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Save them from themselves!
It strikes me that sometimes politicians are their own worst enemies – which, in such a cut-throat industry dominated by foes and usurpers, is not smart.
Consider Kevin Rudd. Now that the Kevin ’07 gloss is wearing off, pundits are questioning what exactly Rudd can do about rising grocery and petrol prices. Not that he promised he could solve these problems at the last election, exactly – but he did strongly imply that inflation, the negative corollary of a strong economy, was a major problem that he, unlike the then government, would at least address.
And thus FuelWatch was floated. At best, such a scheme can only cut the cost of petrol by a few cents a litre. Similarly, Brendan Nelson’s shamelessly populist and fiscally irresponsible reply, cutting the fuel excise, will only lead to maximum a 5-cent reduction per litre at the bowser.
At this point, Rudd – and his high-profile environment/climate change ministers – had an ideal opportunity to highlight that the solution to rising petrol prices can ultimately be resolved through reducing demand – by seriously investing in public transport and alternative power source infrastructure – rather than fiddling with the supply price tag for an increasingly finite commodity. Instead, Rudd allowed himself to be drawn into a useless pissing contest against Nelson as to who could provide the biggest short-term cut in price – a cut that would easily be forgotten after a few months anyway. The credibility of both men was undermined and an opportunity to lessen our dependence on crude oil squandered.
Now consider John Della Bosca and Belinda Neal, Labor power couple of the Central Coast. If both had just admitted from the start that they behaved very badly and publicly displayed poor manners during that now infamous night at Iguanas – promising that such an infraction would not happen again – the ‘Iguanagate’ affair would long be forgotten by now. But Della’s colossal ego would have none of this, so instead statutory declarations from the club were mysteriously withdrawn, ‘apologies’ to the alleged wrong party were written by the apologee himself and the Premier was compelled to stand him down in the face of a public outcry – all because Della and Neal refused to admit to acting like a pair of right prats. Della whinged that the incident was a media beat-up, and to a certain extent he is right – but the whole issue only snowballed into significance through his and his wife’s own hubris.
Politicians seem to be frightened of their shadows these days; too frightened to tell voters that – gasp – we may need to think about reducing our dependence on crude oil, and too frightened, nay gutless, to admit to poor behaviour unbefitting elected representatives. Consequently, they dig their own graves – even when there are already plenty of ready and willing gravediggers around.
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