Via Paul Kelly:
When a parliament is discredited the presiding government usually pays a fatal price. The current parliament is discredited and dysfunctional on fiscal, legal and symbolic grounds, our democracy continues to be damaged and the decline in trust in our institutions is intensifying.
Just as the Tony Abbott-led opposition in 2010-13 was pivotal in ruining the Gillard government’s legitimacy, so the Bill Shorten-led opposition — though facing a different situation — is advanced in its quest to delegitimise the Turnbull government. But that only happens because of the government’s own ineptitude.
…The killer scenario is the reference of Deputy Prime Minister to the High Court leading to a minority Turnbull government. That should not happen. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could happen. But these are strange days. If the worst eventuates for Joyce and he must face a by-election in New England, he would surely win. But history tells us — from the Gillard era — that minority government is a guaranteed political death.
In this environment, where the parliament and public culture are being diminished, the Turnbull government is certain to be lacerated. Can the wisdom of judges assist in this debilitating saga? Rarely have events put the High Court in a position where its judgments will have such far-reaching political impact.
The court will decide the eligibility of a number of MPs (and that number seems sure to grow), whether Joyce must resign and contest a by-election, and also the legality of the same-sex marriage postal plebiscite on which rests Malcolm Turnbull’s entire strategy to resolve the marriage issue.
Australia suffers not just from systemic defects in its parliament but from a polarised culture — far less severe than that in America, which has become a violent internal confrontation, yet alarming in the depth of conflict over same-sex marriage, religious freedom, the role of Islam, indigenous recognition and its historical icons from Australia Day to the meaning of secularism.
You’ve been in the press gallery far too long, Paul, and are personally symbolic of what’s gone wrong. You believe that pollies are the nation. That they in some way represent the polity. The truth is more simple and reassuring. Australia is remarkably tolerant and harmonious, thanks to some weird combination of sub-altern psychology, old fashioned English pragmatism, laziness and because it can afford to be. The pollies in the chamber are thus completely unrepresentative, curios in time and space, gallahs to be laughed at and ignored, and ironically, free to rort the nation for all it’s worth.
The primary schism in Australian politics is between Canberra and the people. This has all been made much worse by the contemporary political ethos, arising from Carl Rove, that pollies need not respond to reality when they can shape or even create it. This has led the chamber to a point of disconnect so far from the average Australian that its daily circus transpires in a near perfect post-modern theatre in which everyone can see the pollies pulling their own strings except the pollies themselves.
This is the import of the dual national crisis. It is also why Baaaarnaby should have resigned. It would have shown substance, that he supported his own meaty statements when the Greens jumped out of the plane. One Nation has blundered too, protecting the idiotic Malcolm Roberts. So too XenoPom. I mean, how’s this for farce, via Peter Hartcher:
The survival prospects for the Turnbull government continue to narrow, with another key crossbench member of Parliament withdrawing support.
Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team said that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull needed to stand aside from his cabinet two ministers with citizenship problems, pending a High Court ruling on their eligibility.
A third Turnbull government minister has been caught up in the dual citizenship crisis that has rocked parliament, with Nationals senator Fiona Nash advising she is a British citizen by descent.
Ms Sharkie told Fairfax Media on Friday that “I am quite frustrated with the Prime Minister” for retaining in cabinet Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Regional Development Minister Fiona Nash.
Mr Turnbull was showing “disrespect to the Australian community” and she has decided she will no longer support the government on the survival matters of confidence and supply.
Yet her own leader has already declared his refusal to resign now he’s a confirmed Pom!