Respect for retiring politicians ?

Mary Delahunty (Age 12/10/10) asks why the public is so ungenerous that we can’t say thanks to retiring politicians (of either party—as she adds John Howard and Peter Costello to the present retirement of Peter Batchelor and Bob Cameron).

In her excellent article she ponders why we are ‘weary’ of the contest, when it is the politicians who do the hard work (trying to please everyone), and so ‘grumpy’ and ‘surly about politics’ ‘or in a sort of civic amnesia‘.

Why do we hate politicians? With Multiple portfolios to watch (and inspire?) are they really deserving of the near contempt that we accord them, relishing every public attack, by a ferocious media—‘a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits’ (quoting a remark of Tony Blair).

Why the near contempt, particularly for the member of the unsupported party?
There are good reasons. Some give politicians a bad name because they are ambitious with their self interest sticking out, and obnoxious to their opponents, though often just for public consumption. But the odour is bad.

Elections choose governments (rarely representatives). We need objective, cooperative, parliamentary government, alert and fiercely attacking the problems, not each other. But parliaments do not rule, they can’t, being more about providing a Colosseum for the entertainment of a jaded electorate. And with this we come to the bad reasons for having a ‘down’ on politicians.

Do we realise the depth and breadth of the responsibilities they have to undertake? Ministers often wear several hats, looking after several portfolios. There is an immense amount involved in government (apart even from the nonsense and waste of time of party politics), including in state governments. But we often see a light-hearted comment about abandoning state governments! Do we then simply add all those responsibilities to our central government—and then, predictably, whinge about centralism.

We are supposed, as a democracy, to be a self governing people, whatever that might mean, but in fact we would not really want to spend any of our precious private time being involved (although a few could and would). We’d be scared stiff to have all that responsibility. So it always devolves to the few who will.

But there is light ahead. Recent events in our Federal parliament give some hope, with independents coming out of the dark, but the real solution is in a working relationship in every electorate between people and their representative conditioned by ‘ballots in parliament’ to be an independent. Not all could or would be involved, but the door to a monthly meeting for their participation would always be open.

And as previously noted, parliament itself would then govern with a direct line of communication and responsibility from the grass roots to parliament—actual democracy. Many changes—all good— would follow, including a well-deserved respect for politicians, even, if only, because their re-election would be entirely in our hands.