They are high-profile, intelligent, ambitious, thoughtful and popular. And now Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett — parliament’s two superstar outsiders of their generation — are political dead meat.
Which leads us to ask: is there a place at the top of Australian politics left for anyone who isn’t prepared to be a conformist, poll-driven, cookie cut-out clone?
In his always-entertaining Financial Review column yesterday, Mark Latham, no one’s cookie cut-out, put it this way:
“The only people who survive in modern politics are the bland party bureaucrats, the one-dimensional drones whose personality gene was excised at birth. They function by three rules, bound as tightly as bonsai: take no risks, never stray ‘off-message’ and never show any spark of life.”
Sadly, Latham is probably right. It’s now almost a prerequisite that the people who succeed as political leaders are automatons. Maybe, just maybe, Tony Abbott can break that mould.
Otherwise, as Turnbull and Garrett have discovered recently, it’s off to the Reject Shop.
Parliament needs members that can think outside of the square, but that thinking must be tempered by common sense, a true understanding of the possible and by having the qualified people in an appropriate role.
Garrett has been destroyed because he lacks the skill set required for rolling out a scheme prone to disaster from the beginning. The whole project needed micro managing by an MP with the understanding that the world is not perfect and that the unscrupulous will take full advantage.
Horses for courses! There are enough unionists MPs in Canberra to surely have found one with a full understanding of the workplace and the people skills to make it work; Combet can’t be the only one?
Hopefully the whole sorry business will result in ministries being allocated to members that are qualified for the particular role, rather than just pleasing the factions, balancing state rivalries or subscribing to some other influences not in the public interest, but then pigs might fly!
Tony Abbott may yet break the mould, but if he does, its an example of how narrow minority interests come to rule the roost in a shitty, 2 party preferred “democracy”. I’ve never particularly liked Garrett or Turnbull, but they were both badly (and unjustifiably) shafted and have now found out (if they didn’t know before) what a bunch of fools and tools there are inside the tent they chose to enter.
And what killed Turnbull and Garrett? They’re both casualties of the global warming cult. What did Keane, Hamilton-Calvin, Rundle et al predict about Abbott and the return of the Howard Living Dead? That the sheer horror of a Liberal party run by corpses would cause it to split. Hamilton would sweep into parliament on a tide of appalled, decent, liberal Liberals. It was clear that Turnbull was leading the Libs into Rudd’s corral, but the pundits were blinded by their climatic ejaculations. Surprise surprise, Neanderthal Abbott has given the Libs their identity back. Ugly as sin, but their own.
Tall fall guy Garrett was the victim of rushed, stupidly-implemented schemes (Green Loans and insulation), facile gestures in the general direction of CO2 emissions.
It’s time. The Left has to jettison the AGW millstone. The Greens likewise. Everything important is being neglected or distorted by this cult, not least the environment. The feral Right is now within striking distance of power. Thank you so much, fuckwits.
Politics is not a game for individuals.
If that is your belief it’s time to find a new career.
Allegiance is to the Party first, regardless of philosophy.
‘Parliament’s two superstar outsiders’?? Come off it. ‘Superstars’ only to a sub-class of the Canberra press gallery who don’t get out enough. Crikey has been grovelling to Turnbull and Garrett for some time. To Crikey, they can do no wrong – they are unimpeachable, brilliant, wonderful… The greatest of their generation…
Garrett and Turnbull didn’t appear to be able to grasp even the basics of being a minister or an opposition leader, respectively. Being clever outside politics was irrelevant.
The all-singing, all-dancing political candidate (literally, in Garrett’s case) is just not a good idea. Political skills aren’t very transferable, certainly not from being a song-and-dance man as a former long-term career…
The failings of these would-be politicians doesn’t prove a case that, ergo, all politicians must be hacks. Of course there are good politicians – intelligent and well-rounded. But Crikey would know that already.