Who cares about leadership challenges and internal divisions within the Labor Party on the high office of Prime Minister, the re-organisation of the Cabinet?
Who gives a shit about processes and bureaucratic mechanisms?
Who gives a toss about the personalities of Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott?
Who does? The Media does.
In fact what the recent debacle in Canberra has really revealed to us
bystanders (the voting public) is that the Media and Politicians have one thing in common that is at the forefront of their priorities:
politics, not Politics.
Kevin Rudd was stabbed in the back by his own Cabinet team, his own Deputy, and his own political party, and voted out of the Prime Minstership of Australia. His former Deputy, Julia Gillard, then gave him the job of Foreign Minister. 18 months later he resigned from that job (a week ago) and challenged Julia Gillard for the top job of Prime Minister, and lost. However, he was this time supported by almost a third of this own party. Now the Opposition is pointing out to us all the clear division in the Labor Party and what this dissenting third means against Julia.
Now that I know all that, am I better off?
How has this development directly affected you as an Australian citizen?
Both the Media and our democratically elected Politicians have recently had nothing on their minds of more concern than who gets what job, who did what to whom, who's undermining whom, is he/she/it coming back to his old job.
WHO CARES!
Who cares except flacid-minded morons who watch daytime soap operas.
Not a single journalist has ever asked a politician why we have this kind of Government. Why do we have a Prime Minister, a Cabinet of Ministers and Political Parties when none of these are even mentioned in the Australian Constitution (a document that clearly sets out the purpose and composition of the Federal Parliament).
Not a single journalist is asking Politicians how they represent the needs of their electorate when this competes against the priorities of their political party.
No one is talking about how well the act of Government is working in this country. Is the Party system even democratic? Isn't 'representational democracy' an oxymoron? Saddam Hussein claimed to represent his own people. Yes we get to vote them out - but are we getting another one back in?
You could argue there are two dictators ruling Australia in turns: the Labor party and the Liberal-National Coalition.
Let's remember why we're all paying for this shit. Politicians only exist because of us. We vote them in, so that they can represent us, our needs, in Parliament: to consider what we want before they vote on legislation and agree on a policy. Our elected representatives don't actually do that. Instead they represent their own political Party, not us. If an MP's electorate wants a National Curriculum of Education but their Party doesn't, then they vote against it.
Parliament is instead all about representing the Party, then Business, then Lobbyists, and then powerful individuals, and finally, not us.
Does the Media question Politicians on these issues? Do they even discuss the issues amongst themselves? No.
The Media has an agenda, and like a political party, its bottom line is not the same as ours.
Instead of turning the news on and hearing yet another bland boilerplate statement, another string of dead slogans and empty cliches, from Government about how it administrates its boring internal processes, and then the broken record of the Opposition's response "this is just another sign of a failing Government" we should be hearing something completely different.
We should be hearing journalists asking politicians exactly how every single thing they do is only to govern us in order to make our lives better, easier, and safer or whatever the fuck we want them to do and only that. Many of us died for this country, supporting our government to keep our happiness and well-being secure. Politicians should keep this in mind. We don't care which automoton gets into what job. We care about the job being done properly. Just get on and do it.
We should be hearing politicians justify to us why they should stay in Parliament, how they are representing us and no one else.
We should be hearing the Opposition (or preferably any individual opposing voice) not just robotically negating every single thing the Government does, but detailing exactly how they would deal with the issue. Instead of only disagreeing with a policy, offering an alternative. Or explaining why they disagree.
You could argue against me that all this "politics" is exceptionally important, even critical, to good government. My counter-point is that it is not even being discussed.
No one is talking about the link between politics and Politics. Not a single freakin' person is talking about the importance to government of "politics". Just like none of the articles in Woman's Day talk about the importance of these articles to Woman's Day readers. It is taken for granted that the articles are strategically good, because people keep buying the damn magazine. But our government doesn't have any such, immediately responsive feedback system. We vote every three years and that's it.
So why the hell do the Media and Politicians report to us with nothing but bland, robotic, vendor machine, soap opera drama, appealing to our ignorance and our childish naivety?
Why?
Because they both think we're all a pack of idiot morons.
Are we?
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