The Australian 18 July 2011
Today we discovered that Peter Reith’s post-mortem of the Liberals’ election effort last year suggested that a bit of policy might not go amiss. Now this bothered me, firstly because he needed to be asked, and secondly because Peter felt it needed to be said.
If anyone were to ask me (though as you’ll shortly discover I’m hoping they don’t) the whole watching-the-polls, focus-group-testing, policy-selling, don’t-piss-off-the-western-suburbs-of-Sydney frenzy has just about reached its use-by date.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to find out what the great unwashed think, but when you get right down to it, you’ll probably find out that we think the people we elected to run the place should get on with running the place and we’ll explain exactly how we feel about how they went come the next election.
I know this rant is a gross oversimplification and has holes you could drive a truck through, which is exactly why the stupid politicians shouldn’t base their stupid policies on what the stupid public thinks which just magnifies the stupidity in an enormous stupidity feedback loop. Just get on with it, and if you bugger it up at least you’ll have buggered it up on your own terms.
Unfortunately it seems being in parliament (or government anyway) is an end to itself these days. Our leaders make the decisions that they think will keep them in the job, rather than taking a stand and doing something they believe in.
Now if I were in their position I’d think you’d be better off to do something bold and risk the consequences. I suspect Windsor and Oakshott have done just that; Gillard may have been forced to by her agreement with the Greens.