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?
No comments:
Post a Comment