To govern is a privilege bestowed upon a few by
all of us.
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one
species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by
the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as
transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781/87) Preface,
A vii
Readers of this blog
will know I’m mostly Kantian in my outlook. A flawed genius perhaps, (er, that
would be Kant, not me) but starting with his ‘Perpetual Peace’ some years ago,
I have come to appreciate through his words that we can, if we so choose, make
the world a better place. Sometimes though, one gets the sense that it gets all
a little too Machiavellian, that other philosopher people like to quote when
politics gets a little, well, brutal. Actually, in his adjectival form, Niccolo
Machiavelli (1469-1527, Florentine philosopher, among other things) is often
‘misremembered’. But that is subject of a future post…
Machiavelli is
probably best known for The Prince a
political treatise he wrote c. 1513. In our modern vernacular the expression
‘whatever it takes’ probably best represents the treatise’s main message. Not
surprisingly, Whatever it Takes was
the title of the memoirs penned by former ALP senator Graham Richardson. It’s
symptomatic of modern politics it seems, and somewhat prescient… I often say to
students that we each draw a line in the sand, the line we daren’t cross in
order to get what we want. ‘Where is your line’ I might ask them, ‘and do you hold
the line, or do you keep redrawing it?’ It makes for challenging classroom
discussion at times.
There is much about
our recent politics here in Queensland, and elsewhere, that makes me wish we
could just all sit down and read the classics. Much of what confronts us has
been subject to musings and ponderings for centuries. Now that says two things
to me: one, perhaps we might have advanced somewhat if we’d paid more attention
along the way; and two, think where we might be if we learned lessons from our
forebears.
In chapter 22,
Machiavelli (in translation) posits that ‘the first method for estimating the
intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him [sic]’. We all
probably know this at some level, and no doubt thoughts might turn to our
respective workplaces… He goes on to say that ‘there are three classes of
intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what
others comprehended; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the
showing of others; the first is most excellent, the second is good, the third
is useless’. That’s a non-partisan observation from me, by the way, a gentle warning
to all who would aspire to public office.
There is an
interesting pattern developing in the new Queensland government in its early
days. We’ve had headline grabbing cuts and savings of a populist, petty and
mean kind (yes, sometimes all three at once) countered almost immediately by a counterpoint
which belies a mature, institutional polity. While parallels have been made
with the government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, I think it is actually more
serious. There’s a real sandpit mentality in George Street at the moment and
neither side is really behaving appropriately. Every new government believes it
has a right to expend its political capital or its ‘mandate’ from the people.
And up to a point, that is true. However, a government that does so by
steamrolling institutional conventions can only in the end further lose the tenuous
trust of the people who put it there.
In just the last few
weeks we’ve seen:
v The dropping of the Premier’s Literary Award at
the same time as two ‘friends’ of the LNP were installed as directors-general
by the Premier.
v Government-funded corporate boxes at sporting
arenas cut but in an ‘unrelated action’, former Federal Treasurer Peter
Costello was given a consultancy to review the previous government’s budgetary
position.
v The members of the Opposition were cast out of
Parliament to a building elsewhere (so that the offices could be refurbished
for use as committee rooms), but then,
v the Premier declared, just after the government
was sworn in, that he would get legislation through without bothering with
committees because ‘that’s what the voters wanted’…that good old ‘can-do’
approach.
v There was a particularly spiteful moment when
Premier Campbell Newman denied his predecessor Anna Bligh a couple of months
grace to tie up post-premier matters. (Now, I acknowledge I clearly lost the
public argument about this one. But people’s anger and frustration was directed
at Anna Bligh the person—she should
pay, she doesn’t deserve it, she’s on a huge pension and so on.
Granted, I too was disappointed when she quit so quickly and thus broke the
trust of her electorate, and I have elsewhere argued that politicians have an
obligation to stay the course, win, lose or go to the backbench. But, there is
a respect for the office here we need to uphold for if we don’t, what do we
have left?)
v The perceptions surrounding the events at
Musgrave Park last week—the pre-dawn assembly of 200 police officers to move on
an Aboriginal Tent Embassy on Indigenous land in West End—will be emblematic of
the early stumblings of this new Government.
v The news on Friday morning last, that the
Premier aimed to save $100m through cutting tea & coffee, indoor plants and
air travel for public servants, somewhat chuckleworthy for the day as we
lamented the end of powdery instant coffee…but by the end of the day, we had
the announcement that all members of parliament would be getting more than the
standard backbencher's salary because of extra duties undertaken in the course
of their work. Yeah, right, that’ll make the public servants, on whose advice
many of our parliamentary novices will have to rely, happy.
For now, Campbell
Newman is basking in the landslide win and taking full advantage of whatever he
has determined is his ‘mandate’. Most of the people who voted for him are
probably quite happy at the way things are going, for now. The only people opposing these actions
are those of the ‘left’, a constituency the government can afford to ignore,
even annoy, for now. But government, in its broadest sense, is for the long
term, not ‘for now’, not just for three years. It is incumbent upon the incumbents
to leave the polity in a better state than when they were elected. Now, our
political leaders haven’t done a marvellous job of that of late, but we have a
role too. As Machiavelli spoke of his prince:
I must not fail to warn a prince, who by means of secret favours has
acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which induced
those to favour him to do so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him,
but only discontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly
with great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy them.
And weighing well the reasons for this in those examples which can be taken
from ancient and modern affairs, we shall find that it is easier for the prince
to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government,
and who are therefore his enemies, than those who, being discontented with it,
were favourable to him and encourage him to seize it.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince,
Ch. 20.
[At this rate, next week’s lesson
might be inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The
Idiot.]
