As a self confessed political junkie,
who has already succeeded in one of her life goals, to be able to quote The
West Wing and pretty much any speech given by Annabel Crabb off the top of my
head, I shudder at the thought of the Federal Parliaments Winter Break. I mean
if our ever-loved pollies aren’t making and debating bills in Canberra, what am
I going to fill my days doing? Interacting with other humans? Making small talk
in the corridors? I almost feel lost without knowing, come 1.30 in the
afternoon I can turn on question time and get my daily dose of humour, politics
and new story ideas all in one go. The other downfall of the mid-winter break
is that it means our pollies have nothing to do, and when people have nothing
to do, most turn loopy. Crazy loopy. Insane loopy. Loppy loppy.
And so many have just scratched my head and
laughed at the events that unfolded during the break as even though the
population of Canberra reduced my half nothing is ever quiet on the eastern
front! Not to make light of the situation but this dialogue from The West Wing seems
scarily on par with what happened…
CJ
(Press Secretary): We have nothing to announce today. No policy, no summit meetings, not even a
warm front meeting up with a cold front.
We've been over this. We need a hard news announcement each and every
day, or the press runs amuck.
JOSH
(Deputy Chief of Staff): This is Toby's job.
What am I, the White House complaint center?
CJ:
You run the policy shop. Besides, Toby's
avoiding me.
JOSH:
Maybe no news is good news.
CJ:
No news is very, very bad news. If we're not running offense, we're running defence. And if we're playing defence, then ...
there's some clever sports analogy that explains what happens then.
JOSH:
We're screwed.
And this pretty much sums up the
federal government. In this day and age of a 24 hour news cycle, we are
constantly looking for updates and new information and when nothing much is
going on, all hell tends to break loose. The smallest most insignificant remark
can be magnified tenfold, changed edited and manipulated and all of a sudden a
Big Brother style fight has erupted before our very eyes. The argument is then played
over and over, and before long every single person in the country knows what
was said, by whom and where. And the examples are endless…
Joe Hockey’s comment that the “poorest people either don't have cars or actually don't drive very far in many cases" was made epic, as was Bill Shortens reply, that “Joe Hockey wants people to live in cars not drive them!” Clive Palmers comments about the Chinese was spectacular and a GIF of Penny Wong’s face was played repeatedly, for days. Not to be disappointed by the big man himself, Prime Minister Tony be-my-friend-coz-i-am-awesome Abbott launched a book and gave away the ending all while trying to act super cool and nonchalant about the whole deal.
It is almost as if all the red cordial and lollies down under were
mass sent to those who we put in charge, and consumed on an industrial level,
as planes were leaving our nations capital on July 17.
That is not to say that our pollies didn’t conduct important
duties while away from the capital, in light of the MH17 disaster the PM and
Foreign Minister flew to Europe pledging Australia’s full support in the weeks
and months following the incident, which many are calling international
terrorism and condemnation of Russia supporting the rebels. Obviously the
Government received a bump in the polls due to this and given the unfortunate
circumstances have chosen to focus on boarder protection and nationalistic
goals in the foreseeable future when it comes to policy announcements, which
will continue when parliament resumes and for the most part of the rest of the
political year.
Finally the issue that has divided the nation, the federal budget
or the feral budget depending on who you are speaking to, is still being hotly
contested. It seems like a number of measures aimed at reducing the debt are
controversial as ever and protests (particularly at a student and young person/
left leaning level) are continuing. With the MYEFO (Mid Year Economic and
Fiscal Outlook)
due out in a matter of month it will be interesting to see if the Government
use that as a way of enforcing the need for their “pain for a purpose” budget.
Okay, so maybe stuff has been happening over the winter break, but
it sure is boring only listening to one round of new news each day, and as
someone who can speak with a mouth full of marbles I for one am glad I will
have new things to discuss, now that parliament has resumed…
