The Joke's On Us

Yes folks, I’m afraid it is. While the scenes of our Leader of Opposition running from the Parliamentary Chamber yesterday were funny, the joke is on us. We, the electorate. The people. Those who the likes of Tony Abbott and his fellow runner Christopher Pyne are meant to serve. If you missed it, here’s some footage below.

Basically, Craig Thomson in his new role as an Independent, turned the tables on the Opposition and voted with it to deny a Government gag order. After talking ad nauseum for months about the Prime Minister accepting Thomson’s ‘tainted’ vote, Abbott couldn’t bear to be tainted himself and took off at a rate of knots to ensure it didn’t count. Cue the many twitter feeds that followed: “Tainted Vote” to the tune of Soft Cell’s Tainted Love.

Nah Seriously, unlike Pyne, Abbott didn’t make it to the door in time before they closed for voting and he had to slump back to his frontbench. No doubt upset that his regular fartlek training on his morning runs didn’t give him enough speed to get out of there in time. Or that the Benny Hill theme didn’t come over the loud speakers as he ran away. Abbott then tried to mount a defence and accused Thomson of a stunt. The words ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ come to mind.

The whole sorry affair really does reflect badly on the nature of our political discourse at the moment. After weeks of the Thomson saga dominating the news and views where no-one has come out of it looking any good, we get the PM-in-waiting running away from a vote. Running away from the Chamber. Isn’t that what we pay our politicians to do? To debate and to vote?

The way all this has gone down and the way it is all reported certainly adds to people switching off and being disengaged with what is going on. And conversely, it also creates more negativity around our politicians and our politics in general. It even prompted Independent Rob Oakeshott, who hasn’t always impressed either since the last election, to tell ABC TV:

‘‘If you listened to public policy discourse right now and nothing else, you would think that our parliament is worse than Papua New Guinea, our economy worse than Greece, our electricity system worse than North Korea’’.

I’m pretty sure millions of people in those countries would love to live in a country with our working economy, with our connected infrastructure and with our stable political system. But perspective is a rare commodity in this country right now and the negativity wins out every time, even in the face of actual facts and figures.

I’ve written before about our massive loss of perspective in terms of where we sit on so many things and against so many other countries. A perceived sense of ‘missing out’ on something, anything, everything has grown to become an even bigger sense of entitlement. Whinging has now become a national sport and the current politics and media coverage of it have a lot to do with that.

No matter what, Abbott is in quite a strong position to take over as PM when the next election takes place. The current Government has made plenty of mistakes but it also seems like it can’t take a trick and the electorate have simply ‘switched off’ to their message. There’s some good policy coming out from time to time, but their politics stinks and any good and constructive news gets mired down in that.

As I’ve said previously, our choice is a poisoned one. One party that is good on policy but bad on politics. Against another party that is good on politics but bad on policy. There’s no inspiration on either side for mine and I despair at what our democracy has become.

Yes, the money says Abbott will be our next PM. I assume he thinks that, his party thinks that and most of the country thinks that too. And they’re all probably right. But isn’t that even more of a reason to demand some higher standards. To demand something that is even in the ball park of being more statesmanlike and more prime ministerial? Because what we’re getting fed now and over the last two years is far, far from it.

So yes, I had to laugh at the antics of yesterday and the Olympic style sprints with Benny Hill tunes over the top. But in the end the jokes on us. And our acceptance of all these stunts and all the negativity are the punchline.

EDM.