INTRODUCTION TO AN ARCHIVES ARTICLE: “WHILE ROME BURNS”
Courtesy: Cathy Wilcox – Sydney Morning Herald
The essay which follows was written in April this year, before election day. It wasn’t posted on Beyond the Spin because the media was then saturated with stories of who was promising what one day before changing or withdrawing it the next, who was blaming whom for past failures, who was promising what they would (or wouldn’t) do if they won office, what the ‘facts’ were etc, etc.
While the circus was in town there seemed little point in posting an essay predicting that all this activity would amount to but little after the election, no matter who won. We’d be getting pretty much the same type of timid, do-little government we’ve suffered since 2007. Governments of huff and puff that talk a lot and do little.
A TALE OF TWO ELECTIONERING PARTIES
Anything you can do
We can do better,
Sooner or later
We’re better than you.
Oh, no you’re not!
Oh, yes we are!
We can defend Australia
with bows and arrows,
We’ll do better with steel spears
made from farmers’ harrows.
We can promise voters an extra weekly coffee
by cutting income taxes.
We promise better by offering 25cents per litre
off service station gasses.
We can do almost anything.
Can you win an election
without telling a lie ?
No
Well neither can I.
(Apologies to ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ 1946 – Irving Berlin).
It’s not often that you get an opportunity to compare a prediction with reality. Here’s your chance.
It’s nearly three months since election day. So far, as predicted, precious little has happened. Labor’s huge majority hasn’t, as yet, produced anything much beyond the setting up a productivity summit of the Hawke-Rudd kind. More ideas, more opinions, more expertise, more recommendations, more papers on a problem that’s been apparent for over three decades. There’s little reason to expect more concrete results this time ‘round. Such reviews usually meet a dismal fate. All the sensible recommendations of Hawkes, Samuels and Henry turn out to be little more than dust collectors. Ditto the recommendations of numerous Royal Commissions and a plethora of other (taxpayer paid for) advisory bodies on a whole host of diverse subjects.
Our governments are expert at talking and reviewing recommendations, poor and making decisions and commitments – and even worse at efficiently implementing anything in the real world. They’ve certainly not shaped up like adults, yet alone statesmen, to the very real and pressing challenges that have been confronting Australia for a long, long time. It’s a way of pretend governing that’s become entrenched in Australia to the detriment of our Country.
Only we voters can force our politicians to change their ways – our political class won’t change its ways voluntarily. They’re very comfortable playing the game the way things are.
Step one is for us to reject being satisfied with the little ‘sweeteners’ (including all those non-core promises) Parties cram into their tri-annual, election showbags, those short lived sugar hits that so often seduce us. We, as voters, need to reject being so easily bought.
We need to demand true leaders who are capable and prepared to serve in the long-term national interest. We, in turn, need to support such leaders by accepting that they will sometimes have to ask us to postpone doing what we’d like to see happen – and sometimes swallow bitter medicine to a achieve an important collective objective. That’s a price voters should be prepared to pay. It’s what living in a true democracy demands.
It’s up to us. We get the governments we vote for.
How near the mark were the predictions made in the archival essay which follows?
You be the judge.
As always, your feedback is welcome.