More Stupidity

Fear & Loathing In Idiotsville

For some time now, every time I blog about the Abbott Government, I inevitably end up tagging the same post with the word 'stupidity'. If you click on the tag, you'll find a whole bunch of entries to do with Tony Abbott and his government. Lately, the tag has become automatic in a way that not even in the darkest days of the Howard Government would I have labelled every government move as a piece of stupidity. Yet this government? Never fails to find a new act of stupidity that cannot go unremarked.

And if you thought I was the only one beating this drum, no, it has become evident that many in the  media are now pointing out just how self-defeating and lacing in basic intelligence this government can be. If Peter Hartcher is asking what is the point of this government, then you can be well assured that the entire media gallery is running with the Abbott-is-an-idiot meme.

The government is so lost, its standing so poor, its members so sick of Abbott's captain's picks, that the party is sullenly contemplating, once again, whether it needs to replace the captain. 

"In February he asked for time," as he pleaded for his job in the party room, says one Liberal MP. "He asked many of us for six months." It's been six months, a deadline that expired this week. 

"The reality is that nothing's changed and nothing's improved. He asked some people to give him to the end of the year. Well, we aren't quite there yet.

"This government is doing some good things. But there isn't anyone who thinks this is a good government." The Abbott government is approaching an existential moment. The existential question: What is the point of the Abbott government?

There is no point, is the answer to the rhetorical question. The problem now is how the Liberal Party goes about replacing Tony Abbott with the aim of winning the election next year; but given the two budgets and the 22month long slog of entrenched low opinion polls, there may be no panacea.

The best thing that could be said of the Abbott Government is that it will end. At some point in history. Beyond that, is anybody's guess as to how and when the historic inevitability happens. Until then we will bask in each and every stupid thing this government does as it fights a pointless rearguard action for the lunar right. 

In case you missed it, the most recent bit of Stupidity-ridden Tony Abbott-ism was his denunciation of the court decision to halt the Adani mine, calling it sabotage. This earned him a quick lesson in the notion Separation of Power from the NSW Bar:

"These comments demonstrate a lack of understanding of the independent role of the courts in our democracy," she said. 

"The courts exist to make decisions according to the law, not to further the interests of particular individuals or organisations, including government. 

"They are an independent arbiter of disputes, and politicians need to understand and respect their non-partisan role." 

Ms Needham said courts were not the servant of the government, and "any such implication is inimical to the basic principle of the separation of powers", which is fundamental to the Westminster system. 

She said it was critical that courts made decisions on the basis of the legislation they were charged to interpret, and the facts of each case before them. 

"Legislation imposes strict conditions on developments such as coal mines, and the courts' task in these circumstances is to scrutinise the executive's actions to ensure that any approvals fall within legislative parameters," she said.

That looks like a resounding verbal thrashing. It's good that the NSW Bar isn't taking the Stupid-is-as-stupid-does sort of approach to such statements.

Still, that's just how things go in the land of the Abbottoir where Captain's Picks turn out arse. 

The Dark Shadow Of Student Politics Of A Generation Ago

Way back in the 1960s and 1970s, way before I hit even tertiary education, Student Politics was big. It was a world wide phenomenon wheretoBay Boomers - rightly - went activist and supported the case of not fighting in Vietnam and reforming various institutions. It gave birth to Feminism and Feminist Theory, as well as usher in the Post-Modernity whereby traditional frameworks for judgment were broken down by a new kind of criticism emanating out of France where the street fights around barricades were the fiercest. 

By the time I got to University, this flame had died down, but not for reasons commonly used to explain it. The radical-ness of student politics in Australia reached an apotheosis whereby it blew it self up on the national stage in 1983. It was acrimonious, pungent, arcane, riddled with misinformation about itself, and then silence followed. The last President of the Australian Union of Students was none other than Julia Gillard. The most active students in demolishing the Union, were Peter Costello and Tony Abbott. These names don't come from nowhere. They came from this very cauldron of ill-will, hate and rancour. 

By 1985 when I arrived on campus, there was just a smouldering ember of it left on campus at the University of Sydney.  The guy who ran for SRC president was Joe Hockey. Again, these names don't come from out of nowhere. They started early at University and made careers out of this kind of thing. The flipside is that if you want proof that these people are nothing but apparatchiks and careerists, well, you only need to look at their history. Make no mistake, the utter absence of substance in Tony Abbott's Prime Ministership is not very surprising given who and what he has been over the years. The incompetence, the gratuitous point-scoring, the rancorous partisanship-over-policy, didn't just evolve out of nowhere and nothing. These people carried it with them from their student politics days and now they are inflicting it on the nation (as they hurriedly draw down their benefits and entitlements). 

All of which is to say, there are days I genuinely regret not involving myself in politics - if but for the adage credited to Socrates where in it is said that those who do not involve themselves with politics are doomed to be ruled by men lesser than themselves. Every time I look at this bunch, I am forced to think of Socrates' line.