own political party.

While it might take a while to catch on, a Centrist type party in time could potentially be the logical party to govern. After all, it would be positioned as the least objectionable alternative to the two major parties and would probably benefit from a flow of voter preferences from those supporters. Also, because of the ongoing drift of voters to the fringes, it might usually need to govern in coalition with the left or right party, but that's not an unusual state of affairs in world democracies, or indeed here in the Senate where disproportional representation from the smaller states requires the party in government to deal with the other side of the fence.

It would also in time attract the more moderate elements of the major parties who, being sick of all the infighting, could come into a party with like minded individuals more interested in the business of governing than knifing each other. The toxicity and rancour that exists in both party rooms would be largely defused, as the fringe elements would be free to go pursue their nutty aims without a bunch of sensible moderates trying to bring them back to reality or convince them of annoying things like facts.

It's an idea I suppose, but a lot of the details would need to be fleshed out. Also it would need a leader: someone prominent, well-known, intelligent and successful to attract the best candidates to run ..... Malcolm, don't fancy making a comeback do you?