verging_on_random

Damn conscience votes …

November 8, 2006 on 8:26 am | In Uncategorized |

Our Prime Minister prides himself on being a strong leader … one who possesses moral clarity, if you’re not with us you’re against us and so on. He’s told us so many times.
Which makes his response to the stem-cell research debate so out-of-character. He just can’t make up his mind … he’s been “wrestling with the issues” … because it’s like, really really complex (unlike issues like global warming, the War On Terror and the way to deal with asylum seekers which are really really simple). In my cynical way I think what he really means is that he’s been finding excuses not to express a view in the hope that the issue will get killed in the Senate and he’ll never have to tell us what his opinion is.

Well he’s out of luck because the Senate passed a private member’s bill last night and now the debate will move to the House of Representatives. Perhaps Howard can manage things so it comes on for debate when he’s called way on urgent business elsewhere.

This is Howard’s interpretation of ‘leadership’. When the polls tell you what your core supporters already believe then you trample over the media scrum to get to the camera or the microphone and keep yapping the same thing in shrill tones.

But when an issue comes up where the core supporters’ views are ambiguous, then duck and cover … keep wrestling with it until you can find a meaningless formula that won’t offend any of them.

Howard gave another clue to his idea of ‘leadership’ the other day. He said that if all the other countries in the world came up with a new treaty on global warming, then he’d be prepared to ‘lead’ Australia into it. Wow, how brave.

Governments are increasingly being confronted with issues like stem-cell research and global warming that can’t be reduced to one-dimensional economic analysis or to pathetic ‘freedom-loving countries v filthy terrorists’ rhetoric. These kinds of issues demand a principled response - they require governments to refer to a framework of moral logic as opposed to a simplistic set of one-size-fits-all ‘values’. No wonder our Prime Minister has trouble responding, because the only framework he’s had for 30 years is the John-Howard-for-PM framework.