As Australia begins to stir from hibernation, there is one thing that could have stayed dormant for much longer.
Numpties. Sorry, politicians.
Now that we’re back to politics as usual, it only serves to remind us what we really didn’t miss during the lockdown.
During the hiatus, the only visible pollies were a small group which included the prime minister, the treasurer and the health minister.
It was more than enough.
Few really missed hearing from the rest of the Morrison government, particularly those weeks when the home affairs minister was felled by coronavirus.
The opposition figured out early on it was best to keep their heads down too.
The opposition leader popped up occasionally for some appropriate contributions on vital issues which was a good reminder that he had not been confined to a bunker like poor Joe Biden in the US.
And virtually nothing from the National Party with their federal leaders’ invisibility now working in his favour. Even Barnaby buggered off for the duration.
Pauline Hanson’s efforts to draw attention included threatening to lay down in her paddock and daring the cops to fine her. No word on what happened. Obviously no one cared — even the cops.
Could this be why ratings for the nightly television news almost doubled? Suddenly it was safe for viewers to turn on their sets and watch real news for a change instead of the usual banality.
It seemed the only ones that missed it all were the rabid right wing commentators who were given some welcome relief with the George Pell High Court decision in early April.
That allowed for some much needed ranting and culture war outpourings that they had obviously been forced to curtail during those damned “we’re all in it together” weeks.
The pollie void was filled by the state premiers which might be why the first polling showed their approval at stratospheric levels. There was novelty value to seeing Labor and Liberal state leaders all working together.
Not so much internally. When NSW arts minister Don Harwin was sacked it was ostensibly pandemic-related given he was breaking lockdown laws. It did allow Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph to ramp up its campaign against the NSW premier under the cover of COVID-19.
There were still tensions between Canberra and Macquarie Street with the PM reportedly warmer to the Labor premiers of Victoria, WA and Queensland than to his NSW Liberal counterpart during national cabinet meetings.
Perhaps the starkest sign things had changed came the Sunday federal Education Minister Dan Tehan criticised Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ lack of leadership on school openings and was forced by the PM to make an embarrassing apology that he had “overstepped the mark”.
Given the usual insults hurled from Canberra it was a seminal moment in the new civil politics. It didn’t last long.
This week Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith issued a childish tirade calling Andrews “lurch” and a “friendless loser”.
Peter Dutton’s pent-up bile was sprayed at the “corrupt and chaotic” Queensland Government for daring to try and help rescue the collapsed Virgin Airlines, comments even the PM refused to endorse.
It has been unravelling at a great pace. In the past week the Queensland premier has lost her deputy after a corruption scandal and the NSW premier probably wishes hers had gone too.
After the NSW deputy premier sprayed everyone, Barnaby quickly popped up with a view, and then Matt Canavan was back, along with a strange photo of himself in high vis in front of a Hills Hoist.
The opposition stirred too. Kristina Keneally was obviously suffering limelight deprivation so penned an anti-immigration piece that infuriated her colleagues and gave Pauline Hanson the chance to claim she was stealing One Nation policies.
And when a press gallery journalist dared to bring up the dreaded sports rorts this week the old smirky, snarky Scott was back.
Political leaders often talk disingenuously of keeping politics off the front page but when the pandemic meant they didn’t have a choice, it actually seemed to work.
Cancelling parliament is a high price to pay but for the first time I appreciate why some oppressed peoples actually welcome a dictatorship after democracy becomes too chaotic.
It’s obviously a welcome respite from all those damn pollies, everywhere, all the time.
Have you enjoyed the break from politics as usual? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column.
Business as usual – and don’t you just love it!
Now will the government be held to account for their past failings and egregious decisions?
Yes, I would really like to see photos of all those very important things such as sporting clubs with female change rooms and no female members, club houses called the Taj and the hockey field in Toorak hosting a Somalian team to play and the list goes on to gun clubs who didn’t even put up a proposal.
These things tied up so many staffers in both the minister and the Prime Minimal’s office prior to the May election, requiring a colour coded system regarding the seats which needed shoring up and the targeted marginals, which seems to have continued well after, in fact even after the whistle had been blown by the Governor General and parliament was in caretaker mode.
Awkward!!
And made infinitely more so, when scottie from marketing going all snarky and god bothering smugly superior and then skulks off indoors, followed by the gathered public servants untidily following in his hasty retreat.
Ooooh, it’s nearly a year since that stellar, one seat majority win that has had Smirko still so overcome with his own importance that he forgets that it was the worshiper of the god of Mammon (Money, ok?) Clive Palmer who won the election for him.
It should always be kept in mind, that Clive expects a politician who has been bought and paid for to remain so. Campbell Newman found that out the hard way.
I don’t suppose that the loss of most of the water out of the Artesian and sub-Artesian basin is too high a price to pay for scottie from marketing to remain nicely living in Kirrabilli house, don’t you think?
SIgh! It couldn’t last, could it, but gee, wasn’t it nice while it did?
The past two months have been the only time that I can recall when our politicians actually did what we pay them to do: lead the country in its own best interests, rather than the interests of its donors.
The deranged Jeff Kennet is back on the news at Kochies Sunrise making stupid statements and showing why he was a short term victorian premier, as if throwing shovel fulls of dirt at reporters during his short term as premier was`nt enough now he`s shouting the debt and deficit bullshit out for all to hear, if he believes the stimulus is financed by borrowed money and doesn`t understand that its money printed internally by Australia and will be slowly withdrawn from circulation over time and does not have to be repaid with interest to some mysterious entity and in fact all the sovereign nations around the world are printing money to pay for their own stimulus programs then he`s even dumber than I thought, tell me Jeff where exactly is these billions being borrowed from, every nation is in stimulus mode, none have billions to lend, the world bank does`nt have enough to bail out tasmania let alone the rest of the world so please, name your lenders, why sothe called economic journalists and T.V hosts dont ask this simple question is hard to work out , are they to scared of their media masters or even worse, too dumb to know the answer.
“Dormant”?
Scotty From Marketing hasn’t been playing politics (to make up for the sports rorts/manifestation of climate change denialism fire-sale of his image)?
Dutton was only laid low by a greater force than his.
Fraudberg’s stimulus is ‘nothing like the Labor one’ that he and this government have been railing against for years?
[I wonder if Scotty’s “stay-at-school/no mass testing human shields” Murphy and Kelly are going to pop up some time in the future as ‘Liberal Party candidates’. ]
“Ruby Princess”?
… The Scotty From Marketing hand-picked fossil fuel skeletal frame of the NCCC?
I thought the opposition had been relatively tame, but the coalition was back with a vengeance and some of the proceedings in the house and ofcourse QT were even more infuriating then before.