There’s one thing nearly everyone can agree on when it comes to this election campaign. It’s hollow. Devoid of meaning. Cancerous.
What no one can reach agreement on is who’s to blame.
Today, Guy Rundle weighs in from another continent. He says it’s not the people we should be pointing the finger at:
“To blame the public for the changed conditions of their life, and the way that earlier decisions by an elite shaped their lives, is to finger the victim, not the culprit. A series of cave-ins, ducked battles, and soft options by the people who controlled parties, papers and powers, and a refusal to stand up to the genuinely maligned, has brought us to this point. It seems distinctive in the world — there is a collapse of political legitimacy everywhere, but only in Australia have I seen this degree of total exasperation and frustration, combined with an inability, at the moment, to imagine how it could be done any other way. “
It’s time for some serious soul searching to work out how on earth we got here.
We got here because our political system is crap. Would the ALP be able to get away with their Howardesque policies if there was more Proportional Representation in Australia ? Stable developed countries need more variety with regards to political parties. Compare the US / Britain / Australia to Sweden, Finland, Denmark and particularly Norway. The latter group isn’t perfect but politically they seem to do so many things better than us.
John Howard’s success in running with Pauline Hanson’s policies has persuaded both major parties that the average Australian voter is a malevolent moron. So now we have Abbott pandering and Gillard tiptoeing around. Both being gutless in different ways.
I think the first step towards getting here commenced when pollies started to realise that the news could be tailored to suit the times and circumstances by means of spin doctors, a combination of roles for press secretary and PR people, which probably accelerated in the 1970s and 80s. This at a time when there became a time for the media to be used in more
sophisticated ways. The ‘Its’s Time…” 1972 Whitlam certainly was a ground breaker in getting a simple message across. Repeat a message long enough and it becomes truth.
However, the situation we are presently in which I agree with Rundle has led to exasperation and frustration, has rapidly evolved from the Howard era with it’s concentration on a cynical message such as with the refugee overboard situation and images of a fit walking Howard compared with flabby Beazley. Image was everything.
This was then taken up a notch by a “me tooism” campaign by Rudd in 2007 who presented as being more Howard than Howard and adopted as small a target as possible. Rudd became even more obsessed with what the populace thought in its poll driven decisions. It seems each party learns the winning strategy from the other and seeks to take on the winning bits of the other party and advance it one step further.
To complete the picture, the overlay of the media with its concentration on sound bites, flippery and slips-ups in speech of pollies is the reason unfortunately why such stage managed political presentations become necessary.
Of course it is the fault of the public, who choose to disconnect themselves from the political process in their desire to focus solely on self gratification. They have an expectation that their every need should be met. This expectation is being fueled by the commercial media in their portrayal of politics as being somehow not nice and providing an unrealistic expectation to the aforesaid public as to how the world should operate. This fantasy expectation has no relationship whatsoever to reality.
If we wish to improve our body politic it will require a concerted effort by a large number of people to actually connect and get involved, at whatever level. The commercial media would, and should have no place in this. “We get the government we deserve”.
I should like to add that I think that although there may be “a collapse of political legitimacy everywhere” perhaps a sense of exasperation and frustration may be more apparent in Australia because we as a population care to be properly imformed about how to use our mandatory vote wisely.
Elsewhere where there is no compulsory voting perhaps those who don’t care don’t’ vote and don’t get frustrated. If this be the case perhaps then there is the possibility of change whatever this might.