Calm down: SA politics is not war
Everyone’s upset with Martin Hamilton-Smith – that’s understandable, but it doesn’t excuse the appalling military tone to political debate this week.
Coupled with martial rhetoric about Hamilton-Smith being a “traitor” and “deserter”, the increasing focus on the former Liberal leader’s family members is irresponsible.
The rhetoric reached a low point today in an execrable article in The Advertiser by former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett in which he brings a young Hamilton-Smith family member – a child – into his spittle-riddled attack on the former state Liberal leader who this week joined Labor’s cabinet.
Kennett, a key adviser to Liberal leader Steven Marshall in the development of his losing election strategy, should know better from his time heading up mental health body Beyond Blue.
But he didn’t stop there.
After questioning Hamilton-Smith’s example to a child, Kennett then compared his behaviour to tragic events in Afghanistan when local soldiers turned their weapons on Australian diggers.
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In terms of a contribution to public debate in a major media outlet, I can’t think of a more repulsive and offensive political analogy in more than 25 years of covering and observing Australian politics.
[Kennett, it should be noted, was distinctly pragmatic back in the 1990s when Liberal Prime Minister John Howard was cutting deals with independent Brian Harradine and Labor “rat” Mal Colston to secure the sale of Telstra. “A small price to pay,” he said of the deal-making at the time.]
However, Kennett is not alone in his ridiculously over-the-top rhetoric.
On ABC radio this week, a caller invoked Breaker Morant in a way that should not have been allowed to go to air.
It was threatening, in the most distasteful way.
Let’s put things in perspective.
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Hamilton-Smith, a former soldier of distinguished service, has abandoned his party, his colleagues and political friends in a move which entrenches the Weatherill Labor Government.
It is one of the most extraordinary recent examples of the betrayal of a political party – but that’s all it is.
He hasn’t compromised the Westminster system of democracy; his behaviour has nothing to do with his military service; he hasn’t “deserted” his constituents or failed in his duties as an MP or, as Kennett disgracefully suggested, as an example to a young relative.
Many business leaders have suggested that Hamilton-Smith’s involvement in the Cabinet could be good for the state.
Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen, but it does show that there is some sobriety remaining in our community, beyond the drunk-on-outrage attacks launched against the Member for Waite.
State politics, as others have noted, is “retail” politics.
In other words, our state governments manage “products” produced in the big political and economic factories of Canberra, in the boardrooms of Sydney and Melbourne, and overseas, in places like China and India.
State governments have an impact on our lives, certainly, but it is but a hill of beans compared with the mountain of influence from other sources.
So to compare a state politician’s paper-pushing and mundane deal-making with the life of a soldier engaged in potentially fatal combat would be laughable if it wasn’t so potentially incendiary.
Hamilton-Smith should have expected scathing character assessments from his former colleagues.
He shouldn’t have to put up with a young family member being drawn into what has become a hysterical frenzy.
Unlike other places in the world, politics in Australia does not involve war, or anything like it.
We should be thankful for our relatively genteel political culture – and seek to protect it more diligently.
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