Friday, 5 August 2011
OPINION: The dithering state
SUSAN MITCHELL
THE media is a strange beast. For months, years even, it has been telling everyone Mike Rann has to go. The polls have been detailing it, the public has been screaming it, and even the birds have been chirping “Bye, Bye Rannbird”.
Then when it is finally determined, the numbers have been crunched, the factions have agreed and they give him the tap on the shoulder – he refuses to go. And the media says: “Oh, poor Mike, the faceless men have been to stab him in the back. How terrible.”
The question is: what is the best way to replace the old with the new, outside of an election result?
It’s not like top footballers, whose bodies tell them when they have to retire. They have a built-in UBD. But politicians are strange creatures. Even when all the neon lights are blinking GET OUT NOW, they refuse to accept their own demise.
Power is an addictive, habit-forming drug for which there is no cure, other than your own destruction or the threat of it.
In my lifetime of state premiers, Tom Playford was the only one who had it all sewn up. He had a gerrymander which he believed no one from his own party would ever destroy. But Steele Hall came along and chopped down Tom’s perpetually blooming cherry tree.
Don Dunstan gave it his best shot for a decade and then had to give it away or it would have killed him.
Dean Brown had hardly had time to warm the seat before one of his colleagues in the party tapped him on the shoulder and told him he didn’t have the numbers, then he left.
John Olsen was never called “the smiling assassin” because he looked as if he was off to the dentist instead of the premier’s office.
While the Liberals played musical chairs with their leaders, Mike Rann managed to scrape in with the support of a couple of independents and stayed there. Too long, some believed. But the reason someone stays that long in the leadership is because the Opposition is hopeless.
While a leader is continuing to win, they won’t go and no one wants to tell them they should because they will be punished for it.
The best-laid plans or arrangements between mates for an “orderly transition of power” rarely work out that way because the incumbent refuses to honour the agreement. They usually justify breaking their promise because they believe it is best for the party and the nation if they continue to lead.
Hawke and Keating became bitter enemies because there was no “handover” of power. Keating said: “If you want the top job, you have to snatch it.” He tried once, failed, sat on the backbench plotting, tried again and succeeded.
Costello should have learnt from him, because despite that piece of paper signed by them both in Ian McLachlan’s wallet, Howard refused to leave. Costello didn’t have the numbers or the guts to challenge him, so he sat and sulked for years. If he had gone for the “snatch” he probably would have won in the end. He claimed he never put himself on the line over it because of the stability of the party and the nation. Only his wife believed him.
Then, when Howard was booted out because he stayed too long and Costello was offered the job of Opposition Leader, he told them in a fit of pique to stuff it. Cut off his nose to spite his face.
Rudd …. well, Rudd destroyed himself by alienating almost every member of the caucus. Julia Gillard, as the deputy, was offered the job. She knew that as a woman, if she knocked back the chance to be prime minister, it would never be offered again. The caravan would have moved on. So she seized it and has been labelled a back-stabbing Judas ever since, a woman shoehorned into the job by “the faceless men of the Labor Party”.
And now Jay Weatherill has tried to do the right thing by not conducting a humiliating challenge against his leader but letting others knock on his door and give him the bad news. They should have known to send leading members of the cabinet instead of someone from the unions. But did they have the right to replace their leader? Of course they did.
The voters seem to think that they elect the premier. They elect only the party. And if the party decides it has no chance of winning the next election with the incumbent leader, it has the right to change him or her. It is stupid to expect a party to lose the election and then change the leader. All parties have to give it their best shot.
But having been in politics for 17 years, Rann is a master tactician and he has played on the perception that it would be ungracious and despicable to ask him to go immediately. He has asked to stay until he finishes the Olympic Dam project and mentors the new leader.
Who is in charge here? The outgoing Premier or the party that has appointed a new Premier?
Now we are back to dithering. Will he go? How long should he stay? What if he still refuses to go? Dither, dither on the wall, who is the most hopeless of us all?
It’s as bad as the Adelaide Oval fiasco or the Victoria Square reconstruction or the one-way super highway or the mining boom or the revival of the CBD or the greening of the city … and we could all add to this list of dithering. The fish rots from the head. So chop off the head or it will spread through the entire body of the fish.
This dithering has to stop or we should just change our car number plates to “The Dithering State”.
Tourism brochures could read: “Can’t make up your mind where to travel? Come to Adelaide and dither.”
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