One of the sadder dimensions of the modern polity is the total uselessness of elections as platforms for discussing and resolving policy issues. Calling this a sadness might well be seen as understatement. Perhaps it should be called an evil attempt by the political class to render voters even more irrelevant than we already are. An elections expert once told me that your chance of having your own vote influence the outcome of an election was slimmer than your chance of being struck by lightning on your way to the polling booth.
We might accept that our individual votes don’t ever count for anything, but, once upon a time, we could be assured that the parties competing for our votes at elections would honestly discuss the big issues so we could decide for whom to vote. Just about every theory of representative democracy, the social contract and the consent of the governed told the story this way. Not any more. Now politicians facing re-election or hoping to gain office do not say what they mean, do not mean what they say, will avoid mentioning things they fully intend to do if elected, endlessly play “look over there”, never earn a mandate, and pepper their communications with cliches and propaganda. Worst of all, they will religiously avoid confronting the issues that matter to voters. They get away with this as a result of the major parties all-but-merging into one broad entity which shares a certain world view. This is the ideology of progressive, green, globalist, woke. Or PGGW. The very few politicians who do not subscribe to this world view generally keep pretty quiet about their objections to it. We know what happens to pollies who “freelance”, who go off-script, who defy the almighty “leader’s office”, from which all political direction, communication and strategic thinking now emerge. Original thinkers confronting big issues, the Burkean core actors of the democratic polis, are no longer welcome in our parliaments, parliaments that are now the playthings of uncontrollable executive government.
The effect of these developments, when combined with lower house voting systems that routinely punish and seldom reward minor parties populated by the independently minded or those who promote traditional (that is, the day-before-yesterday) values, is that around one third of the electorate is disenfranchised. Permanently. These are the outsiders. The deplorables. The eternally othered.
So. We come to another non-election in New South Wales. The first post-Covid election, as it happens. The first election since both legacy parties, each of which now struggles to gain the trust of more than about thirty per cent of the primary vote and so can never (in truth) now claim a mandate to govern, agreed that, because of a minor virus, the whole state should be shut down, the economy destroyed and people’s basic human rights removed. About which neither of them has the human decency to apologise and to beg our forgiveness. And about which neither party will even speak.
Mark Latham, just about the only politician in the State earning his salary – and who is placing himself voluntarily on the ballot paper even though his Upper House term still had four more years to run – has offered core two issues for debate in the election. These are the precipitous decline in our education system (accompanied by the withering away of parental rights in relation to their children’s schooling) and the coming, government-driven crisis in our energy supply. These are critical issues, it is true. But what about the referendum on Covid policy that is so desperately required if the political system is to retain even a skerrick of credibility? To reboot with honour. What about the still-continuing public service vaccine mandates (that even the septuagenarian lunatic running the USA and BHP are poised to terminate)? What about the crushed rights and freedoms? Stopping people who refused to take the unnecessary, experimental, unapproved, dangerous, ineffective Covid jabs from visiting Kmart and BigW? The curfews? The army helicopters? The five-kilometre rule? The tyrannical, papers-please, contact tracing society engineered by Victor Dominello?
Any sort of just political system – which includes the media – would demand that these matters be thrashed out in a serious election campaign. And that every politician, especially those then in charge, who supported the greatest threat to liberty in our country’s history, should be called to account. Hauled over the coals. At least, made to say something about it all. So, what do the major political parties come up with? According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the forthcoming NSW election (on 25 March 2023) can be summarised as follows:
Tolls and trains: Sydney transport front and Centre for Minns and Perrottet
Tolls and trains! Talk about fifth order issues. And (of course), Sydney-centric, as politics in the Rum Corps State now inevitably are. It is almost as if the two leaders sat down together to hatch an election campaign that suits them both and that buries issues that should find those who perpetrated the evils of Covid policies – policies that caused people to die – locked up in prison. These people have blood on their hands. Brad Hazzard and Kerry Chant lied. People died. Not just on their watch, but as a specific result of their actions. Hazzard is skulking off into retirement and the enjoyment of his fat pension, without a glove being laid on him. Barilaro – the Porkmeister – the same. Gladys? Enrichment in the private sector as ICAC still sits on its corruption inquiry into her highly questionable behaviour. Kean the Green? “Wrong party” doesn’t go far enough. He is an economic vandal, nothing more and nothing less. An ideologue. A political psychopath.
Then there are all of the second-tier others slinking away from Macquarie Street. Rats and sinking ships come readily to mind. Ministers whose blunders were considerable and/or achievements minimal. Those that are not facing criminal proceedings, that is (John Sidoti for public corruption and Gareth Ward for sex abuse), or who were eased out ahead of time with as little fanfare as possible (Don Harwin). What an astonishingly bad Government it has been. Incompetent AND immoral. A long Lent of Liberalism, you might say.
Then there is the Sydney-centrism. We had the unnecessary destruction and rebuilding of a perfectly serviceable existing stadium, the light rail vanity project, the endless toll roads, the metro rail lines, the relocation then non-relocation then duplication (in Parramatta) of the Powerhouse Museum. Back in the day, the Libs used to leave worrying about the bush to the then principled and powerful NSW Nationals. Attending to the woeful state of regional services and infrastructure, the loss of services, the lack of medical practitioners, and so on. Nowadays, the Nats’ major contribution to combating Sydney-centrism is to pilfer community grant funds from the “poles and wires” privatisation pot of magic money in order to retain their seats. And, post the arrival in 2008 of former Young Liberal President and current Minister for Worldpride, Ben Franklin, at the organisational arm of the Nats, they have transitioned in very short time from old-fashioned, conservative country party to Rainbow Coalitionist. Out and proud. Pro-gay rights, pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, pro-consent education (a version of infamous Victorian safe schools program that sexualises children), and, no doubt, support for the banning of so-called conversion therapy in the pipeline. As I opined some years back, less Black Jack and more broke back.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/09/from-black-jack-to-brokeback-nats/
Whatever else the Nats contribute, they certainly haven’t prevented the emergence of one of the most Sydney-centric governments in the State’s history. (Ben moved to the Upper House in 2015 as a National while living in Kirribilli. Having moved to Byron Bay, he resigned to contest Ballina in the Lower House in 2019, lost, then turned up again in the Legislative Council as the casual vacancy replacement for … himself! Nice work if you can get it).
The Northern Rivers floods and their aftermath a mere few days short of one year ago provide a useful case study in Sydney-centric governing.
Setting aside the green sabotage and incompetence of all levels of government – the refusal to continue Wilsons River dredging, the broken river gauges, the woeful lack of maintenance of storm drains that resulted in flash flooding and houses destroyed (“third world drainage”, as reported recently in the Gold Coast Bulletin), the ignoring of weather warnings by Government agencies, the attempt to exclude community volunteers who saved dozens of lives, the refusal by the SES of Army offers to help, the retaining in their jobs of failed senior Government officials, and now, as reported in the Glen Innes Examiner, the failure of the proposed Government buy-back scheme to buy a single property – yes, not one – the illegal removal of people’s property from their flooded homes, the continued homelessness of thousands of residents, empty commercial premises on Main Street … and the rest – we have a continuing parade of semi-trailers and demountable buildings with NSW Government propaganda plastered all over them, a series of announcables visitations by the beleaguered Premier, a whitewash, all-but-forgotten commission of inquiry and the endless promises still rolling out.
If ever there was a single case study that demonstrated the lies, the bungling, the papering over of issues, the “look over there” approach to governing, the total absence of administrative follow-through, the fly-in-fly-out model of leadership, and the protection and retention in their jobs of rank incompetents – think Steph Cooke and Carlene York – then it is the Lismore flood.
Then again, blood-on-his-hands Hazzard and Chant kept their jobs after lying about Covid for over two years. Don Harwin was reappointed so fast after breaking Covid laws that he hardly left the building, and Pork Barilaro and Gladys hung on to their jobs till it all became way too hard even for this Government to abide.
What about the other side?
Like Anthony Albanese, who tiptoed silently through the wide-open political door as ScMo’s final legacy of incompetence and evil, and who now is seeking to change the country forever in ways none of us understood to be his intentions, Chris Minns probably assumes that it is “his turn” and that he, too, will be able to slither into office without telling us about the underhand schemes he no doubt has planned for us but will never mention before the election. Or the promises he will break. Or the real issues he will ignore. Or the lies he will tell us. Or the actions he will take that will complete the destruction of the New South Wales economy commenced so capably by the current Government.
Mind you, we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of honest review and debate about proportionate public health responses to perceived threats during the election process. Just look at the elections in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. Criminal Covid state, useful idiot policymakers were all returned to office, rewarded massively by supine electorates for their efforts in crushing the Australian people. All, of course, cheered on by ScoMo in Canberra, who even elevated these mini-dictators to the national stage. No, the electoral process doesn’t evaluate policy any more. It doesn’t punish wrongdoing in high office. It doesn’t give the outsiders any measure of justice.
The NSW election may well succeed in turning over the government of the Premier State, but it won’t achieve anything else for the long-suffering electorate. The big questions will remain untouched, sensible policy will remain a thing of the past, and out-of-control woke bureaucrats will continue to rule the roost. God help us all that the most likely outcome is the return of Bob Carr’s NSW Labor Party to the Treasury benches in the State of Low Expectations, with Matt the Green more than likely leading a chastened but still clueless, faction-ridden Liberal Opposition.
Paul Collits
14 February 2023
The political ‘orphan’ class numbers must be rapidly swelling. The only reason why it would not be could only be a massive decline in public IQ.
Well described Paul. From the Prime Minister down through the ranks of MPs, and the National Cabinet, everyone is guilty of lying and blocking and twisting the truth. They are all criminals creating a crime against their countrymen, women and children ? How can they be brought to justice ? How can they get away with it ? How can these people sleep at night, knowing they have been speaking lie after lie 24 hours a day ? Deliberately setting out to terrify the population into wanting to be vaccinated. How much did big Pharma offer / pay Morrison to buy their untested vaccine, and guarantee to use it to vaccinate the whole country ?