Wickedness of Politcal Ambition

Last Friday, out of the blue, for no perceivable reason and disturbingly reminiscent of the beginnings of political disunity witnessed first in the Gillard/Rudd government and now in the Abbott/Turnbull government, headlines in the West Australian blared out the news that the present leader of the state opposition, Mark McGowan, would not be able to win government by defeating the Liberal Western Australian government of Colin Barnett, and would need to be replaced by former Foreign Minister Steven Smith. I said to myself: "really???"

I live in Mark McGowan's electorate and see him regularly in person. He speaks regularly at my branch meeting. So you may be able to understand my consternation at this pretense of news. Rather than take these headlines as a true representation of reality I disallowed any disruption in my perpetual state of inner peace and waited for the truth to come out. Last night this happened.

The Western Australian State Branch of the Australian Labor Party last night vehemently and resounding closed ranks behind Mark McGowan as leader and next Premier of our sandgroper state.
Loud standing ovations greeted Mark at every turn. No doubt at all was left in the room. There will be no challenge. Any opinion to the contrary or that Mark can not win is simply that, an opinion, with no basis in fact unless evidence is produced in support.

Sources for this headline remain mysterious. Steven Smith himself did not come out  and enlighten us until the following Monday. If you are not happy with the leadership of your political party and think its goals are doomed to failure unless someone else you know of within the party becomes leader, then the ethical, harmless, correct and righteous way of bringing about the change you desire is to take your concerns through normal channels and attempt to implement change quietly, not blast it out for all to see in the local media. What this episode has achieved is to project a little hint of disunity in the mind of the voting public. In politics, as has been noted, and displayed grandly at federal level, disunity is death.

We can call it the great political disease of the twenty-first century. Generated by the increasing compression of the news cycle caused by the acceleration in the IT revolution, politicians with ambition take to the media. It's like a need to be noteworthy, if not through fame, then through infamy. It infected Keven07, quickly spread to Gillard, Back to Rudd, and now has mutated to a more virulent strain in Abbot and Turnbull.

The policies WA Labor is taking to the election in 2017 are wide-ranging, right-headed, far-sighted and well thought out. Their implementation, to put it mildly, will make this state a better place for everyone. This is what everyone should want. I'm not sure absolutely everyone does actually desire this outcome, but I look forward to finding out.