OUR POLITICIANS MUST STOP TRYING TO PASS THE PUB TEST

There is no such thing as ‘everyday Australians’ and the sooner they realise that the better for all of us

BY the end of the year, we’ll be staring down the long, tiresome barrel of a state election – a baby-kissing, hard-hat-wearing, emptypromising Groundhog Day that only politicians and journalists really appreciate.

Much is written about the gulf between politicians and the people they’re paid to represent – like how federal MPs own an average 2.6 homes each, or earn up to four times the average wage.

Few things illustrate that gap as much as when they try to act “normal” – like Kevin Rudd’s cringey “fair shake of the sauce bottle”; Scott Morrison’s radio impersonation of Taylor Swift; or walking dad-joke Tom Tate’s leather jacket and shades at Blues on Broadbeach.

Gaining popularity among “everyday Australians” means state parties often rope in federal counterparts to help – the LNP have nabbed “rock star” Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce this year.

Senator Barry O’Sullivan said: “Why wouldn’t you want to put a saddle on Barnaby Joyce to get a leg over him in your home state?” Fair suck of the sauv blanc Baz, where do we start?

Politicians have always had to try hard to make people like them, but which “everyday Australians” they should target in their campaigns is increasingly difficult to gauge.

In 2017, politicians don’t just have to burst out of their own bubbles to be seen as relatable – they have to break into the countless other bubbles voters themselves have climbed into.

People form opinions based on who they talk to, what they read and what they watch – and the delivery of that is rapidly changing.

Online, we block people we don’t agree with and follow like-minded people who make us feel like we fit better with the world.

This is exacerbated by sites like Facebook, whose systems intentionally serve us more of things we like, based on what we’ve liked in the past. As Twitter cofounder Ev Williams told the New York Times last month, “Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behaviour like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to s supply them.”

Whether we’re looking at c car crashes, political debate or cats on pianos, people are increasingly moving in c circles that validate their views, largely ignoring the rest.

Political decisions are o often assessed by whether or not they would pass the “pub test” – whether they meet the expectations of the community.

But in 2017 there is no single pub test – there are countless pub tests, in pubs pollies have never heard of and don’t know how to find.

Would British PM Teresa May have called an election if she could have foreseen herself coming close to losing it to a career backbencher? Would her predecessor David Cameron have held a referendum on Brexit if he’d thought for a single second it would get up? How were US liberals so blindsided by the election of Donald Trump?

While everything in the world is increasingly fluid, everything about our political system is creaking with age – we vote with pencils and paper, and print reams of how-to-vote cards nobody reads.

There is no such thing as the “everyday Australian”. To campaign for them is boring, and boring is an ineffective waste of time. The politicians who realise that will surprise us all.

kathleen.skene@news.com.au