The reasons why are arguable, but there’s no doubting the recent exponential increase in the volume of appeals we’ve been fielding about people wanting to “sue the government”. Specifically the Morrison government.
My guess is it’s the confluence of existential threats with certain uniquely distinguishing attributes of this government, in an environment where litigating everything is very much in vogue.
Mainly people want to sue the government for fraud. For lying. For saying one thing and doing the other. For shifting and squirming and denying and evading; for taking responsibility for nothing and for refusing to own up to its manifest failures in the most basic particulars of its job.
Not everyone, obviously. Just the people who hate the government for one reason or another.
An example of one query: can we sue this government for a decision we only learnt about recently? That is that last year it placed a ban on workers providing their services across more than one aged care facility after massive outbreaks that had caused hundreds of deaths, mainly in Melbourne. That, you’d say, was a sensible measure that came too late.
But it turns out the government secretly lifted that ban in November. It reinstated it quietly after the latest hotel quarantine outbreak — too late again.
Uselessness or wantonness
At what point is a government’s uselessness — or, if you prefer, its wantonness — so bad that it is not feasible to wait for the next election and we need some other form of legal intervention to stem the bleeding before the body politic is completely dead?
No, the governor-general can’t step in. I mean, he could, but he can’t and definitely won’t. As for the courts, they have no overriding supervisory jurisdiction to come to the rescue of the nation, no matter how spectacularly the elected government is failing in its basic duties.
The reason is democracy. Like it or not, our entire system of representative democratic government is predicated on a fundamental structural norm: that lawmaking power, and the practical reins of executive government, are held by the elected arm. If we don’t like how the government is running the country, we have an election every three years and can try a different one.
It’s an old compact. Thomas Jefferson put it neatly: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
That is to say, if we can’t keep the bastards honest then ultimately we’ll kick them out.
Fundamentals of democracy
However, there was a second assumption implicit in the founding fathers’ ideals, living also in our own constitutional arrangements. Democracy rests on two pillars: its formal structure as laid out in our constitution, and a set of less-defined conventions that go back as far as the concept of responsible government, independent of that government’s legal form.
The reason we got democracy in the first place was that the conventions of responsibility, carried as they were by absolute monarchs, progressively fell down over the centuries. Unsurprising, because absolute power corrupts in accordance with the cliché.
As democracy came to the fore, it was never envisaged by those who did the hard work to bring it into physical being as a thing of perfection. How could it be, as long as humans were still to be involved?
There are in fact many conventions we rely on our elected parliamentarians to observe, although we generally have no idea they even exist. They include, critically, what we sometimes call the Westminster system of responsible government. It dictates that ministers who form and lead the executive arm will behave like grown-ups without being forced.
If a minister fails in their duty — which includes a failure for which they are not necessarily personally at fault but that occurred under their watch — they will take the fall for it and resign their office.
That is the convention.
In the Morrison government, ministers do not resign, regardless how dreadfully they or their departments have mucked up.
It is also conventional that ministers do not mislead parliament. In the Morrison government, in particular the prime minister, openly lying to parliament has no consequence.
Not that democracy has ever expected that ministers won’t lie, be negligent, behave like vandals or occasionally cheat and steal. Its internal conventions are designed to keep the aberrance to a tolerable level between elections, and it relies on civil rights, the free press and the universal franchise to ensure that a bad government will be removed by the people within a survivable time frame.
What the Morrison government is doing is stress-testing those fail-safes by shedding the conventions of responsible government and banking on a quiescent populace not bothering to notice.
That’s why the calls to sue the government are getting louder. It’s the fear that this mob may have found a way to make itself permanent. Not an entirely misplaced fear, either.
It’s not just that the government is “Banking on a quiescent population not bothering to notice,” its that, with the knowing support of the Murdoch press, it is actively and deliberately lying and concealing, and then stoking partisan division to undercut anyone who points out what they are doing. Tony Abbott’s government was the most destructive government in my lifetime, Morrison’s is the most mendacious.
Tony Abbott’s government was the most destructive government in my lifetime, Morrison’s is the most mendacious.
I’ll be 80 next month. I absolutely agree with your summary.
So do I.
What he said.
The cheek of Abbott who is now a foreign agent working for the UK on trade agreements, with an Australian deal coming up. Then again, think the British have more to worry about…..
As an old European friend once told me, ” you get the politicians you deserve because you don’t assassinate any of them.
Much of the Euroland, esp the north, social settlement – social housing, living wages, real cradle to grave welfare & security etc – is due to the propensity of the populace to winkle up the cobblestones and smash the Establishment’s windows when necessary.
Our electorate just gets drunk and screams at the footy.
That did make me laugh although I feel strangely uncomfortable about it.
Thomas Jefferson put it neatly: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Which raises a critical question: are the Australian people well informed? There are issues both with how many Australians make any effort to be well informed, and with the quality of the information Australians get. It seems likely a very large part of what might superficially appear to be information can fairly be described as misinformation, propaganda and disinformation.
If the people are not well informed – what then?
I don’t think the public is well-informed. I think that behind Morrison’s slippery, evasive, doing nothing facade, he is inexorably changing Australia from a Westminster democracy to a crony capitalist state along the lines of the Neo-Cons in the US whose playbook he follows.
as George said, those that control the past, control the present and the future … and given that in today’s 24hr news cycle, the past is only yesterday, it’s clear how dangerous Murdoch is
Amongst core or above media age voter generally no, with a lack of basic critical literacies they have become ‘too easy’ to game….
Just as a free market is a contradiction in terms so a well informed public is inimical to capitalism and must be eradicated if possible or, failing that, demonised as eggheadizm.
Even if we managed to get this government to court, they would probably commit perjury.
I’ve never known a more corrupt (allegedly) Australian government. There is no standard that $cotty and his mediocre Coalition MP’s and Senators aren’t willing to walk past. They know that being irresponsible, reprehensible, lying deceitful scoundrels is acceptable, encouraged and rewarded.
It also helps that most of the MSM are supporters, donors and recipients of taxpayer handouts from a grateful and indebted government…allegedly.
Agreed, the level of cynical self-protection and anti-Australian idleness by this lot is the worst I’ve seen in 56 years.Their lack of personal conviction is made clear by Matthias Cormann’s sudden ‘conversion’ to climate crisis action in his new OECD job. While back here Morrison continues to drag his feet (and our future) behind the Mining and Oil/Gas lobby’s profit bandwagon.
Mathias Cormann’s new appointment as Secretary-Generalof the OECD is a slap in the face of every Australian. Infuriating.
Hypocrite Morrison will soon be winging himself over on his Sharknado jet for the G7 summit where his bluster and bullshit will hopefully be called out by other leaders willing to face the realities and consequences of climate change. To be honest I hope he receives some home truths and some very cold shoulders.
When he arrives home, he’ll inform us all of his brilliance in achieving nothing and the MSM will hang on every miserable word with bated breath and print front page stories about $cotty’s genius. Vomit.
Neither party is interested in a “vibrant” democracy. If they were, we’d have had proportional representation at the federal level in both houses No, they will just take their turn, oblivious that one governing party whose interest has been reduced to holding power and getting rich can make it increasingly difficult for the other to ‘have their turn’.
News FLASH – since the, effective, abolition of the iniquitous Line in Senate (thank you PJK, class traitor with gold cluster) we do have PR in the Chamber.
It just needs an electorate that can count beyond 12 without taking off shoes and refuses to vote Party #1.
Which is a non starter and why we have the status quo.