Y’know, I haven’t bothered posting anything here of a political nature for some time now, primarily because I’m so bloody tired of the overall behaviour of the body politick in Australia.
On one hand, we have a functional, functioning government which is doing what it perceives to be the right things for a future Australia. I don’t agree with it all, but in the main, yep, a pretty effective job. Then we have an opposition which is doing what it’s establishment title suggests. Opposing everything. Not holding government to task or ensuring that what is done in the people’s name is right & just for the majority of the people. Just opposing everything. Government has a policy structure which is freely available to the people and easily understood by the people. The opposition – or as some like to call it, the ‘alternative government’ – has no policy agenda of any note, certainly not accessible by the people and constantly morphing to suit the 24/7 media cycle.
Government has its problems, principally being it’s leadership by a woman who bares the taint of assassin and a liar, although both perceptions are easily placed out of context to suit the view of the perceiver. Government also suffers from an inferiority complex instilled by a lack of simple majority mandate resulting from a hung parliament election in 2010. The government we have is not one of mandated policy agenda, but of appointed, administered oversight of a status quo by a minority balance of power relationship between contenders from the left of politics and a few from the so-called centre. To pretend the Australian Labor Party is any other than a centre-right party is to declare a dreamstate on behalf of the declarant.
Opposition most definitely has its problems, in that it flatly refuses to elucidate any form of policy agenda, other than blatant and seemingly mindless rejection of anything proposed or supported by government. The once centre-right Liberal Party – the National Party not being worthy of consideration of the name, let alone the political influence – has become a far right conservative political influence in this country. Something its creator Menzies, would rend hair & clothing at the very thought of. It is led politically by a man who overtly admits to his own policy intransigence, his inability to speak truth to power unless pre-drafted in basic language for him to reiterate, his biased and bigoted religious views and determination to return Australia to a time when our borders were closed to all of a non-Caucasian heritage. The real problem the opposition has with being led by this man is it’s blind adherence to the ethos of disunity being political death, despite the directionless and unbounded negativity exuded by this man Abbott. Reform can only come from within, yet conservatism by its very nature spurns reform. Can atrophy be far away?
Australia has been in political limbo since August 2010 and hasn’t coped well with a hung parliament. For we, the voters, I don’t think it’s made a whole lot of difference. After all, democracy is simply a majick faerie that visits once every three years anyway. In between is only a reality TV/Radio/Newspaper freak show from which the owners of those mediums make a little money. A hung parliament isn’t a big deal. It works when it’s made to work and ours has been made to work. The simple fact that a simple man with a simple chip on his should missed out on the PM gig does not detract from the simple fact that our current government works. It doesn’t seem to have very big balls, seems to want to pick fights within its own ranks and doesn’t get its message across all that well, but it works.
I guess one can also say the opposition works as well. At doing what this opposition sees it’s one and only task as being. Opposing anything & everything government proposes. Oh, that and promoting lies, falsehoods and providing spuriously obtained, out-of-context information to a gullible minority. Little wonder I’ve decided to disengage until November next year.