Losing Sight of the Forest for the Trees.

To follow the daily stream of news has a risk: by focusing on minutiae -- as I tend to do -- one loses perspective of the totality. A bit the cliché of losing sight of the forest for the trees.

These last few days, as the avalanche of terrible bushfire news reduces now to a trickle, I again felt that.

Take for instance the sports rorts scandal.

A month or so ago, an independent audit of a Commonwealth $100 million sports grants scheme revealed serious irregularities.

Overseen by then federal Minister for Sports and National Party Deputy leader Bridget McKenzie, this is how the scheme was supposed to operate: (1) eligible non-profit sports associations from all over Australia were to submit their applications; (2) Sports Australia (a statutory body under McKenzie’s authority) would rank the applications on merit; (3) money would be granted according to that ranking.

Instead, before the May 2019 federal election, screw merits, McKenzie used the program to gain crucial swinging voters in other parties’ marginal seats (divisions held on slim margins of votes). Journalists even found the smoking gun: the spreadsheets used to allocate the money, colour coded according to the parties (red, for Labor; blue, Liberals, and so on).

This picture speaks for itself:

(source)

The smiling woman (left) handing down the novelty check with her “personal donation” to the Yankalilla Bowling Club is Georgina Downer, then Liberal candidate for the seat of Mayo, which Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie held on a slim margin.

(Downer is the daughter of Alexander Downer, the guy whose reliable testimony launched the Russiagate probe. Trust-worthiness is a family trait that, inexplicably, seems to have skipped only Georgina’s generation. Incidentally, that trick didn’t help her: she still managed to lose to Sharkie. That’s another family trait. Sadly for Georgina, it didn’t seem to have skipped her generation.).

The idea is that antics like that are unlikely to affect electoral outcomes in safe seats (those held with a wide margin of votes). Those voters are already committed to a party and won’t -- as a whole -- change their minds because of a trinket. It’s in marginal seats, full of pragmatic, quiet, swinging voters, that things like that are likely to succeed.

And those seats may decide elections.

Therefore, more meritorious applications in safe seats, whether COALition, Labor or whatever are overlooked, while less meritorious applications from marginal seats get the money.

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We’ll leave that story there (here is the current state of things, for those interested). It’s important to keep in mind that, as COALition pollies and their Murdoch media toadies tirelessly remind us, that kind of thing is not limited to the COALition.

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Parties in government use all sorts of tricks, often bordering on bribery, to retain power. Vote for me because I gave money to your bowling club.

Politicians know that. How could they not? Those are the tricks of their trade.

Pundits and journalists and even casual observers know that, too. It’s not rocket science.

And yet, after every single election, with clockwork regularity, one sees the same nonsensical fairy tale repeated tediously: the people have just given a clear mandate to the winning party.

The winners’ enthusiasm for that fable is understandable, as is understandable the eager readiness Murdoch media prostitutes show in adopting it. It’s the cover they need for their bastardry: we are just following orders.

It’s just marginally harder to understand losers’ acceptance. “Mandate” is the excuse they want to imitate the winners. That’s what the voters want, after all.

Fossil fuels in Australia is a case in point. The theory is that people like those in the picture gave Scotty from Marketing and the COALition a mandate to burn and drown our country, not that they voted for the COALition because it gave them money for some club.

Facing the public, “mandate” theories beat having to admit both sides are in thrall of the same vested interests which point in the same direction. Much better PR, no?

Swinging voters, too, get something. They are the Quiet Australians minding their own business and nothing beyond (and they are the ones journos write for). Salt of the earth kind of people that they are, they don’t protest. They are realists, free of ideological illusions. In other words, the Sensible Middle (another popular cliché) parties need to court. All that while getting bribes donations for their clubs as reward for their virtues and even a photo opportunity with those lovely pollies.

It’s harder to understand honest journalists letting that farce pass unchallenged. Guys, don’t lose sight of the forest.