WELL, the phoney war is over and the real battle has been joined. We have an election and I think it will be an interesting one.

It will be interesting for a range of reasons but not least because of the stupidity of those — Messrs. Bacon and Rundle as I recall – who came together to reduce the size of the parliament to twenty five members which, in my strong view, is insufficient to provide good governance. That silly initiative also compounds the likelihood of an inconclusive result and, as a consequence, a so-called “hung” parliament with no party having a majority in its own right. Moreover, given the legacy of history and the mood of the contestants, it is more likely than not to be badly hung.

The phoney war has been characterised by some vigorous assaults on Premier Paul Lennon by the Liberals and the Greens on matters such as Betfair and related racing issues, a room upgrade at Crown Casino in Melbourne and his brother, a consultant, getting some government work. The attacks have been strong and persistent and they would have stung.

For my part, I do not believe that Paul Lennon was guilty of anything sinister at all. However, I do think that he has shown himself to be more than a little naïve; overly sensitive for one who has never been coy about kicking a head that gets in his way; perhaps less than diligent in some housekeeping matters; and, above all, in seeming to have absolutely useless minders. Where were the minders when he needed them or did he ignore them? Just a little attention to the documentation and declaration of personal interests and connections would have obviated a petty storm in a tea cup. It didn’t really merit the feigned outrage and posturing of the Liberals and Greens but, then, as they say — that’s politics. Sadly, it is.

I have no personal reason to pat Paul Lennon on the back but I believe, and I am assured by people whose judgement I respect, that he is a decent and honest person — a good family man and apparently staunch in his faith — who is doing a job he neither sought nor wanted. I believed him when he said publicly that he would have been quite satisfied seeing out his time as Jim Bacon’s deputy.

Solid and workmanlike

As it is, I think Lennon has done a solid and workmanlike job as Premier. My principal criticism is, perhaps inevitably, the government’s performance on health and hospital matters. For him to keep David Llewellyn in that job is akin to sentencing us to watch paint dry for many decades. Llewellyn is also a decent bloke but dynamic and decisive he most definitely is not. The health and hospital challenge has been a massive negative for successive governments and, this time around, Paul Lennon has the health and hospital issue as by far the heaviest weight in his saddlebag.

It is not as if the government is short of money. On the contrary, thanks to the GST, they are rolling in the stuff but the allocation of priorities has been appallingly deficient. Unless Lennon can convince the electorate that he will address the health challenge he will go backwards at this election faster and further than he thinks. He will pay the price for listening too much to the Treasury and too little to the public.

The Labor team includes some useful talent. Steve Kons has kept a low profile but from all accounts he is astute and his business experience fills what is normally a gaping hole in Labor ministries. Bryan Green is well regarded by some of the shrewder heads in the ALP as are Paula Wreidt and Lara Giddings, notwithstanding reports of the occasional tantrum from the ladies enclosure.

I am assured, by people who should know, that the Liberal Party leadership team — Rene Hidding and Sue Napier — is no less decent, dedicated and able than their Labor opponents. However, it has to be said that, like Lennon and Llewellyn, they do not make the firmament sparkle. Indeed, with this quartet — plus Peg Putt — the most exciting thing in parliament these days would have to be the prayers.

Having said that, Hidding and Napier are said to be experienced and shrewd. That being so, they should actively promote their up and coming talent at this election. Across the state they do have some impressive younger talent including Whiteley and Rockliffe in the north west, Gutwein in the north and Hodgman the Younger (Will) in the south. If these men are pushed forward to be prominent in the campaign — along with “celebrity” catch Fabian Dixon in the south — then they will have a positive impact. I have seen Whiteley perform at a parliamentary committee hearing and he is good value — lucid, on top of his brief, intelligent and with a useful vein of toughness. And what I hear about the others mentioned is overwhelmingly positive.

Articulate, shrewd and persistent

Then there are the Greens. Peg Putt long ago threw off the shadow thrown by Brown and Milne to become an articulate, shrewd and persistent politician although a bit too strident at times and not without the obligatory dash of Green piety.

When the Greens mobilised their forces back in the late seventies and early eighties to become a more organised interest group it was an entirely legitimate and understandable initiative to take. A few years later I was asked by a conservationist what I thought about the Greens establishing a political party. Following is the essence of my response, as included in a speech made many years later still, on Australia Day 2002: “I replied that I thought it a silly idea. I said the movement would lose its freshness, its spontaneity, its broad-based apolitical lobbying potency. I said that to create a political party out of the Green movement would involve them in preference deals, in trade-offs, in all the grubby stuff that they purported to abhor and in a lot of glib and mostly uninformed posturing on all sorts of non-green issues. I said I didn’t share some of the views and tactics of the conservation movement but I found it more digestible as a protest movement-cum-lobby group than as a political party. I have not changed that view. Indeed, it seems to me that a consequence of the Greens being a political party is that their navigators are always in uncertain water — between the reef of specialised environmental advocacy and the whirlpool of trying to be all things to as many voters as possible!”

Now, with Peg Putt’s recent declaration that the Greens are somersaulting on various long-standing Green policies so as to increase the Green vote in the imminent state election, the ultimate smear on the Green escutcheon is plain for all to see. The Greens have, by their actions, boldly conceded that they really are politicians after all and as cynical as the rest of them — especially when there is a vote in it.

Notwithstanding the cynicism of Peg Putt’s U-turn on policies the Greens will probably make ground in the coming election, partly perhaps because the somersault has not received the media exposure it deserves and partly because the other parties may not be quick enough or bright enough to exploit it.

Stumble in the dark

I don’t think it will be a very exciting campaign. I predict that it will be rather like three sleep-walkers bumping into each other in the dark and occasionally stumbling or burping as they search for the light switch. From time to time one of them will break into a frenzied mazurka when seized with a brilliant new policy initiative and then, just as quickly, slip back into a characteristic state of policy torpor.

How will it all end when the light comes on? God only knows. It may not end at all. The contestants may continue to stumble in the dark while the real rulers of our state, the bureaucrats, keep writing memos and dialling numbers and having committee meetings and stashing our money away for a rainy day. A direct descendant of Franz Kafka will preside over all this from a modest office in the Bureau of Paper Clips.

The result? A hung parliament. Labor will lose ground and the Liberals and Greens will gain ground but how much and by whom I don’t know. I do hope that, if the parliament is to be hung, that it be well hung in the important sense of respecting the wishes of the people. That is, a government should be formed and all parties should use their best endeavours to make it work. If they send us back to the polling booths in anything less than, say, two and a half years then they have failed us.

How shall I vote? I honestly don’t know. I want to see the campaign first. I may even vote for people rather than parties but then, if we all did that, I suppose that would certainly ensure a hung parliament. Yes, but perhaps twenty five good people would be better than three ordinary parties. Yes, but then… Oh, I dunno…

It’s all a bit sad, isn’t it?

Over to you.