There’s a very spiffy article by Nicholas Gruen in Friday’s Fin, reproduced over at Troppo. Gruen makes an important point that’s often overlooked about the Howard government’s record:
By contrast Howard saw himself as the strong leader, and his instincts were populist and nationalist. As a result his reign was remarkably free of policy momentum. And that robbed him of political momentum. Remarkably for a politician governing during a long boom, each election saw Howard come from well behind, needing to pull a rabbit from his hat.
The suggestion is that an inclusive leadership style like Hawke’s is more productive of good government, and that there can be an electoral premium for both good policy and a mode of politics that eschews divisiveness.
For gods sake don,t tell Piers
Beautifully written article. What Gruen seems to be saying is that the old idea of political decision making for it’s own sake should be rendered dead and buried.
John above mentions Akerman. I presume this is in reference to the opening sentence of Pies’ latest missive in the Tele:
As Tim Dunlop puts it, what a “forlorn” statement!
We’re “enduring” a “crisis”, the worst since “Whitlam” according to the toadlike one. Made up out of thin air, too… the best type of journalism, where you invent your own facts and the conclusions that come from them come naturally.
Despite the many policy failures of the last year of the Howard government – The Murray, Tassie hospitals, Nuclear, the NT Intervention and so on – Pies is advocating more of the same. “More deciding, less thinking!” he seems to be saying. Never mind inclusion. Never mind thinking things through (someone might leak, after all).
No, go instead for the ambush policy wedge and call it “governing”. It’s only a short intelectual step to call the opposite phenomenon – actually considering the pros and cons of a situation, and even asking outsiders to help you find a few you didn’t know about – “wimpishness”, “glass jaw-ism”, “spin doctoring” or any other epithet that the glass-jawed, wimpish, spin doctor in chief chooses to use.
The Howard legend had it that all wisdom resided within the government, indeed inside the four walls of the PM’s office… more accurately between the two wingnut ears of the PM’s addled brain. We ended up with Howard expostulating on everything: the footy, the cricket, single mums, the weather and (for Chrissake) even Big Brother on TV. Anyone with a different idea was (to the inferiority complex ridden minds of hack, right-wing journalists who’d started out as copy boys) “The Enemy”, an “elitist cadre”, a “whingeing intellectual” to mixed up with political correctness to see The Truth when it was laid out before them.
Howard’s wedge only worked because he managed to gather together like-minded intellectual cringers from all walks of society – uneducated losers who wanted to be winners against those smarmy swots who’d lorded it over them for decades. Howard’s was an alliance of the permanently downtrodden who sought an easy way out by condemning intelligence and forethought. They just did things, and no muckin’ about.
Well, it worked for a while, but look where we are now. Record high debt. Record low housing affordability. Record wastage of a once-in-a-generation resources boom. Little or no infrastructure development. An education deficit that will take a decade to make up. All squandered so that one little man and his mates – Costello, the bullied little brother to Tim turned bully himself, Downer the detested school dropkick turned friend of the high and mighty, and the journos, Pies chief among them, but with an honourable mention for the violent drunkard, Milne – could feel good about the sorry mess their lives had become.
Particularly spiffy. Simultaneously dense and erudite. Quite an achievement. (I’ll sing his praises here. He wants to marry me you know).
I do hope it wasn’t a love job.
I’ve got a bit of a headache now however, all that concentrating at days end.
For the too serious insect lurking in the wings. Its a joke Joyce. He doesn’t really want to marry me.
Bugger.
I mighta known there’d be one.
(meanwhile) . . .Back on topic . . . I particularly liked this, re the scandalous Burke affair (s).
What a pathetic government they were.
I’ll marry you.
Do you mind if I have two wives but?