Of Political Leopards and Spots

Lewis and Woods

"Favouring the rich" is what conservative governments do. I know these guys are telephone pollsters but seriously, what else could anyone possibly have expected, knowing the colour of these guys' political stripes.

At the time of the last election I naively thought that the electorate was too intelligent to fall for the rhetoric of the LNP. I mean, OK the infighting and backstabbing of the ALP was pretty bad, to put it mildly, but the Gillard government had, what I thought was a good track record of consensus-driven progressive legislation even though a lot of it possibly was not progressive enough for my liking. Sure, the shock jocks were ranting against her, but really, that is what shock jocks do. Little did I know.

Superficially, these rantings were the misogynistic ravings of an alcohol affected boys club. Surely the electorate wasn't like that. No but it wouldn't tolerate disunity.

I suppose one could say that it has been interesting to watch all of this unfold. I might further characterise it as disheartening, even depressing, but the basic fact remains that the LNP never altered its stance one whit on any issue. Political leopards never change their spots.

Most of the commentariot has said that the change back to Rudd saved the ALP from annihilation but really the infliction of this non-government on us was a punishment for disunity and I think it possible, if not likely, that Julia Gillard may have beaten Friar Tuck in a fair fight.

We will never know, but this all speaks to the self-imposition of topical myopathy by voters, and the media is largely to blame. Yes it is the media which insists on a 24-hour news cycle, the reduction of every issue to a sequence of sound bytes on the television and the obfuscation of reality with white noise. No one forces them to. To write it off as simply an unavoidable byproduct of advances in IT is incorrect.

But that can wait for another post.