Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised this prior to gaining office :
…and the commitment that I’ve been giving to the Australian people is that there’ll be no surprises and no excuses under a Coalition government.
Source: May 21, 2013 – Joint Doorstop Interview, Bundamba, Queensland
It was, of course, a ludicrous promise to make. There is nothing as constant as change, and any credible adult government must deal with change that may at times cause decisions to be reviewed, and commitments to be re-assessed. The Abbott government has spectacularly failed to demonstrate this fundamental adult coping skill, not least in Abbott’s fantastical undertaking to protect us from the inevitable surprises of inevitable change in the first place.
No surprises
While on the one hand using that refuge of scoundrels the old “situations change” line to excuse broken promises and commitments he never intended to keep, Abbott continues to cling to his no surprises and no excuses mantra. He can’t have it both ways. If he wants unexpected situational change (surprise) to explain his backflips, he can’t have a commitment to no surprises as well. Hell, he needs surprises to explain his changes, because nothing else credibly achieves that.
Promising citizens there will be no surprises is elephant excrement, unless we’re all about to die, in which case we can reasonably expect there likely won’t be anymore surprises, not in this world anyway.
Annabel Crabb noted that in the first three months of Abbott taking office his party could well be renamed “The Surprise Party.” The broken promises and unexpected decisions just keep on keeping on.
No excuses
If he wants to continue to claim that his is a “no excuses” government, Abbott is going to have to stop blaming the ALP for every difficulty the LNP encounters. They’ve been in office for over twelve months now. No government can blame its predecessor indefinitely, otherwise political rhetoric will come to consist entirely of what they did made us do what we did, or some infantile variation on that tiresome theme. Anyone involved in the management of children knows the old he/she started it is a path to hellish infinity that endears the instigator to nobody.
“The ALP made me do it” is no way to run a country. If you are making changes because a situation has altered since you took office, how is that the responsibility of the previous government? If these changes are genuine, why not clearly explain them? Any other approach is an excuse that insults the intelligence of all thinking people.
LNP narrative consists almost entirely of unpleasant surprises and excuses for them, or really only one excuse: the ALP made us do it. Did this government know nothing before it was elected? Was it so naive, so ill-informed, so out of touch that it took office as if newly born into political life? Doesn’t it know every government has to deal with the decisions of its predecessor and that we don’t actually care about that, it’s part of their job description and we expect them to stop whining and get on with it?
This government urgently needs to grow up and understand the serious responsibility they have towards the citizens of this country. We need a government that has at least achieved tertiary standards of development, and not one that is still toilet training in day care.
No Place For Sheep 
Hmmm, yes we do seem to have come to the point now where simply being incredulous and disparaging of this lot’s sheer incompetence is becoming less useful, and where we need to come to terms with the fact that we’re stuck with them for two more years, and to start giving constructive criticism in order to avert any further damage to the country as a whole.
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Stuff that. I’ll go the whole hog and do the job for them, perks and all. Tony can have my job. I’ll back myself in. King for a day and all that. How much worse could it be? (Maybe don’t answer that.)
Seriously though, there are plenty of otherwise intelligent people out there (I meet them all the time) who have believed for generations and will continue to believe unshakeably that the LNP are the mature adults and Labor are incapable of governing, traditionally based on nothing but media-driven echo chamber thinking that reduces the whole shebang to the simplistic level of barracking for your favourite football team (like I’m doing right now 🙂 but I’m hardly a rusted-on Laborite).
Vote 1 something else.
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I can’t find anyone who’ll admit to voting for this government, so either they are lying in shame, or I don’t know any LNP supporters, they’re all in the closet.
Which says an awful lot, really.
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I know them. They read the Murdoch Media (“Murdia”) and think Labor a very short step away from Joe Stalin.
They are having a crisis of confidence just lately. 🙂
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This tweet perhaps shows the beginning of an awakening:
IMHO the percentage of real people voting in Australian elections in accordance with law is about the international norm for non-compulsory turnout, around 60%.
Yet our official electoral statistics claim around 95% turnout.
What if such postulated disparity has been able to be translated into centrally-disposed-of successful vote claims over the years? Could not our national politics have been manipulated at will?
Are we looking at an end game scenario here?
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It is down because fools decided that “They’re all the same!” and voted informal, or not at all.
Well, fools, are they all the same?
Do you like having this government?
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No. Because the real powers that be dont want good governemt.
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Seems I’ve lost my hairy purple look…just changed email address and probably taking an odd route to updating my details.
As you were…
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Do you think they are at all interested in constructive criticism?!
I always enjoy how you think the best of people!!
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Am I your little ray of sunshine, who comes along and brightens up your day?
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What does the evidence suggest as to my caution re human nature, btw?
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Less useful, perhaps but altogether more fun. I’ll give them constructive criticism after they resign en masse and allow Labor to take over.
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Very late in the day now, and few Australians seem to have the mental skills and character to work through what makes the current situation problematic.
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Think about it.
Their initial attack on Labor came on competence, something not always born out by the facts.
So, they werent being asked to form government on an ideological mandate. They were elected on a safe pair of hands, to coin an old sports analogy, NOT to rock the boat and just run things better.
All they had to do was go to Canberra, quietly run things effficently and get out of other people’s faces.
But this is not how their peculiar mindset has acted, rather they have mistaken an invitation to the honour of administering the nations government for an invitation to play class yard bully and to have thier own sanctimonious fingers in the till while crucifying asylum seekers at the worst case, to the disadvantaged put through the mill locally, as with the “ewige” scapegoats on welfare.
He is uncompromising on abortion, but must be allowed leeway to intervene/ contravene on issues he thinks it ok to involve hmself with. That’s his spin message: do what I say not as I do, trust me, but never expect me to demonstrate good faith or “mutual obligation” in response, lest it upsets me that you don’t (trust me).
I mean you can forgive the Pharáohs for thinking they were God, twas an earlier civilisation, but how do we explain people of the twenty first century who think/know they are God, in a supposedly enlightened age and worse stilll expect society to put up with their nonsenses.
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Arrogance, and hopefully in the not too distant future, hubris.
Though this hostage situation will work for the Abbott, I fear.
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The hostage event should not deflect us from dispassionate consideration of it, eg, how is the bod resposible so utterly ALIENATED from society in general and whether we can avoid more mossie bashing in favour the hard brain work required to figure out where an event fits in with others.to make up the current picture.
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Or perhaps it is not he who is alienated, but us. I’m sure that is how he would have viewed it. And you, paul walter, would have been one of the first beheaded if he’d got you and a big knife handy.
The tabbott (ie a cunt with no use whatsoever) wanted an ISIL flag. And when he had that and his little chat with T Abbott (another cunt with no use whatsoever) he might have used the occasion to try a little decapitation.
Spare him no dispassion.
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DQ, I finf it tragic, this news. So much he could have acheived for the country…
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I think the inevitable need for change once a new party takes government reins, just demonstrates how much the Federal Public service really run the country, but throw an occassional policy breadcrumb to the fearless leader to avoid embarrassment. This to me, explains why so much of ALP and LNP policy ends up looking like a carbon paper copy of the others policy paper with only the logo changed at the top. Even the ALP eventually voted for offshore processing for example. Must have been a bad menu in the canberra cafe that day. I so despair of the incompetence of the parliamentary membership and the whole co-opted process we pretend is a democracy that I have studiously avoided political commentary and blogs for a while now. It leads to a happier life even if it means I occassionally have to wash the sand out of my hair, ears and eyes. So Merry Xmas to you all and a HNY too and lets hope the 2015 recession doesnt hurt too much.
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Happy holidays to you, and thank you for making Sheep an exception to your blog abstinence. 🙂
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