Spinning glibly, smiling sweetly, and talking to us in kindergarten-speak has lost its charm

LEONARD COLQUHOUN
What MHA Larissa Tahireh Giddings is discovering is that you can’t charm all of the people all of the time. While she was, from 2004 to 2006, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for the Arts, she could do a very passable Minister for Glad Tidings act. But now, as Minister for Health, without doubt the hardest/worst ministry for anyone, she is discovering that her spinning glibly, smiling sweetly, and talking to us in kindergarten-speak has lost its charm.
And, as well, there’s her pre-MP work/life experience, all of it in politics and political adminstration, with little to no We-the-People life and experience. Particulary worrying for us voters is the claim in Wikipedia of having ‘worked for the Tasmanian Premier as a speech writer and media assistant’.

Unfortunately, in regard to this dissociation from real life, she is not alone: far too many MPs have never had real jobs, never lived real lives, among the ordinary, everyday people they are supposed to represent.

Nor does the situation look any better Coalition-wards, but for a different reason.

With their children at private schools, their health care in private hospitals, their transport needs not including riding trains, trams and buses to and from the outer ‘burbs (their lives being lived in nice leafy inner ones), would-be and current Coalition MPs have little to no experience of the main areas they are sometimes voted in to administer.

And, finally the Question-of-the-Day: is Giddings’ admission enough of a reason for Tasmania regaining a bigger House of Assembly?

[If you’re feeling a sense of déjà lu, it’s because of déjà vu – I’ve posted similarly in similar discussions.]

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