With Julia Gillard about to announce her new climate change policy (which I am sure will have to be better than the opposition’s!)—after last weekend setting a date for the next Australian election on August the 21st—I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the upcoming Australian election here, and Julia’s performance so far. If I could sum up her style of politics in one word, I would call it “pragmatic”. Unlike Kevin Rudd, she certainly isn’t over promising, which I think was his downfall: I still believe he was sincere in his stated intent, but when circumstances didn’t allow him to deliver on some of his promises, he was perceived as dishonest. Julia certainly isn’t falling into that trap—she has been very cautious indeed with her promises.
July 23 update: Well Julia has just announced her climate change policy, and while it certainly is better than the opposition’s, I think she’s taken the pragmatism a little too far this time, to the point where it looks like a bit of a cop-out. I’d really like to see her work together with the Greens (who will no doubt hold the balance of power after the election) to take decisive action on climate change.
Many people have dismissed Julia’s pragmatism as “backing down” and “not standing for anything”, but quite frankly, I think it is a good thing. This is politics after all: deals have to be struck and compromises have to be made to get anything done at all. As I’ve said here before, I often feel left wing/progressive voters are too idealistic—unless our leaders do a perfect job, we often don’t vote for them. But we have to face the reality that the nature of politics makes this virtually impossible. And it opens the way for conservative politicians to get into power, as conservative voters usually aren’t critical at all: they just believe what they want to believe (the facts be damned), and believe their politicians deliver on it, seemingly no matter what. We have to accept less than ideal solutions in the short term, so that more ideal solutions can be arrived at later. Otherwise, we are simply allowing the conservatives to turn back the clock. Read the rest of this entry »