Headless chooks

Tony Abbot and Julia Gillard are racking up the flight hours -- sadly, not in the pilot's seat.

It seems that voters in marginal seats in Queensland and Western Australia are deemed worthy of sustained attention in the form of repeated visits from the leaders of the major parties.  I think this is a waste of money, and a burden on the environment in the form of burnt jet fuel.

The problem with all this flying about is that nobody really gets the sustained attention of Julia Gillard or Tony Abbot.  They appear, do their thing, let the papers take a photo or two, answer a couple of questions at a door stop and get on the plane or other transport and go away.  The real effect is that the local candidates -- the ones who will be the true beneficiaries of voting on Saturday -- are overshadowed in the presence of whichever Dear Leader they follow.

The only contribution visits of this sort make to our political culture is the continued cultivation of the impression that we elect a Prime Minister, rather than a Parliament.  This is, of course, completely wrong: a good civics course in the form of one-minute ads screened on the hour, every hour, for the next three years would do much to amend matters, but hardly likely to be sanctioned under the present arrangements.

There are a couple of other cankers floating about.  Some whacko has been publishing rubbish about supposed citizens' rights -- guaranteed in the Constitution, apparently -- being traduced.  This is sad, given the atrophied and inconclusive state of the argument over a bill of rights for Australian citizens.  The sad thing is that the whackos are taken seriously by sad people who are literate enough to go and read the Constitution to find out what it really says.  Undoubtedly the US Federal Bank is wound up in this sad tale somewhere.

I agree with Shaun Carney's view that this is simply one of those bread-and-butter elections that we have more often than not.  He does put a compelling argument for why big picture politics are absent this time round in the face of uncertainty about the likelihood of a further deterioration in the global financial situation.  The reality is that uncertainty is not conducive to big dreams.

In the meantime, I really wish all senior politicians would get pilot training.  At least they would be responsible for their own flying around like headless chooks.