Alexander Downer on how to lose friends and disinterest people

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By Leith van Onselen

With the satisfaction with Australia’s political system plunging to all-time lows, and distrust growing and voters flocking to minor parties:

Former Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, is playing ‘blame the victim’. From The AFR:

There’s an old political slogan you might remember … the public get the politicians they deserve. Through all the political turmoil over the past decade I can’t help but draw your attention to your own culpability. It’s at least partly your fault. And there’s every danger you are about to make the whole situation worse…

The public overwhelmingly want Australia to contribute to lowering greenhouse emissions… But here’s the rub. They don’t want to pay more for electricity… The problem is the public wants a magic pudding…More than anything, it is the contradictions in the public mind that have contributed to the scandalous degree of political instability we’ve experienced over the past miserable decade…

If disillusion with Liberal and Labor keeps growing, you’ll end up with something a lot worse: a coalition of chaos.

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I suggest Mr Downer and his fellow politicians take a long hard look in the mirror. Voters are continually told how well they have it, yet our own lived experience of falling real wages, housing unaffordability, crush-loaded infrastructure, and declining amenity tells them otherwise every minute of every day. It is equally obvious in the statistics as well:

In psychology, this is called “gaslighting”, an abusive behavioural process in which one person (often disordered certainly ruthless) bullies or manipulates his own version of reality onto a normal person or persons, disavowing their needs, despite obvious falsehood. In our case, we have an entire disordered parliament doing it to an entire nation.

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It produces one guaranteed outcome for any individual or group subjected to it: rage.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.