Leonard Colquhoun Conservatively opting-out of the frying pan
Natural Liberal supporters have effectively handed power over to the ALP, especially at the State level, by opting out of the public arena in many important spheres of life. How else to explain the return, one after another, of incompetent ALP governments ? SE Queensland running out of water, Sydney, too, with the NSW health ‘system’ becoming a daily byword for neglect, incompetence and bureaucratic over-loading. Schooling systems struggling under the multiple disadvantages of under-paid and under-trained teaching cadres, together with story after story of near-criminal maintenance neglect, such as leaking roofs, ‘temporary’ classrooms 30 years old, unheated in winter and over-hot in summer, and so on.
PAUL KELLY’S claim that “Liberal Party weakness across the nation is assisting Labor” [If government changes, you change the system, Opinion, Wed 21 Nov 07: HERE ] ought to lead, after some morbid post-Ruddslide introspection, to the conclusion that the Big End of town will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Natural Liberal supporters have effectively handed power over to the ALP, especially at the State level, by opting out of the public arena in many important spheres of life. How else to explain the return, one after another, of incompetent ALP governments ? SE Queensland running out of water, Sydney, too, with the NSW health ‘system’ becoming a daily byword for neglect, incompetence and bureaucratic over-loading. Schooling systems struggling under the multiple disadvantages of under-paid and under-trained teaching cadres, together with story after story of near-criminal maintenance neglect, such as leaking roofs, ‘temporary’ classrooms 30 years old, unheated in winter and over-hot in summer, and so on.
Apart, it seems, from in WA, State transport infrastructure is a cross between the sickest of sick jokes and a dedicated Monty Python approach: rail networks that haven’t yet made it to the second half of the last century (meaning, some would say, the 19th), computer management systems, often mutually incompatible within a network, using stuff that NASA rejected for Apollo XIII, and a purblindness about solving all traffic problems by building another 25 km of freeway.
So why do these mobs keep getting voted back in – it can’t be on their records. The only possible answers are that the alternatives are worse. Which are, (i) the Greens, and (ii) the Coalition / Liberals.
Australian voters are not yet desperate enough, or frightened sufficiently by doomsters, whether lugubriously local or chubbily foreign, to hand over their daily lives to single-issue fanatics.
Which leaves the Liberals, doesn’t it. But, as far as we can tell from the media (with the caveat that many of its operatives seem ideologically committed), Liberal MPs and election candidates specifically, and Party branches in particular, seem devoid of much discernible talent, an impression strengthened by reports that many branches frequently lack quorums for decision-making. It’s as if conservative-minded citizens have opted out of political life.
Actually, this is not surprising.
In education, their children attend private schools, so that no matter how many foolish experiments EdCentral inflicts on hopelessly over-funded (or mis-funded) State schools and their hapless teachers, young Nigel and Fiona can be isolated from much of the nonsense in the company of other children of PLUs. Their Beemers and Mercs save them from ever commuting with the unwashed on tram, train or bus, so that the almost daily news about yet one more rail network disaster in places like Melbourne and Sydney (and recent reports have Adelaide now joining this list) is largely irrelevant. As for public hospitals, they avoid them like plague villages. So what if ALP regimes stuff these up – such things are not for People Like Us, and we don’t need to bother with grubby politics of any kind, let alone at branch level. It’s a withdrawal to a gated-community mentality.
Every Liberal Party State branch is struggling for members, even quorums – it is the ultimate in individuals opting out of a community dimension to life. Which is not to endorse the progressivist perception of everyone and everything through collective lenses, and where individual responsibility is subordinated to societal determinism.
And when they wake up next Sunday to the reality of ‘wall-to-wall Labor / union regimes’, it’ll be too late for regrets about past apathy and indifference. Perhaps some will at last acknowledge that it’s time their version of good men and women came to the aid of the Party.
Leonard Colquhoun 7248
For www.tasmaniantimes
November 2007
