Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The 1001

Sounds like a new TV Series form the States. 1000 specially gifted individuals and their Leader bringing the World to a new Utopic existence by solving all the imponderable conundrums of the 21st Century in one massive talkfest. Like Hero's crossed with Numbers.

However the reality is less prosaic. What we really have is Opinion Polling By Proxy crossed with Plausible Deniability. The media will cover all the agenda driven genius ideas these Annointed Ones put forth, the Party Researchers will monitor public reactions in the blogosphere, in letters to the editor, callback radio and with their other usual research methods to work out which ones Poll well, and Kev can hitch his wagon to the popular ones without fear of coming up with a bad idea on his own. The flags that get torn to shreds before they're halfway up the pole are just someone elses ideas and suggestions - nothing to do with the Government. How terribly neat. And they think they look open, inclusive and consultative while they're doing it. A real Man for the People is our Kev. He really cares what we have to say. He listens. Yes indeedy.

What a terrible facade. What a transparent sham. What a thin disguise for a Government more concerned with Symbols and Announceables than substantive policy. So far in his leadership Kevin Rudd has confirmed his place as the most groomed, preened and artificial Prime Minister we have seen yet. The product of a veteran Lobbyist and a PR Machine, Rudd is all about the Ratings. He has issued a glut of symbolic and stylized Announcements that get adoringly reproduced and embellished by the Media for uncritical consumption by the Punters who were starved of good, old fashioned self-promoting politics by a Coalition Government that pretty much stuck to it's knitting and trusted the public to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Oops. Howard should have said Sorry, and signed Kyoto. But he forgot that being PM is as much about the Show as the Substance, and he lost touch with how the man in the street felt, and how the media works. He could have done these things and more with no danger to himself or his Government, but he was far too much a man of principle to make what he saw as hollow, meaningless gestures that would at best give false expectations and at worst gloss over real problems with symbolic placebos. In the end he seems to have forgotten what it means to be a politician in a modern democracy.

So soon we will have The 1001 sitting down in Canberra charged with delivering policy inspiration for a new Government that has already run out of workable ideas that go deeper than the 2 or 3 points on which they managed to carry an election. Now I don't know about you, but I have been involved in these brainstorming sessions, some organised by Government (notable Labour Again for their Queensland Creative Industry Economic Strategy), some within an industry - and the bigger they are, the more open they are and the less selective you are with who participates and what the session is focussing on - the more useless the process becomes. What we have here is a massive group, an unlimited agenda, a deliberately non-selective process (except for a handpicked committee from which all the real output will to the Government will flow) and absolutely ZERO chance for implementation of outcomes in a meaningful way.

Shouldn't we be alarmed that the Government has the TIME for this symbolic claptrap? They have been in Opposition for 11 YEARS! Are we to believe that in all that time they didn't work out what they would concentrate on in at least the first term if they ever got back in? They should be so busy implementing all their well considered and planned policy that pointless talk-fests should be the last thing on their minds. But clearly that isn't the case. Or maybe it is, but they're doing it anyway because they think it will look good to the punters. You know, like they care, and want to listen. So at best it's cynical and fatuous flattery, and at worst it's a sign of a Government without a clue.

Well I feel good about how things are going. What about you?

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