The most effective political leaders are semi-housetrained polecats, which is also a famous insult. You cannot lay a glove on them; if you do it is terribly painful, at least for those who are hostile. Most leadership then ends in failure, with leaders thrown out of office.
I am not sure how this reconciles with John Stuart Mill’s idea that good political life is about persuasion, conciliation, two steps forward and one step back, and:
‘…to shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of opposite views…’
Hardly a day passes without ominous hints about a looming fundamental breakdown in the operations of the US Constitution. A library of books has been written containing ominous hints. What will they do with the books if business as usual happens and the next Congress and President are duly elected? Move on to another fixation I suppose.
Our current affairs now include repetitive wild claims about foreign hotspots and unconvincing campaigns that lead nowhere.
The overall problem is how to distinguish between legitimate current affairs and what turns out to be background interference. There is an awful lot of interference and lava flow of overheated language. Why doesn’t everyone just be reasonable? You do not have to be a ‘moral vacuum’ like Sir Humphrey Appleby to be half sensible. Although numbing bureaucratic language is not particularly useful – ‘consulting stakeholders about interim in principle proposals’.
There was never a paradise of liberal thinking, in which Australia and the first world got the balance exactly right and in proportion. Too much of the early 20th Century was distracted by misdirected support for government intervention in the market economy.
The radical form of government intervention radically thwarted economic growth and life in half of Europe, behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ and threatened another world war. The less radical form led to ‘Eurosclerosis’ and poor economic performance in too much of the other half.
We did not need books putting Arguments for Socialism (Tony Benn, 1979) which dominated the bookshelves in the 1970s. We needed a way out of that particular dry gulch.
Historical context is important, but when a friend wanted to study Australian history, he was told not to by others who had. The history he would be taught was essentially how one of our major political parties had driven all the policy agenda since Federation. Or so he was told, I hope wrongly.
My own view is that our public life has to be fixated about maintaining our standard of living, addressing our stagnant productivity growth, and cutting unsustainable public spending. While somehow also addressing lethal geopolitical challenges, stamping out antisemitism, and restructuring immigration. But this cannot be ‘proved’ and relies on people agreeing.
A less emphatic approach to these key issues seems at least possible for the foreseeable future. The argument may have been lost. There may even instead be new taxes on assets and new spending on welfare.
None of this can be ‘proved’ except by putting the argument forward. What happens if it does not convince enough, as may be the case?
Nothing happens, and for a while we live on in the cocoon of environmental, spending, and multicultural illusions that are far too comforting for far too many.
Eventually, a real world correction may occur. The 1981 ‘prices/costs explosion’ forced agreement on radical restructuring of the economy for the next 30 years. A severe economic crisis and breakdown is not the preferable way to address obvious problems.
We have now had a major real world correction on the problem of antisemitism. Although whether anything truly effective will result is unknown.
On January 21, unknown fugitives from the law vandalised the Separation Memorial to the separation of Victoria from NSW in 1850 and destroyed the Pioneer Monument marking the place where early pioneers are buried in Melbourne. They inscribed moronic slogans and what a Deakin expert said was ‘a symbol’ of a terrorist organisation.
We cannot again ignore the damage done by too common feral attitudes, by idiocy and worse.
Every Victorian school should now visit the monuments to celebrate the Victorian achievement. They tell the story of how and why Victoria was established, and how the pioneers built our modern standard of living and first world nation.
But are any of our state education systems able to tell such a positive story now? Their priorities may lie elsewhere, with for example ‘cross curriculum priorities’. These do not obviously emphasise the benefits of Australian traditions, history and achievements. As usually interpreted they do the opposite.
There is some suggestion that when caught the culprits will be made to pay for repairs, which is a good idea. Although I will believe it when I see it.
South Australia celebrates its remarkable 1856 constitution and now has a ‘timeline of firsts’. It was the ‘Australian or world leader in many reforms’ including ‘Adult male suffrage (including Aboriginal men)’.
I talked with a then senior minister and experts at the Adelaide Centre of Democracy to promote such a positive view as best I could.
I see no reason why a national timeline of Australian ‘firsts’ and ‘early achievements’ should not be developed and promoted.
It can then be taught at the colonial monuments people now vandalise.
Attitudes are not helped by an almost universally damning approach to our history, and belligerent activist groups. Radical chic may be our dominant mono-fanaticism, but it is a poor education.
Most people understand that there are different points of view on current issues, even the foreign hotspots that attract so much agitation and attention. But obviously not all do. This has become a serious public problem.
Call me Mary but getting the Coalition back together again, as happened yesterday, may be nearly as important as the thumb-nosed numbat. The government needs effective and strong scrutiny, and not just internal scrutiny by its own.
The Hon. Reg Hamilton, Adjunct Professor, School of Business and Law, Central Queensland University
