So, another 4 years for the Liberal-National Coalition in NSW. I must admit, I’m not particularly surprised. I’ve not seen such a limpid and uninspiring campaign for a long time. For the first time, in about a decade, I didn’t have much to do with this campaign. I refused to: mostly because I was so thoroughly disappointed in the way NSW Labor has treated Emma Husar, but also because I couldn’t find much to be excited about either Luke Foley or Michael Daley. It wasn’t solely their personalities – although to be honest neither of them are exactly overflowing with charisma – but rather the lack of policies. Sure, there was a lot of talk about hospitals and schools – and so there should be, from a Labor party – but it didn’t really seem to mean much. The coalition seemed to blunt that attack by offering the same thing. And don’t get me started on the stadiums.
Don’t get wrong – I think that the Coalition is entirely a terrible prospect for New South Wales. I think they are riddled with vested interests and blatant pork-barreling, if not out and out corruption. They clearly govern for their base, and to hell with the rest of us. I get all of that – but it’s Labor’s job to ensure that everybody in the state knows that, and also that Labor has provided a compelling vision of what the future might look like if they were in power. But they just couldn’t do it. It’s easy to whine about the Murdoch media – and sure, one would be naive to ignore their malign influence – but those are excuses. And defeat allows none.
The older I get, the more I see that our politicians, for the most part, are almost entirely, hopelessly compromised. I get it – I know that politics is the art of the possible – and that forming alliances between disparate groups is almost entirely what it means to be a politician in this day and age, but I guess that I am saying that this is no longer serving our interests – if it ever did. Instead, it seems the only politicians – of both stripes – with any cut through are those without any vested interests – the ones able to step past the competing interests and actually say what the rest of us are thinking. This seems to be the case for politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US, and, to a lesser extent, Jacinda Ardern. Perhaps even Emma Husar, too? Interestingly, they are all women too.