Newly appointed New South Wales Opposition leader Luke Foley has been very careful to publicly clear the decks prior to leading Labor to the polls this coming March. He has freely admitted that his past is not squeaky clean - and shocked many people when he revealed that he has twice been caught behind the wheel on drink driving offences.
He blew .07 when he was twenty three years old, and .08 more recently when he left a Labor function in 2007. These matters were not known to the rank and file when they elected him leader, but Foley claims that they were known to the ALP's head office. At the time of these revelations he also admitted "experimenting "with Marijuana as a young man, and claimed that his twenty-six years of driving was marred by just a single speeding conviction.
This was a wise decision on Foley's part. The election campaign is about to get under way and what politicians most fear is a revelation hitting newspaper headlines and drawing attention away from the message they are trying to deliver. That dreaded word "Scandal " can make or break a successful campaign and it is far better to have it out in the open before the sniping begins.
Politicians are not the most loved creatures on planet earth and their standing in the eyes of many ranges somewhere between real estate vendors and used car salespeople, and yet we trust them to navigate through parliament the laws under which we live. In recent times, their record has been consistently tarnished. It is likely that retribution will still be progressing through the courts for the next decade for some of the outright scams that have been perpetrated on the public purse and many have left parliament with their reputation shredded.
We pay our politicians a decent salary and they get a range of hefty "benefits " in one form or another - and when they finally retire they get a pension we other mere mortals can only wish for in our dreams. The sitting days of parliament are short in comparison with most other jobs - and they get the prefix "Honourable "to preceed their names. No wonder these are jobs that many seek !
Unfortunately, despite what individuals promise on the election trail in the vast majority of cases the candidates vying for our vote are simply party "hacks ". They are subjected to political party discipline and when it comes to a vote they invariably toe the party line. This makes the utterances of people like Luke Foley important. As the party leader, Foley should be indicating the policies his party would follow if it were elected, but of course circumstances can change and there is no legal obligation that any election promise will be met. We therefore take the utterances of politicians with the proverbial "grain of salt "!
From time to time, laws are enacted that try to clean up parliament and bring the personal affairs of elected members into open view. We expect our representatives to list their holdings and personal wealth - and withdraw from voting where a conflict of interests arise. The very nature of parliament puts information in the hands of those elected to office that could be used to generate personal wealth - but that would be considered "insider trading "and is strictly against the law.
On the other hand, can anyone remember an ex member of parliament down on his or her luck and sleeping under a bridge somewhere ? It is not uncommon for those who have been former members of parliament to morph into elevated positions in the business community - and sitting on boards of directors is common. They bring with them that valuable list of contacts and the inside knowledge that turns wheels and achieves results. In particular, ex ministers are highly sought as "technical advisers " to chart the course ahead for business.
In this state, the campaign to present a vision of how the next parliament will govern is about to get under way. A large percentage of the voters will cast their ballot along traditional party lines and the emergence of various "special interest "parties may lead to coalitions of unlikely bedfellows, but such is the trend that has emerged in Australian politics.
We are one of the few nations in this world which insists on every eligible voter at least presenting at a voting booth and having their name ticked off - and be handed a ballot paper. How - or even whether we lodge a valid vote is a matter of personal choice, but at least when the results are tallied - we get the government that we deserve.
If it fails to deliver what we hoped for, we can only blame ourselves !
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