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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Another case of hubris? the Australian election
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Tukai
Shipmate
# 12960
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Posted
Numerous current threads on the ship testify to the hubris that brought down the Prime Minister of England, David Cameron. With no better reason than to pacify his backbench Cameron called for a "referendum" on Britain's membership of the EU, when he was under no other obligation to do so. He thought at first that this idea would be blocked by his then Coalition partners, but they vanished after an election. Then he thought that he could coast successfully through the referendum. Instead he found out the hard way that he had ignored the feelings of a large part to the populace , who felt abandoned by the political class. So finds himself forced to resign from office , with his country divided and in chaos, both of which are arguably his own silly fault.
Meanwhile in Australia, Mr Turnbull staged a party-room coup against the then Prime Minister and sometime Oxford graduate Tony Abbott. The party turned to Turnbull because all polls correctly indicated that Abbott's right-wing policies were certain to lose his party the coming election. Soon after assuming the Prime Ministership in November last year, Turnbull's popularity rating was >70% , as voters assumed that he would bring the Lieberal Party (as the conservative Party is called in Australia) in behind the views he had publicly espoused in the past, such as action on climate change and on same-sex marriage, not to mention a government that supported health and education services for all and not just tax cuts to the rich.
But rather than calling an early election when he was way ahead, Turnbull bowed to pressure from the rump of Abbott supporters in the party and agreed to adopt all the old unpopular and unfair policies as his own. And then in an act of hubris, he hatched a "cunning plan" , worthy of Baldrick himself, to get rid of the "unruly" independent Senators who had blocked the worst parts of that agenda, by changing the voting rules for the Senate to favour the major parties even more than they did already, and then calling for a simultaneous election of all members of both houses of parliament.
But he forgot that under the Australian constitution, such a "double dissolution" makes it much easier for an independent senator to get elected (because he or she needs only half as many votes as when only half the senate is elected , as is normally the case). Although it will be several weeks yet before the Senate vote is finalised under our complicated preferential voting system, it is already clear that there will be even more cross-benchers than there were before the election, and certainly far from a majority for his party. And even in the House of Representatives, where the voting system is simpler (though still preferential), although the result is not quite finalised yet (a week after the election), it is clear that the government's majority is slashed to the point where it may even be zero.
Some questions that occur to me form this a re:
* what drives political "leaders" to assume that only they know what's best and turn a tin ear to the people?
* What other cases are there of hubris leading to self-destruction? (Tony Blair in the UK? the Republican establishment in the USA? ).
* Where to next in Australia?
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A government that panders to the worst instincts of its people degrades the whole country for years to come.
Posts: 594 | From: Oz | Registered: Sep 2007
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
The examples are legion: Mrs Thatcher is the obvious one from the UK, but I dare say we can multiply examples. I think the reasons are as follows.
1/ As Prime Minister/ President they are pretty much top of the league in their profession. By definition, everyone else is not, therefore the temptation is to think: if you're so bloody clever why am I on this side of the desk and you on the other. This is multiplied if you have won a number of elections.
2/ You get confidential briefings on absolutely everything to do with the national interest by people who are incredibly senior and well informed. Some of these are Top Secret. This generates a, not wholly unreasonable, conviction that you are better informed than your critics.
3/ People who become Prime Minister (I think this is the key point) are the sort of people who have oodles of confidence in their own ability. Prince Caspian might be the right person to be King of Narnia because he told Aslan that he wasn't sure that he was up to the job. Very few politicians think like that. Asked why he ought to be Prime Minister, David Cameron famously replied, because I'd be good at it. The first thing a newly elected Prime Minister does in the UK is to write a letter to Trident Submarine commanders setting out what they should do in the event that the UK undergoes a nuclear holocaust. (Cameron's probably says "hold a Referendum among the Trident crews on the advisability of nuking Russia"). Would you want that level of responsibility? How many of your friends and neighbours would you trust with that level of responsibility? The people who become Prime Minister are the sort of people who turn down better paid jobs to have a bucket of shit poured over their head on a regular basis, on the off chance of becoming Prime Minister. On one level this is a bit like a superpower - we do need politicians, after all. But it is also simultaneously a character flaw. Why exactly do you think, you can solve intractable problems that have defeated cleverer and better people than yourself? Most of us ought not to be Prime Minister because we are not clever enough, some of us ought not to be Prime Minister because we are clever enough to see the enormity of the task and the knowledge of the responsibility would crush us, some of us are able to cope with the enormity of the task but none of us is able to make the right call every single time and our fatal flaw is over confidence. There is a reason that Enoch Powell once observed that all political careers end in failure...
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
Turnbull has a very self-confident manner, probably necessary for any politician, and one which served him well in his banking career. In his case, I'd think that probably led him to believe that he was much more popular than he really was. He did shine at the start, at least in the eyes of the media reporters, because he was such a change to that other over-confident man, Tony Abbott. Abbott did not have it in him to be a good PM. His skill - and a very great skill it was - lay in demolishing Gillard rather than in governing. Turnbull ought to have know the effect of a double dissolution in halving the quota needed to elect a senator. In an ordinary half-Senate election, and using the actual votes, Hanson would probably not have made it to a quota for herself, and there's talk that she might drag a colleague in with her. Derryn Hinch would not have made a quota in Victoria. Hard to say what would have happened in other states, but as you say there would have been a good weeding out of the minor parties and independents.
Turnbull did not have much of a practice at the Bar here, and it was very brief. I barely knew him.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
I didn't realise Malcolm Turnbull had been a banker. No surprise that John Key (NZ P.M) was making happy noises - he was too, in which role his nickname was "the smiling assassin".
Pauline Hanson??? I am wrong in thinking of her as the Australian Sarah Palin?
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
After Neville Wran retired as Premier of NSW, he, Nick Whitla and Malcolm set up a merchant bank. Wran and Whitlam retired* a few years later having made a very tidy sum. Turnbull continued on, then sold out to Goldman Sachs, remaining in a very senior level. It's fair to say that Turnbull's banking and venture capital career was much more financially successful for him than his short period at the Bar.
* a euphemism.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Tukai
Shipmate
# 12960
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Posted
Yes. Pauline Hanson is roughly equivalent to Sarah Palin of the USA, especially in empty-headedness. She also has the anti-immigrant feeling of Nigel Farage of [what was] the UK (she was also anti-Aboriginal in her first incarnation). LIke Donald Trump she plays to the "left-behind white working class" - though unlike him she really is part of that class (she used to run a fish and chips shop) and puts herself forward more modestly than Trump as "someone like you but who says out loud what you feel".
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A government that panders to the worst instincts of its people degrades the whole country for years to come.
Posts: 594 | From: Oz | Registered: Sep 2007
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