The following post is from Stephen Spartacus who writes at the excellent blog The World According to Spart. His sentiments accord with mine entirely.
Excuse me for so poorly paraphrasing Harold Macmillan. But fair dinkum. It feels like our political overlords are speaking in English but listening in Dutch.
I wrote this recently about the Liberal Party’s review of their election performance:
There are no ideas in the Liberal Party and no leaders which is why all they do is talk about themselves.
I am not a member of the Liberal Party but I am a stakeholder in their incompetence. We have seen time after time after time what happens when a horrible government has manifestly incompetent opposition. See the legislative and political garbage in any state when there is a pathetic opposition allegedly keeping the government to account:
Matthew Guy to Daniel Andrews in Victoria
Labor Clown Convention to Mike Baird, Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet in NSW
Liberal Clown Convention to Nathan Rees and Kristina Kenneally in NSW
Liberal National Clown Convention to Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland
… the Liberal Party is facing an “existential crisis” and has called on the party to introduce a fundraising levy for all federal MPs, forcing them to contribute to a new women’s network aimed at boosting the number of women in the party.
Is the Liberal Party facing an existential crisis? Probably. Is it because of a lack of women in the parliament. No. Is it for a lack of ideas, values and governing competence? More like it.
Senator Hume suggest further that:
it’s time the party realised that increasing the number of women in its ranks is the best way to win back government
Yeah. No.
Let me just speculate here that the claimed gender issues within the Liberal Party are not the disease but rather the symptom. A symptom of an organisation that is intellectually and spiritually vacuous run by a cabal of self serving factional hacks interested more in self service rather than national outcomes.
If you want more women in the party, give them a reason to join, participate and engage. To pay homage to factionalistas is not a particularly exciting pathway for talented and capable women.
As evidence of the disconnect between what the political class wants and what the electoral wants, Hume offers this …
If you try and nut it down into one word and answer, [to] what does a modern woman want, [it] is opportunity
For Hume, politics is a career, a job. Opportunity. For the people who elect politicians, politics is a tool to improve the state of the nation and not to provide well remunerated careers to women (or men for that matter). Are these things mutually exclusive? No. But they are not perfectly aligned.
And to demonstrate the misalignment, Hume offers this:
She described the recommendation – one of 49 in the review – as “fundamental” to the party’s future success, but believes the network needs the financial support of all federal MPs, who could be forced to each contribute $1000 of fundraising money to it.
Hume’s solution? A tax. Does that not say wall that is required of the modern Liberal Party.
No idea. No clue. Which is why Australia will have a Labor Government in Canberra for quite a while yet. And why we will all be literally poorer for it.
