This piece was first published in yesterday’s Sun Herald.
Who do we blame for the superficial sludge that was Australian politics last week? Do we blame the party leaders for each insisting that the other was a dreadful excuse of a man for nicking a few words from other people? Or do we blame the media for putting the story in lights with arched eyebrows?
Iraq is ablaze. Israel is going for the kill against the Palestinians even after it got George Bush’s blessing to permanently seize sections of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A new book published in the US reports that Bush gave the Saudi Government an exclusive preview of his Iraq war plan and that the Saudis promised him they would get the oil price down by the US presidential election.
Bob Woodward’s Plan Of Attack says that John Howard begged Bush to keep him informed exactly when we’d go to war so he could pretend we made our own decision. Lance Collins is still trying to get the Government to address his concerns that our intelligence services are corrupt and potentially dangerous to our national security.
Where was the questioning on these big issues?
Take the claim that Mark Latham used the same wording as Bill Clinton once did to set out appropriate education benchmarks for our kids and ourselves. So bloody what? Latham announced some big aims – how about some questions on what would it take to get us there and how much would it cost?
I reckon the media and the pollies are locked in a demeaning game they get off on because it’s easy! Howard tries to make Latham look small and Latham returns. Both look small. The media gets a cheap yarn. Big deal.
Web diarist Christopher Selth wrote: “The cries of plagiarism coming from Canberra remind us how far away a new politics is. We find yet again our so-called leaders are engaged in point scoring of the pettiest nature.
“It debases their obligation to deal with the challenges facing our community. It makes a mockery of our political processes. Its immaturity is both outrageous and embarrassing. It truly represents a style of politics where the only objective is the defeat of your opponent, where the political class are lost in their own struggle and utterly disconnected from their responsibilities and the community they are supposed to represent.
“The new Mark Latham should not have risen to the bait. If he wants to represent a new politics and new hope he must stay on the issue. Not play tit-for-tat games. We must demand that these men behave like adults, not schoolboys. Enough is enough. We are paying them to do the job of running our country.”
I blame the media too. Why aren’t we demanding answers to questions the pollies want to run away from instead of the ones they feed the chooks with?
What do both parties think of the latest Israeli actions? What struck me at the joint press conference between Bush and Sharon when Bush gave Sharon everything he wanted was that Bush looked small and weak and Sharon looked like the boss. It seems the sky’s the limit for him now that the US has no other unambiguous friends after its misadventure in Iraq. Yet Israel’s actions seem designed to further inflame Arab enmity and up the ante in the Middle East. What do our leaders think about this?
A group of active citizens of all political stripes on Sydney’s North Shore are showing us a way through the meaningless game the politicians and the media play. North Shore Peace and Democracy will hold its second big community forum on the theme of Secrets and Lies Destroy Democracy? on Monday May 3 at Willoughby Town Hall. Like its first forum last October about why Australia invaded Iraq, this one will see politicians on all sides – Labor’s Kevin Rudd, Liberal Senator Marise Payne, Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway and Greens Senator Kerry Nettle – take the stage.
Before the forum the group works out six questions to ask each politician in turn. The pollies have prior notice of the questions, and, after they answer, the person who put up the question asks a follow-up. It’s polite, civilised and compelling; it gives politicians the space to speak beyond sound grabs, and citizens the chance to hear answers to the questions they want asked.
The highlight of the October forum was an impassioned plea from former Liberal Party president John Valder to his friend Tony Abbott to recognise that Howard may have committed a war crime in invading Iraq.
You’ll find details of the community forum at http://www.sydneypeace.com. The group’s motto is: “Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter.”