As in the lead up to the recent election in the UK, the latest Australian national opinion polls reveal that the electorate literally hates the professional political class that has evolved in the late twentieth century and now has taken hold of the parliament.  

Ordinary citizens in Western Democracies know that the people who are supposed to represent them are nothing like them. Moreover they know that political representation is now not something that an ordinary citizen can aspire to, not just because of money, but because  it is a career -  a lifelong speciality. The craft of politics seems to be about saying things that seem substantial but are not, bending facts and figures to suit a position and using ‘weasel words’.  

Typical representatives of the major political parties learn the art of the trade as students. Pubescent politicians in the early 1980s and 1990s learned the art of the demonstration, learned the art of the mock public debate, learned to see that there was a difference between a public position and what happened in backroom negotiations. Many of the current crop of Federal parliamentarians have lived in the same student colleges, contested for the same boy friends and girl friends, and fought the same mock symbolic battles and ethical issues since pussy was a kitten:. They learned how to bore people stupid if necessary to win a ballot and to be the last person standing at a bbq from a very tender age. Some were signed up to the Liberal or Labor Party from as young as ten. The Australian people, and citizens across the democratic world, have come to detest this class of professional politicians who now live in a sort of separate zone of life. 

Why is their leadership not contested? Why have we become so complacent about politics at national and State levels? The electorate have though lived through the most stable period of growth, development and prosperity that the world has ever seen. More families in Western Democracies, and increasingly in the developing world, have been able to acquire a house, a means of transport and a reliable income than ever before. Certainly the gap has widened between the poor and the rich at the same time, but a political class can only prosper if a majority of the citizenry also prosper with it. Prosperity may well be responsible for our current spineless political classes. 

In Australia or the UK or the USA two main political parties have seemingly delivered record levels of prosperity to record numbers of people. The electorate knows that the calibre of politicians is waning because it is drawn from an incestuous cesspool. But they still cannot dissociate stability from the rise of the political classes they so detest. At that crucial moment when you mark a ballot paper, electors would rather the devil they know than the uncertainty of a new face. This was essentially the reason why, for the first time in a long time, the preceding opinion polls in the UK did not reflect the final result of the UK election. It is also why the recent spike in the vote of the Australian Greens is unlikely to translate into a radically different parliament when Australia goes to the polls later this year. 

Perhaps we have forgotten what real leadership looks like? When the illustration above was published in 1864, Abraham Lincoln, was portrayed as ‘the national joker’. On January 1 1863 Lincoln had proclaimed that all slaves will be forever free. Two months later national conscription was introduced for the first time in US history and draconian powers were introduced to enable the detention of political prisoners. When the conscription process began in New York City unprecedented riots broke out, the largest civil insurrection in US history. Over one hundred were killed, dozens of buildings burnt to the ground including an orphanage for black children. Lincoln remained steadfast. 

A lot more work is going to have to be done by minor and new parties to disassociate stability and prosperity from the godawful class of politicians that now predominate. It has to be demonstrated that what we have at present is not leadership but loquacity. 

When Kevin Rudd changed his position “on the most important issue of our time” as if he was changing a pair of strides it confirmed the electorates worst fears. His popularity has plunged. Worse still when Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and half of the political bureaucracy fly off to Copenhagen and it turns out to be the world’s biggest bureaucratic boon doogle – ordinary Australians threw up their hands in disbelief. The true believers of climate change in both the Liberal and Labor parties have departed to vote Green at the next election. But the most likely result is that there will be no change to the political status quo in Australia. One of the dominant political parties will govern in their own right and, much as I hope it will be otherwise, it is even unlikely that the Greens will win any members in the House of Representatives. 

However, the ongoing disillusionment with the mainstream parties and the current political class is profound. They say that if you make the post of the Prime Minister you have to be a cut above the rest. But the Australian system of annointing a Prime Minister does not involve a national ballot for the man or woman who will be a leader. In effect a Federal Parliamentary party room vote for leader means that the political class selects from its own, who the nation will get to choose as leader. 

Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott are the luckiest of leaders. They face no national crises, Australia is a prosperous nation. Nothing much is required of them. Leaders in all varieties of Australian public and private life keep the boat afloat. How could the country change for the better if we had better quality political leadership? In a more open political market or in another political era, or in an open nomination process involving the whole country, it is arguable that neither Rudd nor Abbott would have been judged to have what it takes to lead the country. Many Queenslanders still remember that the young Kevin Rudd was so arrogant that he made Mark Latham look like a picture of modesty. As a bureaucrat in the Goss government he was a disaster. The only reason he has prevailed as a politician is purely because of his inside knowledge and manipulation of the political system and luck. As my interview with Rudd in 2006 indicated, when he first stood for the safe Queensland seat of Griffith in 1998 and was defeated, his political life passed before his eyes.  He began to become more human. He actually became involved in issues within his electorate . He told me that he would pass on his seat to someone who had the most meritorious record of political activism in the electorate. But did he really mean it? And will he change his position if it is politically opportune to do so when the time comes? I wouldn’t risk a bet on it. Rudd’s one political defeat, and the fact that his opposition was John Howard, was probably the making of him as Prime Minister. 

Tony Abott has shown himself to be even more a member of the professional political class than Rudd. He has publicly admitted to stretching the truth where it is necessary. In parliament Abbot is simply sticking to the political rule book of “stacks on the mill” he and Joe Hockey learned at university. If attacking the government means attacking principles that you would otherwise support – then so much the better. You maintain the dogma not matter what is said. You put up no confidence motion after no confidence motion hoping that the mud will stick. Whereas Malcolm Turnbull had been more discerning about the issues he chose to contest with the government, with Abbott it matters little. The more storm and tempest and noise that can be garnered up the better. In other words, student politics 101. 

At what moment do we reach a tipping point where large sections of the population will vote for alternative parties and vote against the professional political classes. The small parties have to demonstrate that they have the leadership qualities that are now non-existent in the main parties. One of the things that we in the small parties have to do is demonstrate that life will be more stable and better when the clowns who run the country now, on both sides of the parliament, are history. This means we have to devote ourselves to the task of creating policies and skills that are objectively of a far higher standard than those we see in the major political parties. Such things cannot be achieved overnight. They cannot be done through public relations campaigns. The reality is that while the membership and resources of the major political parties are diminishing, they are enormous when compared to those of the Greens and the Democrats. Money, however, cannot buy you love and it cannot buy you good policy and sound principles and it cannot buy you leadership.