Internal PESTS are the worst
POST-ELECTION stress traumatic syndrome (PESTS) is a condition frequently suffered by the leaders of political parties in the aftermath of an election.
The main symptom is an inability to process the reality that their party didn’t perform very well.
Globally, Donald Trump is the leading exemplar of the malady, but until last week the worst Australian case I ever saw was Liberal leader Billy Snedden, who insisted that he hadn’t lost the 1974 federal election.
That election was admittedly a close-run thing, which apparently exacerbated Snedden’s PESTS and saw him laughed out of politics.
“I didn’t lose,” Billy famously insisted. “I came second.”
Last Saturday night in the Hobart Tally Room, PESTS was epidemic. Despite scraping back with the same slender majority that he had convinced Governor Warner necessitated an early election, Peter Gutwein was now ecstatic.
“What a night, what a night,” he enthused. “We have won this election convincingly.”
The PESTS-afflicted Premier was victorious in the face of a sombre political reality that would deliver, at best, a mere 12 or 13 seats in the 25-seat House of Assembly.
Yes, it did represent a historic third term in Tasmanian government (for those historians who are counting), but it was hardly a landslide.
The media, too, got caught up in the contagion.
The front page of the Sunday Tasmanian the next day shouted “GUTWEIN’S GLORY DAY.”
In the cold light of dawn, it could hardly look like a convincing or stabilising win. Voters had registered their declining
support for both major parties, despite all the threats of impending anarchy.
Certainly none of us want to go through another election process soon, but with the government’s wafer-thin majority and a mercurial cast of characters, anything could happen.
Not much of a result really for an election cost of almost one and a half million dollars of your money. And after putting up with five weeks of badly made television ads, we must all be experiencing a degree of Post-electoral stress traumatic syndrome.
But back to the Tally Room. Was it because those pollies were not social distancing, nor wearing masks, that PESTS was spreading faster than a mutant virus?
“The Greens are back in town,” cried Cassy O’Connor, in a wild declaration of triumph. “The swing is on for the Greens at this election.”
But the dulling reality was that in fact the Greens won back precisely the same seats as before, albeit with an increased percentage of the vote. (But again, that’s only for those political tragics who are obsessively counting).
Cassy O’Connor, always impressive in full flight, castigated the major parties (Laborials) for threatening only to govern in majority.
They were “childish and disrespectful to democracy”, she accused.
She implored the Laborials to respect the Tasmanian environment and not to “wreck the joint”, in a great and rousing
speech full of sound and fury and signifying one thing quite uncommon.
In a state where political oratory is unknown and speeches short and perfunctory, hers was certainly the best (and longest) speech I have ever heard from the Hobart Tally Room.
Meanwhile, on live television coverage, Senator Eric Abetz, who is better known for terse character analysis than colourful oratory, observed, “You would have thought Ms O’Connor had just won the election rather than 10 per cent of the votes and two seats.”
Up to a point he was right, of course.
Although what Eric failed to note was the extent of the PESTS infection.
Everyone had succumbed,
including the defeated Labor leader, Rebecca White. Bec should have been in a world of political pain with a deeply divided party, the embarrassment of the absurd Dean Winter affair, and looking like having a meagre eight seats in the new parliament.
She was burdened with too many bad policy compromises, among them the cynical pokies deal, which in the end failed to trade conviction for votes.
As leader White has had to wear it all and suffer the consequences, though she may not have been the author of much of it.
Yet, smiling, brave and dignified on the night, Bec White behaved for all the world as if there was a political tomorrow.
“We won’t let you down. We will keep standing up for those Tasmanians who deserve a fair go.” Was that just the PESTS speaking, or do you wonder if she knows something we don’t know?
The state Labor Party itself suffers from a chronic form of PESTS.
Deluded ideological elements warring within are always more obsessed with obscure factional victories than they are with winning government. They find triumph in serial loss.
Indeed, they are probably celebrating victory right now.
But this result is so bad it bodes ill for the upcoming federal election, and probably invites intervention by the national ALP in the affairs of the state branch.
If Bec White wants to stay on as leader, perhaps what she urgently needs is a big, strong, hairy godmother from the ALP federal executive to beam down and bang a few heads together.
I wonder if she granted that wish.
We will know soon. will
HERD IMMUNITY THE ONLY WAY TO GO
be
LAST week I got the AstraZeneca jab now available to all Australians over the age of 50.
Not only was it quick and painless, but I am still here.
I accept the science that tells us that the risk of vaccination is infinitesimal compared with the dangers of catching the disease.
Statistically I was at greater risk driving to the medical practice.
As soon as possible you too should get the jab.
The pandemic will not be over until we achieve herd immunity, and the only way that can happen is when the vast majority either catch the disease or get the jab.
Which option do you reckon is less painful?