SMH: Letter to editor

SMH 30 April 2012

At the H.V. Evatt Memorial Dinner in Katoomba on Saturday, Senator John Faulkner was inspirational in identifying the distorting lack of trust pervading political discourse in democracies around the world.

Before we can begin to chart safe passage through this sea of malevolence, we need to recognise that social media, talkback radio and reliance on endless surveys have reduced public debate to an ill-informed and superficial level. So cynical an environment inevitably reduces our capacity to engage in serious discussion.

A searing case in point is the tendency for even mainstream media to call into question the legitimacy of Australia's governing coalition because one political party happens not to have a clear majority on the floor of the House of Representatives. Whatever one's political views, it needs to be acknowledged this Parliament has had the nerve and negotiating skills to enact critical legislative reforms. Curiously, no one mentions that Australia has been governed by 14 coalitions since Federation without the sky falling in.

It's an important point. People seem not to grasp that Abbott's Coalition is no such thing. The Liberal Party maintains its uneasy alliance with the National Party with a view to electoral victory and not much else.

But MPs on the opposition and crossbenches need to remind themselves that Labor holds more federal seats on its own than any other political party in the country and there must be very sound reasons for that to be the case. So why don't our political blitherers, pollsters, shock jocks and letters editors encourage some reflection upon that statistic for democracy's sake?

The ''Doc's'' legacy deserves no less.