[jen729w]

Let’s try to make this more constructive than the Herald Sun letters page, shall we?

For instance, I read a profile of Jacqui Lambie [0] in The Saturday Paper [1] the other week. I’m a Green-voting Fitzroy-dwelling hipster, literally, but I found it gave me a real appreciation of someone who I would have dismissed out of hand the week before [3].

Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult. They really don’t get paid that much. I wouldn’t want to do it.

If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough. It might not make you any less cynical — spoiler: politics is a shit-fight — but it might give you a little more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that. They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good. (Rhodes was Obama’s adviser: if anyone has similar recommendations for Australian politics, I’d love to hear them.)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie.

[1]: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21...

[3]: Actually, a few weeks prior, Jacqui sat beside us in the Qantas lounge at Devonport. We moved — mostly because of the annoying kids clambering all over the furniture and the toxic hellstew that is Sky News blaring from the TV, but we joked that we didn’t want to sit next to her. Now I wish I’d said hello.

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book)

[Intermernet]

Jacqui Lambie has matured so much as a politician. I used to see her as someone flailing around in an inexpert way, but now I actually respect her. I rarely agree with her stance on many things, but she seems to have developed consistency in her messaging, and doesn't toe party lines. She gets respect from me due to being a lot more genuine than most other Australian politicians. I wish we could have more politicians like her, but spread across the political spectrum.

[dwd]

This was an interesting article on her from the weekend:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/20/from-...

She's get my respect as she genuinely seems to want to make a difference, not just make a career out of being a politician.

[nl]

I agree - she (generally speaking) seems open to finding out more about issues.

The other person who impressed me was Ricky Muir, from the motoring enthusiasts party who won a senate seat with 0.51% of the vote (via preference deals)[1].

He was very inarticulate (yes, that's not a typo - he was bad at public speaking), but he actually read about things! And voted in ways that made sense! I turned right around on him - I thought it was terrible he got in and it turned out quite well.

Rex Patrick is another senator who seems to do a good job.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Muir

[jacques_chester]

> Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult.

I worked part-time for a backbench MP for a while. There is no time off for a politician: if you are awake, you are on duty. At home? Constant calls and texts from colleagues, journalists and party officials. Out shopping? You'll be interrupted. Celebrating wedding anniversary at a nice restaurant? You'll be interrupted. Walking down the street? Insults yelled from cars. Plus you are expected to show up for everything. Every new classroom, every intersection being repainted, every Northern Districts Cat Club AGM, every school fête, every art exhibition, everything. And you are expected to fix everything, whether or not you are even the right level of government for it: immigration policy, local hospital, the roof of the primary school, potholes, rubbish collection, council rates, parking fines. You are blamed for thousands of things beyond your direct control and outside your legal control.

It is actually a terrible job.

[baybal2]

> If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough.

I think this goes well for politics in the West. Politicians there "go with the flow" and almost never against.

I used to socialise with Cristy Clark social circles when I lived in Vancouver. On my naive questions about why things a, b, and c not got discussed, I almost always got a hushed response like "It would've been a political suicide to this and that camp."

Politics is very hard to enter, and very easy to be ejected out.

It is those who have the power to direct that "flow" of bigger social trends in which all mainstream politics happens that truly direct the nation, but such people are very, very rare, few times a century occurrences for a nation.

[thundergolfer]

> It might give you a little more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that. They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good.

I'm not comfortable with low standards such as these. We are, for starters, in a climate emergency and cannot afford a "well, they're human, they tried" approach to our politicians.

Judge them on their actions, who cares about whether they're "regular". More to the point, "regular" people and business-as-usual neoliberalism is what got us in this mess.

I've read that piece about Lambie, did this bit not stand out to you?

> But later, when asked about immigration policy, she questioned whether Australia should select people on “moral” grounds. Did she mean Christians should be preferred to Muslims? She replied: “Yeah, I think that would make myself and many other Australians feel more comfortable.”

This is blatant bigotry against Muslims given that there's no good reason the prefer Christians to Muslims, all things being equal. The Christian Right is a leading force for destruction and oppression globally; the basic reason Lambie prefers Christians is xenophobia.

For the record I think religiosity should count against you on an immigration application because it's bedfellows with conservative politics and straight-out bigotry, but you don't get to pick and choose religions like that without revealing yourself a bigot and a xenophobe. I demand better from public leaders.