Word Power: pertinent/impertinent observations on ‘22 Election

This is #1 in a temporary series of not many episodes!

Utterly underwhelming as Australian vote-seekers’ performances have been, a few observers of “Scomo”, “Albo”, “Clive” et al – and of us, their target – have delivered choice, pithy observations…

We have inertia because we have arrived at the era of personal greed and the major parties feel obliged to pander to that greed.

The above is the opening sentence of one paragraph in a memorably-headlined article, Rorters, rooters and the country’s lost decade.

The rest of that paragraph:

The test of this election isn’t whether Labor or the Liberals can outscore each other; it is a test of each and every Australian as to whether they care about the future of our democracy and political institutions, whether they care about the world our old people die in and our young people will live in, or if they care only about themselves and the rorts and indulgences politicians promise them.

Former independent federal and state MP Tony Windsor’s essay is in The Saturday Paper no 396, published on 23.04.2022.

Tony Windsor also highlights the exquisite irony that Australia’s farmers may well be saved by the very people Barnaby Joyce reviles as inner-city latte-sippers:

If there is to be action on climate change, it will be forced by the Independents running in these city seats – and that action will be necessary for every farmer in the country to have a future.

As you may remember, as a state MP, then as a Federal MP,  Windsor has held “the balance of power”.

“Major” parties, of course, do not wish their power to be checked by the lack of an absolute majority of seats.

Accordingly, they are currently uttering a lot of utter tosh about the alleged “danger” posed by a so-called “hung” Parliament or a “minority” Government, and the alleged “irresponsibility” of any and all Independent or “minor” party candidates.

Conveniently “forgotten” in this narrative is the fact that the National Party is a “minor” party which often wields disproportionate power, most especially in our national government.

Presumably, this having been “the norm” for so long has led many voters to unthinkingly accept “The Coalition” as a “given” – a part of Australian politics’ built-in “furniture”.

Too many Australians are blind to the reality that in most of their living memories every non-Labor Federal Government has in fact been a “minority” government.

As Paul Bongiorno reminds us in the same edition of The Saturday Paper:

Of course, Australia has been frequently run by a minority government, in that the Coalition exists because neither the Liberals nor the Nationals have the numbers for a majority in their own right.

Also in The Saturday Paper of 23.04.2022 is a piece by Rick Morton which details how the hilariously-misnamed United Australia Party (UAP) is enormously outspending both the Liberals and Labor on paid political advertising, across every “platform”.

The UAP is largely funded by its puppeteer, Clive Palmer – a master of disunity.

The longest paragraph in Morton’s article is mostly a list of some of Clive Palmer’s broken promises, plus a still-current prosecution which Palmer is fighting.

Morton notes Palmer’s seemingly-undiminished confidence, and concludes the paragraph with my favourite sentence to date in press coverage of our current election campaign:

Perhaps his self-assuredness stems from the remarkable ability, powered by extreme wealth, to survive scandal the way a cockroach might survive a nuclear winter.

Online, The Saturday Paper lives here.