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Ruthlessness, brutality and cowardice

By Jennifer Wilson - posted Tuesday, 29 June 2010


If the events of the last few days demonstrate anything, it’s that the practice of democracy in this country has lost its way, along with the government that’s suppose to set the course and steer the mighty ship.

On the positive side, we’re on the way to becoming a republic, in thought if not in deed.

Like it or not, we have become a country that increasingly behaves as if our political system is a presidential system. More and more we’re voting as if for a president, even as we pile into the booths and cast our votes for our local member. In the major parties the leader is a synecdoche - Rudd was Labor. Howard was the Coalition. Both leaders attempted to ignore or stifle the voices of their elected colleagues in the pursuit of power and their own personal vision.

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Howard was well known for his iron grip on his party. There was little dissent from within the ranks when there should have been. Similar complaints are made about Rudd. He was allegedly an unapproachable micro manager, and people were allegedly frightened of his temper.

The question that has been asked many times over the last few days is, did anyone ever sit down with Rudd and give him some straight talk about his style?

No Labor politician has answered this question, though several political commentators have alleged that Rudd’s colleagues were so intimidated by him that nobody dared approach him, and anyway, he never opened his door. This commentary is not dissimilar to opinions expressed about Howard, though the details may vary.

Does this mean that none of the men and women we’ve elected inthe last 15 years have had the bottle, singularly or collectively, to front their respective leaders when those leaders urgently needed to be spoken to?

If this is the case, it speaks of a system so dysfunctional that it simply doesn’t work anymore. A system where there can be no dissent because its members are too frightened to take a stand. A system in which individuals are so intimidated by their boss that they can’t do the jobs we pay them to do: that is, run the government in a democratic fashion. A system in which the leader’s personal vision overrides the collective vision, and nobody dares to stand up and say so.

If this is the case, we’ve already kissed democracy goodbye. We’re living in the dictatorship you’ve got when you think you’ve got a democracy. This most recent coup is further evidence.

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It takes more than a dictator to create a dictatorship. It takes other people to be silent and take no action. The elected representatives in our form of dictatorship aren’t afraid for their lives, and the lives of their families and friends. They aren’t afraid of imprisonment and torture if they oppose the leader. They don’t have these justifications to offer for their collusion in creating the circumstances in which the major parties have the landed the country.

Elected government members had a responsibility to do everything within their power to address the difficulties presented by Rudd’s leadership. That was their responsibility to the punters who put them, and him as Prime Minster, in government.

Instead, they abdicated their responsibility and allowed, among others, the unelected to orchestrate the events that led to this most undemocratic action.

It is an extremely serious matter to throw out a prime minister. Only as a very last resort should a prime minister be unseated in this fashion. Every possible avenue should have been explored first. In electing the Labor party to government Australians endorsed Kevin Rudd as leader. The party had a responsibility to respect that democratic decision. It should not have been overthrown except in the most extreme of circumstances.

In resorting to the most extreme action first, the party has done itself no favours. Any subsequent leader can be assured that she or he will face the same fate if they don’t keep the factions on side. There’ll be no warning. Nobody will front up and say, Prime Minister, we have to talk. They’ll just take the leader out, literally overnight, and be damned with the voters’ choices.

The precedent has been set, and what a frightening and dangerous precedent it is.

And where were Julia Gillard’s renowned negotiating skills when they were needed? If she wasn’t able to use them to any effect on Kevin, why should we believe they’d work on the mining magnates?

We’re told that Gillard and Wayne Swan had the bottle to fight the tyrannical Kevin and win in the matter of dropping the ETS. If this is true, it must have been quite a battle. It was pretty close to his heart, his great moral challenge, and he copped some nasty flak over the back down. Yet neither of them could talk to him about his style?

Or did they just decide to give him enough rope to hang himself? Because I’m sure that brilliant victory speech Ms Gillard gave wasn’t written an hour before she became Prime Minister.

Like obituaries, they keep them in the bottom drawer for when the moment arrives.

I know several people including myself who’ve been approached by pollsters and have refused to participate because we don’t like the concept of poll-driven political decisions. We object to our considered democratic vote being overthrown by mercurial poll results. We don’t want to see poll-driven political assassinations. How many other Australians feel this way, and refuse to engage in polling?

At least no politician can ever again publicly deny the influence of polls on decisions.

Each and every one of the federal Labor politicians is accountable for the dreadful events of the last few days.

Each and every one of them should explain to the punters why, by their passivity and contemptible lack of courage, they have colluded in turning the governance of this country into something that increasingly resembles a form of dictatorship, rather than the democracy that is held up as a shining example to the world.

Why do we bother having elections, if those we elect are incapable of conducting a robust and vigorous democracy within their own parties?

And for anybody who believes Julia Gillard will be any better just because she’s a woman, you need to think that through. I think it’s high time we had a female Prime Minister. But I didn’t want the first female Prime Minister to take office under heinous circumstances such as these. It kind of takes the glow off it.

Ms Gillard has to be returned in her own electorate, and the Labor party has to be returned to government with her as its leader before we can claim we’ve elected Australia’s first female prime minister. Until then, it’s a case of political expediency, and under circumstances nobody can be proud of.

It’s also a case of women to the rescue again. When all else fails, wheel in the woman. Think Kirner, Bligh, Keneally. Women get a tilt at the top job when the blokes have thoroughly stuffed it up and everyone’s desperate. Women pick up the chalice the blokes have poisoned, and they’re apparently proud and grateful to get it.

The ruthlessness, the brutality, and the cowardice we’ve seen over the last few days leave a very bad taste and a very bad smell. These can’t help but taint the federal Labor party and Ms Gillard’s ascension for a long time to come.

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About the Author

Dr Jennifer Wilson worked with adult survivors of child abuse for 20 years. On leaving clinical practice she returned to academia, where she taught critical theory and creative writing, and pursued her interest in human rights, popular cultural representations of death and dying, and forgiveness. Dr Wilson has presented papers on human rights and other issues at Oxford, Barcelona, and East London Universities, as well as at several international human rights conferences. Her academic work has been published in national and international journals. Her fiction has also appeared in several anthologies. She is currently working on a secular exploration of forgiveness, and a collection of essays. She blogs at http://www.noplaceforsheep.wordpress.com.

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