Tweet
“Ruminate – to think deeply about something”
Hi, I’m Rob Greaves and I’m a Feature Writer, Administrator and ‘Editor-in Training’ at the Toorak Times, sometimes I publish under Rob and sometimes under ras-x.
This is the second posting in a new on-going, if not somewhat ad-hoc column called “Ruminations From My Veranda”.
A nice evening, I have a bottle of red, a glass, some cheese and I sat back and thought about the two things dominating the news. The first is the recent election of Pope Francis, and I think I'll have something to say on this a little later. However, the second is the ongoing 'mess' in our Parliament!
OK, let me make it clear, I am a Labor voter! Having said that it pains me to see my party tearing itself apart, but at the same time, I’m not sure whether it deserves to form another Government. When Julia took the reins from Kevin I was happy.
I thought that Kevin was a very intelligent man, someone who might make a good PM, but he seemed to be aloof and removed from the people of Australia, and even his own colleagues.
So I supported Julia taking over. I think she has had a shit of a time and has undergone more scrutiny than any male PM ever! I mean, when did you last read about a male PM being criticised for his clothes, the colour of his accessories, and being accused of being incomplete because he hasn’t had a family, not even married for goodness sake? Oh and there was a lot more.
We managed to navigate through a horrendous economic period in a fine style, whilst it seemed to me, every other country struggled, and we stood tall! Yet Julia hasn’t been so crash hot on the political ‘smarts’. Many blunders, failing to sell some damn decent policies, allowing herself to get side tracked a very clever Opposition campaign. Somehow I couldn’t imagine Gough, Hawke and certainly not Keating, to allow Tony Abbott and his party to verbally walk over them!
So now I’m wondering what the cost would actually be if she stood down, or was pushed?
Yep, the polls say that Labor would be right back in the ‘hunt’ if Kev were back in charge. But this is easy to make a noise about when he isn’t. I have this gut feeling that the very political commentators who are constantly throwing this in our face, would turn on him the moment he took over again!
Is the electorate sophisticated enough to deal with such an event?
So, as I sip on a fine 2002 Coonawarra Cab/Sav/Merlot, it strikes me that Labor will be stuffed if they do make a change, and stuffed if they don’t.
So, what the hell is the alternative? Ok, I did make it clear that I am a Labor supporter, so it comes as no surprise that Tony Abbot leaves me cold! In any other time, any past Labor leader would have made utter mince meat of this man! He swaggers as if he has an orange stuffed up his bum! But does that preclude him from being a great leader, a great thinker, someone who can galvanise this country? No it doesn’t! Yet frankly, I honestly believe he is failing and will fail all three of these counts.
He has had a plethora of PR people working overtime to help him appear to reinvent himself, particularly his image toward women and Gays! To me, they have done a fantastic job, but as Bo Diddley sang, “You can’t judge a book looking at the cover” and that old Tony is bubbling just below the surface, I’m certain of that.
If we look at policies I’m just as fearful.
The charges that Labor is putting this country under the pump its spending seems to suggest that a Government under him would be spend thrifts. Maybe they will, and that’s a worry because its not big business that will suffer from cuts, it will be the low income, the single parent, the aged and the unemployed.
We only need to examine the past to see the future!
On the other hand whilst he is quick to throw charges of misspending at the Government, we have absolutely no idea at all how all his promises will be funded.
A bit like the late (and not so great) dictatorial premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen once said, that he loved to feed the chooks, when it came to letting info out to the media, Tony lets very little out, scattered bits and pieces while he deflects questions on his funding attacking Julia. In fact we can expect a plethora of material from his just before the election, which gives little time to digest it let alone to analyse it.
So as much as it scares the bejesus out of me, it looks like a Liberal Government is the only alternative.
Please don’t talk to me about the Greens. Oh for the return of the Democrats! You don’t know what you’ve lost til its gone, eh? At first I thought the Greens would make a good partner for any Government, play the honest broker and bring some ecological reasoning to the table. They have shown me that they are pretty mono-dimensional, they are opportunists and they have about as much charisma as the other two parties, their leader is seriously in need of a personality transplant and they seem to reject any compromise that is bought to the table.
Like it or not politics IS about compromise.
So where the hell are we heading? Wherever it is, we seem to be stumbling like a mass group of drunks. We strike out at each other in due deference to how our leaders act! We seem to have lost the skill of consensus, or, the desire for it! This is a great country; lets not get into a nationalistic fervour, but it is! We have it all before us, but we have no leaders, no person (male or female) who can bring us together, who can challenge us with their foresight, their words, and who has a plan for the future that excites us.
This is a Ship of Fools! It matters not what political party you support, at this moment if you are true to yourself and this country, and stop lashing out at the other political persuasions, regardless of whom you support, it is hard to see a bright future in regard to our Parliament and our political situation in the immediate vicinity.
Thank god for this bottle of red, it gives me a pleasure that politics of today can and never will.