It is worth remembering that these are the observations of a former senior Federal Government Minister, also – in Opposition – a Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, and that he departed Parliament at a time of his own choosing, as one of its more widely-respected members.
A government that must deal with sensible independent centrists is better than a government that must rely on the support of the most eccentric ends of its party spectrum.
The writer quoted above and below is Fred Chaney.
Post-1993, when he departed the Parliament, Fred Chaney had – until this year – refrained from joining the swollen ranks of “relevance-deprived” former senior politicians who cannot resist the urge to act as “commentators” on partisan politics, and/or to “play on”, as still-active participants in “party politics”.
However, such is his disgust with the current state of play in Australia’s misnamed “two party” Federal politics, that Fred Chaney is actively supporting his niece Kate Chaney’s attempt to win the “blue ribbon, Liberal” seat of Curtin, as a so-called “teal” Independent.
Don’t expect the government to undergo a spiritual or moral conversion to the need for accountability, the need to use borrowed and taxpayer funds for public rather than party interest as shown by the absurd levels of pork barrelling, the need to repair the aged care system, the need to end the use of cruelty in our refugee policies and obscenities like the robo-debt approach that unlawfully pitted a bullying government against those least able to resist.
The government will only change its approach if the parliament does not tolerate these things. The moderate Liberals have shown they do tolerate these things by supporting the government in doing them. Neither major party should be trusted with absolute power.
Click here to read all of Fred Chaney’s essay, published in The Sydney Morning Herald today, 04.05.2022.
Fred Chaney also spoke eloquently on ABC RN Breakfast; click this to hear Patricia Karvelas’s interview with him.
My “journalistic sentence of the week” award goes to Paul Bongiorno, in the April 30 edition of The Saturday Paper.
Bongiorno wryly noted how “unfortunate” it is that Scott Morrison has become a “known known” quantity:
How sweet must be the memory of the blank page that he presented the last time he faced the voters.
Footnote:
I took the photo at 5.35 pm on 22 April 2022 on one of Curtin’s well-heeled streets. Here, purveyors of “wellness” are nigh-ubiquitous, but their signage is currently less omnipresent than Kate Chaney’s.
A very pertinent selection of observations from Fred Chaney (one of the most authentic and human moderates of the Liberal Party) and Paul Bongiorno. I’m volunteering for Monique Ryan in Kooyong, I’m happily supporting the campaign of a woman described as a “so-called independent” by a man whose track record in various portfolios since 2013 warrants him being accurately described as a “so-called moderate” in the Liberal Party.