Find our true north
LEADERSHIP is not easy, and it is sometimes difficult to say how we measure it.
Yet we all seem to know when we are in the presence of great leadership, and equally we all know when it is poor. When faced with poor leadership, that indescribable feeling of disappointment, resentment and anger boil away.
When the vacuum is felt at a community level rebellion starts, anarchy prospers, and civility becomes absurdity. The United States today is a prime example.
In Australia this week, we have witnessed a very sad leadership vacuum with the Federal Court’s ruling that in 2011 then agriculture minister Joe Ludwig’s blanket ban on exporting cattle was invalid.
In making the ruling, Justice Rares commented that Mr Ludwig was aware of the “risk” of the ban, but “plunged ahead regardless”, making a decision that was “capricious and unreasonable”. Leadership?
Senator Ludwig (as he then was) is a trained lawyer, and so is Julia Gillard who was Prime Minister at the time.
Yet they wilfully stood on the neck of North Australian cattle farmers and destroyed the lives of many.
Why did this tragic failure happen? Let us hazard a guess: Remote from the issue, distant from the problem and aloof from the people and the ongoing consequences of their decisions?
Sound familiar?
In October 2020, Queenslanders will go to the poll to elect a four-year fixed-term government.
The two “leaders” are both lawyers, Brisbane based and have little to no sense that we in the North live differently to those in the southeast.
And if we needed an example, what better could there be than how the Brisbane government has managed COVID-19 in the North.
Despite these two calamitous adversities, however, light can spring eternal.
The election on October 31 is an opportunity for those seeking to be elected to represent the people of the North to lead.
Our nation needs to grow, and provision was made for that by the founders who made provision for new states in our constitution. To all candidates, here is your chance to lead and commit to a process for the North to become the seventh state where we will have our own senators that will ensure decisions like that made by Senator Ludwig don’t happen again, and our own parliament will make decisions about how we manage issues like COVID-19.
HENRY FRACCHIA,
Vice President, North Queensland State
Alliance, Mundingburra.