Episode description
Episode description
Political parties love to end the year with momentum and provide a springboard into the new year – especially if there’s an election coming up. Labor is starting to release some policy to address long-term political issues: climate change, skills shortages, university placements – and to combat this, the Prime Minister decided that it was best to ride around Mount Panorama in a race car and announce to Australians that it’s time to put them back into the driver’s seat. The symbolism was strange: a Prime Minister in the passenger’s seat, calling for everyone else to take up responsibility. Perhaps it’s an adequate reflection of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership: always the passenger, never the driver.And if Labor is starting to release policy and make grand announcements for what they will do if they manage to form government, what better way for the Prime Minister to drown out these messages by calling for the return of a former NSW Premier to run in the seat of Warringah. Never mind the fact Gladys Berejiklian resigned because she was being investigated by the NSW ICAC over corruption matters – anything to drown out Labor policy announcements, even if it does magnify a major problem within the Liberal Party. Corruption.
An excellent example of the Pyrrhic victory.
And if the two-party system is not providing the answers the electorate is looking for, there are independent candidates who are willing to fill in the gaps.
The former ABC foreign correspondent and journalist, Zoe Daniel, is the latest independent to seek a move to Canberra, and she’s running in the seat of Goldstein, under the banner of the Voices Of Goldstein. And we think she’s in with a good chance of snaring the seat from the Liberal Party. Why? Because she’s running on all of those issues the electorate is interested in: climate change action, integrity, respect for women, professionalism, honesty and decency.
It’s been such a long time since we saw these types of values in federal politics, it might be shock to the system if they ever do return. And it’s an idea that might catch on, certainly in the seat of Goldstein.