Perhaps you are a bit like me in thinking Australia is starved of leadership.
That’s different to having people in positions of authority. We’ve got plenty of them but few spring to mind as expressing true leadership.
Most are followers at best, slaves to public opinion and rarely willing to take any personal risk on behalf of others.
And that’s what I have always considered leaders do. They put others before themselves and act in accordance with principles. Those principles have been defined and distilled over the years and according to one exponent can be broken down to eleven main principles.
As I mention them, think of a major political leader you know and ask yourself how do they measure up to this list.
Do they exhibit courage? Are the motivated and decisive? Do they demonstrate responsibility and integrity? Do they display initiative and judgment? How is their ability to communicate and what is their level of knowledge?
Most importantly are they selfless?
I left that point till last because, while our leaders all display some of the other virtues, selflessness does seem to be the quality most lacking.
Do you really believe that political decisions are measured primarily by the public good or the political.
Every state premier has sought to exploit the corona hysteria for their own benefit.
The have all confused reaction and overreaction with leadership, even while outsourcing decision making to unelected bureaucrats. Their goal has been re-election and it has been spectacularly successful thus far.
Maybe achieving your goal is a form of leadership but in my mind they certainly haven’t displayed selflessness.
In fact they have all exploited the situation to abdicate responsibility, deflect from their political failings while making the rest of us pay the price.
If you ask the hospitality or tourism business owner if they think there premiers have been good leaders, you’d hear a resounding NO hurled back at you. Ask those scared witless by irrational corona coverage and projections of Spanish flu like deaths, you might get a different answer.
It's not much different at the federal level. They have thrown money they don’t have to ameliorate a problem they created, ditching every tenet of their political philosophy along the way.
They were cheered on by the opposition who were fully aware that in the long term this would provide them with a golden political opportunity.
Again, not selflessness but selfishness on display.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
