The Australian public has been served unjustly several months of turbulence in the last few months. The knifing of Malcolm Turnbull to the rise and fall of Peter Dutton and the ‘accidental’ Prime Ministership of Scott Morrison, then the byelection at Wentworth and the recent rumoured knifing of the fresh National leader with an option of returning to the home wrecking, cheating and womanising Barnarby Joyce who went on to take a handsome amount of money to fix his image.
It has been some time that Australians have been treated unfairly. Since ‘Kevin 07’ Australians have endured waves after waves of narcissistic infighting of the so-called elite Australians in Canberra. From Kevin Rudd to Julia Guilard, then back to Kevin Rudd, then switched over to the Tony Abbott promising a stable government going to do their job properly, only to be knifed by Malcom Turnbull and then as a pay back, Peter Dutton ramped up his far-right support only to find himself second to Scott Morrison. The Parliament was shut down for a period because of these politicians in suit who actually behaved like thugs in suit were engaging in a full-on internal war among themselves.
The Merry-Go-Round of Prime Ministers made Australia a butt joke internationally and put Australia on an undesirable radar of failed governance. This happened while Australians believe more attention should be paid on climate change, the conservation of the Barrier Reef, the refugees’ issues, public health, public education, pension, supporting young people who are struggling to get a job etc. Australians maybe a tolerant bunch and battlers, but there is a limit to such tolerance.
Today, at the Wentworth byelection, Australian democracy struck. Despite Scott Morrison repeatedly raised the issue of a ‘stable government’ (hello?) and ‘you know what you get’ (hello? Are you sure what you are doing is what Australians wanted?) and John Howard’s pitching in on the same topic (bad move, remember what happened when he did that in 2007?), Kerryn Phelps, an independent won the seat with the biggest swing against the Liberals (22.1% at the time of writing) and snatched the seat form the Liberals for the first time since federation. The Liberals conceded defeat but the main questions of this whole saga still linger – would the prominent parties ever learn? Do these people who claimed to represent day to day Australians really know the people they claimed to represent?
Looking back from 2007, this was what the Australian public was served by the bunch in Canberra:
Infighting between John Howard and Peter Costello, leading to the rise of Kevin Rudd. The Liberal National Coalition lost the election
Discontent of a faction of the Labor party against Kevin Rudd, leading to Julia Guilard to challenge Kevin Rudd and replaced him
Julia Guilard was deemed unpopular enough to win the next election against Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd returned and knifed the person who knifed him
Kevin Rudd proved to be too late to mend Labor’s image, Tony Abbott won the election
Tony Abbott introduced a number of unpopular policies and his cabinet members making unpopular comments such as ‘Colonisation made Australia a better place’, ‘Poor people usually don’t have cars and even they do they don’t drive very far’, and ‘What does time matter when they have water lapping at their doorsteps (about the Pacific Island countries) leading to Malcolm Turnbull challenging Tony Abbott, and finally got the top job he always wanted
Peter Dutton led a full-scale assault with his far-right cohort trying to remove Malcolm Turnbull, failed for the first time
Peter Dutton challenged again two days after his failed attempt, Parliament shut down because of this, and Scott Morrison reaped the benefit of the situation and became Prime Minister
None of these events the Australian public had a say. Every time when a challenge happened, it was because of factional infighting, and in two occasions, the persons who were showed the door became the ghost of the party that kept on undermining their nemesis until they were undone themselves. And ironically, these are the same people who kept increasing their pay checks while tightening other people’s budget under the claim of ‘Australia needs the best people to govern and make important decisions for them’. Did Australia really have the best people when it was just a revolving door of people in the top job?
Many a time in different opinion polls Australians expressed their preferences on important issues such as marriage-equality, climate change, refugees’ treatment and public health. However how many times did these so-called representatives acted accordingly? Marriage-equality was only made possible after a plebiscite that the Australians disagreed on indicated that the majority of the country wanted marriage-equality. After dragging a lot of people through mud the Coalition government wanted to claim credit while at the same time discredited the same group of people during their ‘No’ campaign. Climate change denial is rife in the Morrison government and Turnbull was knifed because of his belief in climate change. Peter Dutton wanted to gag all workers on Naruu so inhumane activities were covered up and he could wash his hands clean. My Health Record had so many loopholes on privacy that people were opting out despite the initial good it could provide. So how could these people claim to be representing Australians when general Australians hold completely different views against them?
Some people said the loss in Wentworth byelection should be a wake-up call but then at the time of writing the Nationals are considering knifing their own leader again. So really my question is would these people ever wake up? Or are these people so obsessed with themselves that the rest of the country do not matter to them anymore? For those people who wanted Barnarby Joyce as leader again, do they think he, who took such a handsome amount for a ‘redeeming’ interview from a free to air channel represents what rural Australians going through day in day out?
The best part about the Wentworth byelection is that it showed that Australian democracy still matters. Unlike in the States where the powerful few continued to change laws and legislation against the people they claimed to represent so they can stay in power. However, placing so much weight on one occasion could cloud our vision of the real situation – is the country going to be continued to be run by a bunch of thugs in suits who cared about nobody but themselves? – and this applies to both dominating parties in the country. I personally think independents making the call for policies is a good thing as this could limit the play of biased-collective interest. The days of voting of big parties for stability is over and maybe this kind of disruptive shakeup will do the Australian Government good. Only time will tell.
