By Derek Green
We’ve been patronised by politicians plenty in our lifetimes. Even though I was only a kid when Malcom Fraser told us ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’, my first thought was ‘Believe me I know that already mate’.
When Tony Abbott made ‘captain’s calls’, I wondered why the people chose him to represent them if he was just going to do whatever he wanted anyway. Scott Morrison’s ‘lifters and leaners’ speech made me wonder for a moment if maybe he thought we were all as dumb as him.
And John Howard’s suggestion that ‘working families have never had it so good’ helped me finally understand where politicians priorities were – lining the pockets of big business and donors at the expense of the rest of us, the true birth of the ‘cost of living crisis’ AKA ‘cost of corporate profit’. Looking back, it’s still a pretty galling comment given how far mega-profits have out-gained wage growth over the last 20 years.
And now Albo, the great hope of centre left politics (planted firmly at the newly recalibrated geo-political centre – the centre right) is doing the same. He wants us to ‘Turn the temperature down’, because it’s:
- Not the time to talk about climate change.
- Not the time to talk about taxing gas exports.
- Not the time to talk about guns.
- Not the time to talk about America or AUKUS.
- Not the time to talk about anti-semitism or islamophobia.
- Not the time to talk about becoming a republic.
- Not the time to talk about gambling harm.
Spare me mate. If the head of the country can’t tackle the tough topics that people want tackled, then who will? We didn’t vote in a super majority government so that the can of responsibility for doing stuff could be just kicked down the road again – all that does is open power vacuums for dickheads to occupy, and risks stupid, half-arsed, and damaging decisions being made by others in the future.
No Albo, we don’t need a ‘look away’ government in 2026, what with the climate collapsing, public hospital and aged care in crisis, people with disability facing an uncertain future, housing increasingly out of reach, and the cost of living biting: all while we meander along, further exposed to the security and economic risks of following an erratic USA into an increasingly unstable world.
After all those years of agitating from the wings, Albo has caught himself out trying to be all things to all people, obsessed with pleasing the entire electorate. In reality this plays into the hands of the right, industry and corporations: ensuring a paralysed government, afraid to poke even the smallest bear, a status quo that merely continues to deliver profits, all while hoping the rest of us won’t notice. It’s almost like his legacy is more important than his deeds in office – someone needs to remind him that he’s still there as the resident of Kirribilli House, and that it’s time to get things done. Sure you might sell a few less copies of your biography, but the country needs decisive action – there’s no need to ‘find a balance’ between right and wrong, just do ‘right’, surely?
Sorry to raise a footy analogy, but the famous words of Hawthorn coach John Kennedy Snr during the 1975 Grand Final still ring true:
“At least do something! Do. Don’t think, don’t hope, do! At least you can come off and say, ‘I did this, or I played on.’ At least I did something.”
Kennedy’s Hawks were too far behind that day for his words to inspire a miracle, but Labor aren’t too far behind to act on something; anything. If they don’t, it’s Australia that’s going to lose.
Albo – it’s time to ‘do’.
