We could blame Malcolm Fraser or conservative premiers who found conservative replacements for elected Labor senators against all convention.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
We could blame Prime Minister Abbott’s great idol of public life, Sir John Kerr.
We could blame a succession of power-crazed and pocket-lining, weak Labor members at state and federal level that led to a mediocre vacuum, into which fell a gormless, witless purveyor of three word slogans as policy statements.
We could make comparisons with the enormous legacy of social, political and foreign policy reform by Whitlam and a rush to war by a prime minister who can’t even get his first budget passed without all sorts of kiss-and-make-up deals with even smaller splinters of a wooden parliamentary intellect.
Or perhaps we should sheet the blame where it lies – on us, the electors of Australia, who through self-interest and gullibility have allowed the concept of vision to be truncated to a three year election cycle and constant thirst for what’s in it for us.
Perhaps instead of regaling one man’s greatness – as appealing and as righteous as that might be – we should be mourning the slow and lingering death of intelligence and courage and vision and egalitarianism that we once held as the greater ideals and purpose of being Australian.
Peter Langston
Tamworth