It's hard to remember nowadays, but it wasn't so long ago that the expectation of government was that those in it would… y'know, govern.
Sure, recent history would suggest that winning government means failing to legislate anything while angrily complaining that one's inertia is all the fault of the opposition, or the senate, or the previous government, or anyone other than the people actually tasked with running the country.
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Refugee ban: debate intensifies
Discussion is continuing over the government's refugee ban plan with accusations of pandering to One Nation while there's little support from some Labor MPs. Courtesy ABC News.
The latest ideological proposal from the government – let's ban all asylum seekers from ever entering Australia, even if they become citizens of other countries – is the latest piece of mean-spirited garbage based on the questionable notions that the best way to stop people smugglers is to torment those desperate enough to use their services, and that the only effective method of saving lives at sea is to ruin them on land.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has written a scathing comment piece about how the new legislation is a betrayal of Malcolm Turnbull's supposed principles. The response has already begun with the government pointing out the deaths that occurred in the wake of the Rudd government's changes to the Pacific Solution and the increase in refugee boat arrivals. And both, let's be clear, are correct.
But let's sidestep the issue in question, because while it's refugees (again) today, it could just as easily be one of the many, many, many other matters that have been argued over for the last four years or so.
Like, for example: emissions trading, renewable energy development, marriage equality, funding for schools, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, cuts to arts organisations, indigenous incarceration levels, access to legal advice, domestic violence, Medicare funding, the National Broadband Network rollout, protection of the Great Barrier Reef, funding for the CSIRO, university fees, housing affordability, paid parental leave, the ballooning level of public and household debt, corporate tax avoidance, water resource management, parallel importation of books and access to mental health services. It's not as though there isn't stuff to be getting on with.
We're used to watching political parties make hay out of each other's failures and sidestep their own responsibilities by childishly bleating "b-b-but they done heaps more worserer things when they was boss!"
However, the Coalition have been in power for two terms during which time they – and only they – have had the power to make policy. Thus it's hardly unfair to expect them to do more than stamp their little feet and blame Labor when people ask why they've been letting entirely solvable problems go from complicated and expensive to far more complicated and orders of magnitude more expensive under their idle watch.
Take climate change: Australia could have introduced an emissions trading scheme a decade ago and started investing properly in renewable energy research. At this point we'd be well on our way to the low carbon future that is a necessary condition of our future survival while also being at the forefront of an increasingly profitable export industry - just in time for the developing world to start buying up big on non-fossil fuel power generation.
Instead, the Abbott and Turnbull governments chose to abandon our progress on what was a stone cold historical inevitability by pretending that the science wasn't settled and that there was some sort of nonsensical global conspiracy to make everyone believe in the thing that was clearly happening.
Hence now Australia is going to have to do the things we could have done in 2007 – only now the costs are greater, the benefits reduced, and the situation far more acute.
And that job is made harder for the Turnbull government by only having a one-seat majority in the lower house and an obstacle course in the senate crossbench – except that was a situation which the Turnbull government created for itself by calling an ill-advised double dissolution election.
The government has also created exciting extra problems for itself over the past few years by gleefully attacking anyone less than entirely deferential, from other parties to the media to public servants like Australian Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs and Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson. who has resigned. That hasn't exactly shown a respectful willingness to work towards solutions in the national interest, which makes bipartisanship at this point something of an ambitious dream.
If there's one thing that Labor, the Greens and every other party learnt from the Coalition during the tenuous Labor government of Julia Gillard it's that when the party in power is weak and divided, you attack and attack and attack and attack. Tony Abbott gave a five-year masterclass in political aggression, before switching from fighting those outside his party to those within it.
And yes, even when things are good, running a country is incredibly difficult. Abiding by international agreements is frustrating. Compromising with the Senate is time consuming and complex. But – and this is really important – that's the job.
Maybe this government can't do that job like competent adults, but it's high time Australia found one that can. We've wasted enough time as it is.
Andrew P Street's new book The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull: the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat is out now through Allen & Unwin
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