Something odd is happening in Australian politics right now, and it is hard to tell whether it is panic, performance, or a complete loss of perspective.
Maybe it’s just a significant lack of talent and competence. I don’t know, all I know is I’m spending a lot of time swearing at politicians saying and doing utterly dumb things.
We are in the middle of a genuine crisis. A war that is reshaping global energy markets. Fuel shortages that are biting hardest in regional Australia. Real consequences for real people — farmers, truckies, people trying to get to work or otherwise go about their business, everyone. If we don’t manage it, what comes next is recession or even depression, fuel shortages and complete system failure. Real doom and gloom stuff.
This is the moment when political leadership is supposed to sharpen, not unravel.
And yet, across both state and federal levels, what we are seeing instead is… strange.
Take the national address from Anthony Albanese last night. It was treated as a major moment. The kind of interruption that signals gravity — urgency — action. Newsrooms snapped into gear. The ABC, Sky, everyone rolled into full coverage. The expectation, reasonably, was that something significant was about to be announced.
And then… nothing.
No meaningful policy shift. No clear new measures. Just a lot of ‘keep calm and carry on’ type words sitting very oddly in the theatre of urgency. Even experienced political journliasts like Patricia Karvelas were left trying to explain an announcement that didn’t actually announce anything, before abandoning the planned evening of analysis to return to normal programming.
But that absurd bit of political theatre was not the oddest thing in federal politics this week. That gold medal belongs to the Coalition.
The federal opposition launched a full-scale campaign opposing an increase to the size of parliament — a proposal that does not exist.
Not “isn’t finalised.” Not “is being considered behind closed doors.” Does not exist.
So where did this come from?
The entire episode appears to have been triggered by a comment from Don Farrell at the National Press Club. Don who? Yeah, exactly.
Mr Farrell, the Special Minister of State which is the minister that looks after odd things that don’t fit into other buckets, like elections, commented that Australia tends to review the composition of parliament roughly every 40 years, and that the population is now double what it was when the number of house members was set at 150-ish in the Hawke era.
That’s it.
And even that comment didn’t come out of nowhere. It was itself a reference to submissions made to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters – that is, electoral nerds like me and ‘concerned citizens’, making comments to a parliamentary committee as part of its standard post-election inquiry process, to the effect that we should have smaller electorates and thus more politicians.
There is not even a standalone inquiry into the size of parliament. Just JSCEM doing their thing.
Similar submissions can be found after every election, but the last redistribution was utterly stupid, so this time around there are a few more than usual, and there are a collection of beard strokers talking about how many bums on seats we have in Canberra.
New Englanders don’t need to be told how stupid the redistribution was, we got Muswellbrook in our electorate.
There’s also a bit more attention because Tasmania is having a redistribution. And because Tasmania can’t have less than 5 seats – because the constitution says they can’t have less than they had at the time of federation – their electorates are being redistributed to have on average 82,635 voters, instead of the mainland average of around 130,000. So, as you’d expect, there’s a bit of chatter around how Tasmanians should not have double the voting power of a mainlander, one vote one value and all that, and perhaps we should set all the electorates closer to 80,000.
So, from this very normal process that happens all the time, Don Farrell made a comment at National Press Club that we were about due for a reassessment of the number of politicians.
And yet, from that thin thread, we got a full-blown populist political campaign against a proposal that does not exist.
Press conferences. Question time attacks. Coordinated messaging warning of an expansion of politicians. Warnings about how many millions it will cost. Much ado about nothing.
It is difficult to overstate how strange that is. Why would the Coalition literally make up an issue to oppose, when there is so many real issues to choose from?
Besides which, it should be a policy proposal – coming from the Nationals. Not being opposed by them.
Regional electorates are already stretched to breaking point. Seats like New England and Parkes are vast, diverse, and increasingly difficult to represent effectively. Of course we want smaller electorates!!
Liberals should want smaller electorates too. In larger city electorates, people are more likely to vote party than personality because they don’t know the candidate. Liberals could win back some of their city seats, and y’know, have a vague chance of ever winning government again, if their electorates were small enough to effectively campaign in.
But I digress. I am terribly sorry for rudely interrupting your populist campaign with such evidence based points, apologies to the “strategists” of the Liberal and National parties, I should have known that having a PhD in voter behaviour was folly and realised I needed to be twenty something and have a penis to comprehend the wonder that is our body politic.
Back to the odd behaviour.
In New South Wales, the opposition response to the fuel crisis has been somewhat confounding, with nonsense ‘calls’ for ‘action’ that have a less than vague feel of that terrible affliction, ‘need to be seen to be doing something’. Proposals dressed up as action that collapse under even the most basic scrutiny.
While last week I had issue with the stupid partisan stunts of Labor as we run up to the next state election, this week is the highly unimpressive National Party leader Gurmesh Singh and his erstwhile chief of staff Rory Cunningham that made me groan and beg for the NSW Election to be over yesterday.
Asked to provide comment from the party that is supposed to represent the regions, in response to this story that NSW Health is still intent on transferring us elsewhere for medical care and making us pay for the trip home, and is not changing anything in the face of the fuel crisis, this is what I got back:
Hi Raphaella,
Please attribute to a spokesperson for NSW Nationals Leader Gurmesh Singh:
The NSW Nationals and Liberals have called for genuine measures that would address the fuel and diesel shortage currently facing NSW. The Minns Labor Government have refused to engage or act on any of the Opposition’s suggestions.
Measures suggested by the NSW Nationals and Liberals include a regional fuel guarantee and implementing a fuel transparency plan.
Last week, NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane and NSW Nationals Leader Gurmesh Singh wrote to Anthony Albanese demanding the fuel excise be cut immediately to deliver critical relief to families and businesses. Chris Minns refused to do so.
ENDS
Sick people are being abandoned at the front door of hospitals a long way from their country homes, and all the NSW National Party has to say is Minns wouldn’t say things we wanted him to say, pout sook boo hoo.
Great.
Don’t get me started on how their “genuine measures” include the Premier writing a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to do something he had already done, and a “fuel transparency plan” that is little more than the long standing Fuel Check system that already exists.
This is not policymaking. It is not leadership. It is, at best, a performance. A bad performance – zero stars, do not recommend. I would rather wipe the National Party from existence than give power to anyone this fixated on putting partisan hackery over people.
And it is happening at a time when partisan hackery and performances is the last thing anyone needs.
I mean, when Barnaby Joyce is being held up as the paragon of action and complimented by the PM for constructive solutions, you know we are through the looking glass.
I get that the crisis situation is real and scary. But this is the job guys, this is what you signed up for. Leading is not about ribbon cutting and photo opps, it is about making smart decisions and solving problems – particularly under pressure.
This is the job. This is the moment. Do better.
End rant.
RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and a well known migraine advocate. She is also the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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