We have to talk (about) Kevin

I’ve just got back from a fortnight in Vietnam. 

During my trip Singapore airport asked me to rate the cleanliness of their toilets. I just had to jab the appropriate smiley face. Vietnam hotels wanted feedback about whether their staff have served my every need. 

But I still haven’t been polled about my political convictions nor my choice for the upcoming (whenever Kevin calls it) Australian election.

So in the increasingly mistaken idea that someone in the universe is interested in what I think (even if some weeks my most numerous followers are in Romania), here I go again.

 We need to talk, Kevin.

I have only met you once in person, and you were polite, courteous, interested in what was going on at the school you visited, and seemed to connect with the kids and staff. Now that may be politics, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I have friends who are public servants and who have nightmare tales about working under your former leadership regime. 

So here is my advice given those two direct experiences:

1. Don’t micro-manage. There are excellent people in the world who can do their job without being watched every minute, or without having to provided inordinate amounts of detailed briefings for no real purpose. Be clear about what you want and let people get on with the job.

2. If you want to work 24/7 then that’s fine. But don’t expect your public servants to do the same thing. Expecting people to be on deck before 7am to provide responses to media items is just unnecessary and absolutely disrespectful. People have families and need to be able to balance the demands of their work with the demands of their children, spouses, partners, parents etc.

By the same token don’t create accountability  and deadlines that required working in to the wee hours of the night either. This is not fair, nor reasonable. 

3. Find advisers who have some life experience, brains and education and will provide real advice about what’s going on out here instead of responding to polls that obviously don’t reach the whole population – ever (have I told you nobody polls me). Look up praxis.

4.Don’t let advisers and staff groom you with blandness to the point of disappearance.

5. I’m over ‘cut to the bone’ and I’ll soon be over ‘negative’ as well. The media may like catch cries – advisers may tell you if you repeat the same message over and over so that it is ingrained in the psyche, but I say forget the tired and trite and talk to us like we are intelligent people who understand complicated English.

6. Don’t resort to abuse – you are a leader – you set the tone. There is a time for spitting the dummy- rarely- and then it should happen with intelligence and wit (sic Paul Keating).

7. Drive policy change with backbone, conviction and sound rationale that doesn’t change in an ad hoc response to unpopular comment.

8. And finally, (and again, I can’t believe I am citing Mark Latham) it’s time to do something about the factional and sub-factional Labour system that determines candidacy and policy direction. I appreciate this is a big one and that you are not God.

There’s a lot riding on you Kevin. What have you got to lose?

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No art work this week - have been too busy enjoying the sights of Vietnam.

Can I push this polling?

While the morning was trying to climb above the zero degree mark,  I was motoring down the Highway for an early morning start at my part-time job where my workmates speak tweet and I speak encyclopaedic. I sometimes think I am the bike riding, power station loving character on New Tricks.

I was daydreaming about the 30+ temperatures and humidity I will experience in Hanoi next week but was abruptly bought back to reality by my Radio National driving companion. Craig Emerson was in the spotlight making it plain that he had no book of protocols from which he was speaking, and if the listener wanted they could bring their camera around to his side of the desk and check it out. Oh, such fascinating pollie comedy so early in the morning!

His point was about polls. His claim: everyone does polls – news polls, social polls, lobby group polls, factional polls, secret polls…so the list went on. And while he didn’t quote: the only poll that counts is the one at the voting booth on election day, he couldn't miss the golden opportunity  to reference cutting to the bone and citing events in Queensland as indicative of what might happen should Labor be unsuccessful at the poll that counts.

Now, I’ve been doing research lately and developing and analysing survey results is becoming a specialty. So I thought it might be a good idea to develop my own poll and send it out – since nobody polls me - ever (sic. the name of this blog!). 

Here are some sample questions:

1. Have you or a member of your family past or present come to Australia as a result of famine, political persecution, war, or because you/they were sentenced for the term of your/their natural life?

                                    Yes                         No

         If Yes: you are a refugee and you may need to invest in a lifebuoy

         If No: you may need to check ancestry.com

2. Would you prefer our future Prime Minister to be:

a: a redhead

b: a budgie smuggler

        If a) you may have to buy an I love Pauline shirt from your local fish and chip shop

        If b) you may want to start filling out your NZ citizenship application now.

3. What are your priorities for the nation?

         a) Subsidising multi-nationals so they can eventually close their production in Australia when  it              becomes non-profitable to continue.

         b) Ensuring that you personally help each politician get elected in September as you don’t like to see Aussies lose their jobs. Who cares about the public servants who are out to lunch.

        c) Reducing wages so that big mining companies can make bigger profits. Gina we love you.

        d) Rolling back and repealing any laws made in the last 40 years so that we are once again that grand and glorious society so wonderfully depicted in Mad Men .

       e) Guaranteeing funding for political parties so that they can promote themselves for nine months before every election. Give me more Bob Katter.

       f) Seeing more of Tom Waterhouse on TV because he knows what you want.

       g) Government take-over of the media because we all know that only government knows what is good for us to see and hear.

       h) Returning to teaching the three R’s because children can’t read or write or spell or add or calculate or do anything worth while really. And for that matter, get rid of calculators, mobile phones  and computers too.

       i) Cutting even more funding to universities because they just encourage dissenters and time wasters – get a real job.

       j) Introducing even more gruesome adds on TV that show people dying, wheezing, gasping, being trapped in coffins, or having nicotine squeezed out of their essential organs, so that even though you are a non-smoker you need to be constantly reminded about your own mortality.  

     k) Returning respect for the clergy. Heaven knows they have earned it.

     l) Cutting down all camphor laurel trees and floating them adrift since they are illegal arrivals and need to be severed before they kill all the pigeons in Lismore.

OK, that last choice is silly, but I swear someone made that argument to me in a letter once when they were writing to complain about the proliferation of such trees in school yards in Northern NSW.

When I have all my questions sorted - and I take your point that 12 options is just too many in Question 3 - I’ll give you the link to Survey Monkey and you can fill it in. 

Do you think my careful analysis and report on the data will get front page coverage in the national press?

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Art Work of the Week

I looked for something to go with todays theme and the best I could do was a a painting that is made up of squares...just like my tick boxes will look when my survey is finished!

Carol's rocks. Assemblage of  small acrylic paintings on canvas (detail)