Years ago, I remember, there was this bloke who used to come on Insiders; Mungo McCallum, I think his name was. Obviously I can't remember exactly what he said when he left, but I do remember it being something along the lines of this:
"The biggest change to Australian politics that I've seen in my lifetime, has come from television. In the days when people got their news from the paper, they read about the issues, and the policies that both sides were proposing, and based their decision primarily on that. But once television came along, people started paying more attention to the gut feelings they got from looking at and listening to politicians. Charisma, likeability—optics—became the #1 thing pollies had to worry about. After all, nobody wants to vote for a dickhead."
When Julia Gillard was deputy PM, she was quick-witted, charming, and engaging to listen to. She seemed like fine leadership material. Yet, as soon as she got handed the top job, she started talking like a grade one teacher and doing weird robotic karate chopping motions with her hands.
Bill Shorten used to sound like a decent sort of everyman, who was invested in the topics he spoke on. Now when he speaks, he sounds like he's at a funeral, trying to act sympathetic towards the grieving widow of one of his wife's workmates, whom he barely knows.
Look, we all know that this sort of superficial shit shouldn't matter. We also all know that it does matter. A lot. So my question is, what the fuck is going on with the Labor party? And how much is it going to hurt them, two weeks from now?
5 comments :
Personally I think the ALP is going on just fine right now. But I'm in VIC.
The problem is when you are PM you can't afford to put a foot wrong because it will go online as soon as it happens!
Do you reckon we're starting to get passed that at all, though? I mean, you look at Donald Trump's "grab them by the pussy" thing in Yankland; and then you look here, at the re-emergence of Pauline Hanson as a political force; and I have to wonder if embarrassing gaffs are as much of a problem as they used to be. Maybe we're reaching a point where people would rather their politicians act like normal human beings, along with all the rough edges that entails.
Just going off the people I've talked to, I wouldn't be surprised to see a big chunk of QLD votes go towards One Nation, Shooters & Fishers, etc, yet again.
Yeah they are all cray cray up there.
The stupid thing is: what they want is change, but they are voting for people who VERY BADLY want things to stay the same. Not for nothing is Clive spending $60m on this election. He wants to make sure his horrible polluting coal mines planned for the Gallilee basin get off the ground. Pauline - well she wants to wind back the clock 40 years.
Never mind that it won't matter if you have a job of not if the environment has collapsed so bad that there's no food or water to be had anyway. And that if nothing is done about climate change we'll be swamped with so many climate refugees we won't be able to feed or house them.
But Queenslanders just don't look beyond their own backyard to see the bigger picture. Oh well, we're all fucked anyway, it won't matter that much if it's in 15 years or we manage to push it back to 20.
If you want a little bit of hope, Suze, go back and have a look at some of the climate-change projections that were floating around twenty years ago. If we're lucky, you and I might be long dead before environmental degradation seriously bites us in the arse.
IF we are lucky.
And I fervently hope that we are. Because I and many of my friends are switching off the news in despair.
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