From Jeff Kennett:
AUSTRALIA is now in the appalling position of being a nation without adequate leadership. The citizenship issue is not yet a Constitutional crisis but it is a crisis — yet our leaders seem incapable of dealing with it quickly.
What, if anything, can we take from our federal Parliament’s past 15 years? The last stable administration was the Howard government from 1996 to 2007. It had its challenges, but it made the best use of our growing economy and not only wiped out the debt left by Labor but also directed billions to set up the Future Fund.
…But since 2007 we have had a period of political “disruption” during which personality politics has emerged, delivering us a decade of wasted opportunity. Individual ambition has compromised government after government.
As a result the public has become disillusioned with the political class in Canberra and that has resulted in independents and smaller parties winning seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, where disruption to the legislative program has become a sport.
And while the minor parties have been blamed for the disruption to the governments programs, I believe that is a cop out. The blame lies more with personality politics and the tactics of oppositions. Started by Tony Abbott and now embraced by Bill Shorten, the aim is to simply oppose, at any cost.
Of course, as Abbott discovered, if all you can do is oppose, it is very hard to govern effectively. And that brings us to this question: if a leader takes his party to power, is it in the party’s interests, and those of the nation, if the leader is removed midterm by their colleagues?
The evidence is that it is not. Rudd to Gillard to Rudd, Turnbull to Abbott to Turnbull.
…What I find so remarkable about our present situation is the failure of leaders to do what should be obvious to anyone in commerce or government: to act quickly to solve a problem.
When we had the explosion at the Esso gas plant in September 1998, we moved quickly to put a response in place: temporary restrictions to keep gas supplies flowing to households and commerce, measures to deal with the human tragedies, steps to keep the public and the media informed; through transparency, over time we worked our way back to normality.
In contrast, the issue of citizenship is diverting Canberra from the goal of good government.
Once the High Court ruled on the Gang of Seven, Parliament knew it had an issue. The only way to deal with it quickly was an audit of all members.
…Amid the confusion there has been talk of Turnbull being replaced. Yes, we thought he had a plan when he took over from Abbott, but that was a false hope. None existed.
…Let’s face it, the past 10 years have been a lesson in how not to run a country.
To me it’s obvious that the pollies of the day are selfish and dumb but they are also being corrupted by a bureaucracy that clings to dated and failing ideologies that produced our last boom but can’t sustain it going forward.
That means both the executive and legislature needs a mighty clean-out and that can’t happen without a very large accident (which hopefully won’t throw up even worse!).
