Tom Dusevic

OUR LEADERS ARE PLEASERS, NOT DOERS How should our politicians be judged? Both sides understandably compare themselves to ‘the other lot’, and proclaim themselves better. And commentators sometimes say that today’s policy or promise is better than it used to be. Yet those are relative yardsticks. They’re like the old joke – two people are running from a grizzly bear, and one yells “we can’t outrun it!” The reply is “I don’t have to outrun it: I just have to outrun you!” And it’s true that relative yardsticks are pretty vital, if for no other reason than they’re important in deciding how you should vote. Yet I think it makes more sense to use an absolute yardstick – how will history judge this campaign? Australia relies on China for prosperity and the US for security, but the ability of China’s economy to keep generating Australian prosperity is faltering, while the willingness of the US to provide us security is subject to their toxic and volatile politics. So today’s changed backdrop says history will look at this election with deeply enquiring eyes. History’s grizzly won’t care if one side has marginally better policies than the other, or even if a few of the policies of both sides are better than they used to be. History will rightly see that as rounding errors. World events are rapping on our door, but the response of both sides has been to plug their ears and to try to plug ours. They are pleasers, not doers. I’ve long loved a speech given in April 2008 by Don Russell – former chief of staff to Paul Keating and Ambassador to Washington. He said “political figures tend to fall into two groups. There are those who subscribe to the notion that if you are nice to the electorate, the electorate will be nice to you. The other group tends to believe that the electorate is much more impatient and believes that, unless you are being useful, the electorate will inevitably tire of you and replace you. Loosely speaking, these two groups can be described as the ‘pleasers’ and the ‘doers’ …. Pleasers will try not to upset people; will seek approval from as many groups as possible; and will try and shield the electorate and themselves from bad news. Doers will identify problems and be seen to deal with them. Doers tend to maintain a dialogue with the electorate and tend to want to educate people. They tend to seek acknowledgement for tasks accomplished. For a doer, transparency can be an asset; the identification of problems is the basis for the next set of recognised achievements. For a pleaser, transparency can be scary; once a problem is identified it might need to be dealt with, which could have unpredictable and possibly painful consequences. Doers also tend to have more fun. The life of a minister might be shockingly hard and thankless but at least the doer has something to show for it when it is all over. The doer also experiences the exhilarating thrill of doing something worthwhile and important. The pleaser on the other hand lives the life of a thousand miseries. And at the end, he or she will find that a legacy which consists of a mishmash of half-baked policy initiatives provides little comfort …. A government’s narrative is important: the big picture story that senior ministers and Prime Ministers tell about the state of the nation and the strategy of the government. A government’s narrative differentiates it from its opponents, energises its supporters and builds a case for national action. At times of crisis and national difficulty, it is essential that the government of the day articulate a clear and coherent story about the nature of the challenges, and the strategy they have in hand to deal with them …. Doers find a clearly articulated narrative helpful; pleasers find them troublesome. A narrative helps build the case for change and it provides the benchmark against which achievements can be measured and acknowledged. A narrative leverages up the influence of senior ministers; it empowers departments like the Treasury and gives guidance to all. It reassures the electorate that the government is on the job and most importantly the electorate appreciates having a benchmark against which they can judge performance.” Ahhh. Those were the days ... These days, however, our nation’s government and the alternative government are both pleasers, pretending that today’s challenges can be met with business as usual. I fear history will judge that as mediocre.