Politics

Whoever wins next week, America loses. One candidate is grotesque and the other insipid. Donald Trump’s television-inflated personality and proto-fascist flirtations divert focus from the inadequacy of Kamala Harris, who until recently was a near-invisible vice-president. She is a calculated, accidental candidate, who was resoundingly rejected by the Democrats the only time she sought the nomination.

You know a government has a problem when every time a minister or even one of the backbenchers puts their head up for an interview, they are asked to defend their prime minister.

We are still waiting for the government’s promised reform legislation on political donations. It was pledged as a key element of Labor’s first-term agenda, and yet here we are with just a few weeks of parliamentary sittings left this year – or, indeed, before the scheduled March pre-election budget – and there is no movement.

Own goals were the order of the week for Australia, both on the soccer pitch and in federal politics. For the Socceroos the one-all draw with Japan in the World Cup qualifier was more of a victory than a disaster. The same cannot be said of Anthony Albanese’s purchase of a $4.3 million clifftop mansion at the height of a housing affordability crisis.

Language is a truly fascinating phenomenon – it is fluid and constantly evolving. We are barely aware that, as we are shaping its evolution, language is shaping us – individually and collectively. This is what makes it such a potent political tool.

The Voice was meant to be the start of a healing process. One year later, we are meant to celebrate the symbol of that power that inflicted those same wounds in the first place. The irony is impossible to ignore.

In a full mimicry of Donald Trump, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s reality is how he claims it to be, in complete disregard for the facts. So it is with his stance on nuclear energy. He simply asserts his nuclear power will deliver cheaper electricity to Australian households, and that nuclear is the only pathway to net zero by 2050.

Dutton’s refusal to back Albanese’s comprehensive condolence motion, acknowledging the pain of the Jewish community and extending sympathy to the Palestinian and Muslim communities, was a calculated and divisive play.

I owe the ALP a great deal, but I am increasingly edgy about where the two major parties are heading, their increasing factionalism and secretive oligarchies … I put the planet first, then Homo sapiens, then other species, and place national interest, my own or anyone else’s nation, some distance down the list. I have no sense of the tribal…

A former senior Liberal asked me this week: whatever happened to the Liberal Party’s commitment to developing substantial policies? I had to admit the current Coalition seems to believe it doesn’t need such things, that it can win an election by just being critical and negative, by basically undermining the credibility of the government.