The ascent of the Palmer United Party to effective balance of power in the Commonwealth parliament will hopefully be a useful wake up call for us all.
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The cliches of political partisanship – “I’m Labor, so Tony Abbott is a liar”, now, it seems, have to be seriously interrupted.
For years, “Howard was a liar about WMD and GST”, “Gillard was a liar about the carbon tax”, “Hawke was a liar about no child living in poverty by 1990” and so on kept the fun high in the coffee shops and now on Facebook.
Now, for what I think is the first time, PUP’s Jacqui Lambie, having joined the ranks of what Paul Keating aptly described as the “unrepresentative swill” in the Senate – because the Senate is unrepresentative – is transposing that political social banter into the domain of parliamentary deliberation and public leadership (The Australian, June 5) .
Those of us who have had such fun with this slanging over the years are now, by continuing it, disowning the Hawkes, Howards, Keatings, Beasleys, Costellos and Faulkners who have represented serious reality in confronting the challenges of government, and becoming the spiritual constituents of the Jacqui Lambies and PUPs of parliament.
And, as my next letter on this will detail, this is just the start.
Stan Heuston
Oxley Vale
