Advertisment

Opinion

8 April, 2021

Grow up, man up and deal with the issues

Editorial - Friday April 9, 2021

By Peter McCullagh

Grow up, man up and deal with the issues - feature photo

Once again the Australian public has been treated to a massive finger pointing, pollie shaming exercise from some of our elected leaders.

The Queensland Deputy Premier, Steven Miles takes aim at the Prime Minister and claims he was using the COVID-19 vaccine rollout to distract from the issue of the treatment of women in Canberra.

Not to be out done, the suitably morally outraged leader of the LNP in Queensland, David Crisafulli counters with an assessment that the Deputy Premier does not have the “intellectual capacity” to be an “attack dog”.

Crisafulli then called Miles’ behaviour “childish”. And on it went, tit for tat, name calling and whilst this was going on both sides were struggling to occupy the moral high-ground.

With any game of political one-up-manship there is bound to be collateral damage. Seems to be par for the course in modern warfare.

Collateral damage: - injury inflicted on something other than the intended target.

Whilst these highly paid leaders of our economy and society are taking gratuitous pot shots at each other let’s pause and consider the collateral damage from their campaign of media 30 second grabs.

Oxygen has been wasted by two ‘leaders’ as they dominate the media’s attention and we forget about the issues related to treatment of women and our front line responders.

Yes I know Mr Miles and Crisafulli will claim they are attempting to highlight the plight of women in Canberra in addition to the amazing job our front line responders are doing.

The truth of the matter is, both testosterone fuelled bovva-boot enforcers have gone on the front foot perhaps more for personal and party political gain than out of concern for those they ‘defend’.

The spotlight was firmly on both Miles and Crisafulli who have dominated headlines and column centimetres when they should be dealing with real issues, not personal political point scoring.

So please, drop the personal insults, dial down the moral outrage and its time to ‘make a difference’. It’s time to play the ball and not the man.

The public is sick of political posturing. We need real action on both issues and less collateral damage. Please do what you have been elected to do.

I’m sure both men are well motivated and have a genuine desire to serve and ‘make a difference.’

Australia showed the world how this pandemic should be dealt with, a strong decisive approach, clearly supported by all sides of politics.

Unfortunately these two leaders have shown the world that we are not above politicising the pandemic as well as an issue which -should be above politics, how we treat women in today’s society.

Peter McCullagh

Editor

Advertisment

Most Popular