Maybe we marched against the wrong party
Image courtesy of smh.com.au
‘A government is only as good as its opposition’.
That old adage has been been thrown around for as long as I can
remember and has been cited more times than I would care to count.
And it holds true in Australia’s political theatre.
We clearly don’t have a good government at the helm. This must then imply that we don’t have a good opposition.
Certainly, we don’t.
The Shorten Opposition is so demonstrably soft that I’m half inclined
to suggest that the anger and frustration from the March in March
should have been aimed straight at them. They are not performing as an
opposition should. Simple. The government could (possibly) be a better
government if the opposition would be a better opposition. But at the
moment they don’t seem capable.
Show me just one Labor voter who is satisfied with their performance.
They have sat back and lazily watched the Abbott Government stagger
from one debacle to another. Lies go unchallenged, policy backflips are
yawned at, attacks on workers and welfare recipients are waved off as an
apparition and they have adopted a ‘ho-hum’ attitude towards Tony
Abbott’s gross incompetency.
Where have they been hiding? Why aren’t they saying anything that
might hold the government to account? Why is it up to the social media
to do all the talking for them? Where were they when people marched in
the streets for them?
The political landscape has changed irreversibly since Labor last
occupied the opposition seats. It has become meaner, nastier and more
viral thanks largely to the previous opposition leader. Labor do not
have to go as far as emulating the behaviour of that man – and I hope
they don’t – but they certainly need to abandon their wet lettuce
approach.
Many have suggested that all Labor need to do is sit pretty and wait
for Abbott to fall on his sword (and that fate is certainly not beyond
the realms of possibility). The latest opinion polls
do not look good for him and Labor no doubt are buoyed by the result,
but like every other response to the negative aspects of Tony Abbott;
they lack the initiative to capitalise on it.
In fact, in the six months since they ‘won’ opposition they have
ignored the chance to take the initiative on any life-line Abbott has
gifted them.
They are, collectively, timid in the House and they lack the mongrel outside of it.
As a self confessed Labor voter it’s difficult to sustain my
patience. As each Abbott disaster has been left unmolested I reassured
myself that the next one wouldn’t be. I took some comfort in the
assumption that they might just one day stand up to the wrecking
machine. I keep waiting for them to strike, as do most Labor supporters,
but I can no longer be tolerant with the constant ineptitude. The
tipping point was the dismal interview Julie Bishop gave to the BBC
and more to the point; the ‘no comment’ response from the opposition to
what was an absolute and monumental stuff-up from the Foreign Minister.
That interview was almost two weeks ago. They’ve had two weeks to
respond to what was a massive furphy, or should I say a ‘massive lie’.
In the interview she claimed that:
. . . asylum seekers ”are processed in third countries,
and then we look for resettlement in other countries, including in
Australia . . .
That alone should have been enough for the opposition to emerge from
their hiding place and shout from the rooftops that her own Tony Abbott
and Scott Morrison have repeatedly declared the exact opposite. How many
times have the government said something along the lines of ‘they will
not be settled in Australia’?
On the world stage our Foreign Minister delivers an outright lie and
not once (to my knowledge) has the opposition attempted to not only
expose that lie, but hold her and her government to account over it.
They’ve had two weeks. They blew it.
In six months they’ve blown everything.
Bill, are you listening?
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