If a week is a long time in politics, what does that make the 24 hours we saw on Tuesday-Wednesday? I'm finding it hard to recall a more chaotic, ugly, fascinating...and ultimately distracting...day during my 15 years as a journalist.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
And it's the distraction that is key here. For a week now we've been chasing personalities instead of the real issues that matter.
We are four and a bit months on from the region's most devastating bushfires and we still have residents living in tents not able to access government "support" even as the cold weather descends; clean-up crews only just now making a start on Cobargo village despite that being among the most publicised and visible of January's destruction; Bega Valley council battling with huge financial impacts of both its own making as well as due to COVID-19 lockdowns.
Instead we have politicians of all three tiers of government promoting their own career prospects, party in-fighting and colleague back-stabbing. As Andrew Constance rightly pointed out - we've all had a gutful. I trust he realises we include him and his about face(s) in that observation too.
Constance was clearly a changed man and politician after January's bushfires. And many said for the better. Open, not afraid to show fragility and be emotionally connected to his constituents and neighbours. If only more politicians were like that.
However, you can't use the bushfires as a reason behind making the leap into federal politics and then less than 24 hours later, use those same bushfires as one of the reasons not to. It's also unlikely that's the first time he's been called a bad word, whether by a mate or a political adversary - Sydney Light Rail anyone?. There's certainly more to this week's flip-flopping than those excuses, but it remains to be seen what lasting damage the Constance/Barilaro circus has done - if any - to our state MPs and their future working relationship.
Questioning that relationship, of course, was Labor and it's state leadership. To be honest, my initial thought was, well that's to be expected, that's par for the course of whomever is in opposition.
But on reflection quite frankly, it's insulting. Insulting to all of us left in the blackened landscape, homeless and cold, missing out on work and missing our friends in isolation, only to hear bickering between parties from the comfort of their Sydney taxpayer-funded townhouses and offices instead of delivering solutions we've been screaming for for months.