Pollies – well-meaning amateurs

Its an facet of democracy that you might get “ordinary” people in places of political power. After all it is the meaning of the word.
It is also why we have public servants that make up Departments. They should be there to see the policies of the politicians are realised and that politicians are well supported, without bias.
I am in no way an apologist for politicians and the decisions they make, far from it. Many people work in jobs for which they have no bits of paper or formal qualifications. this is not a definition of “well meaning amateurs”. Judge people on the outcomes of their work not what bits of paper they have.
I have qualifications in engineering, but worked successfully in education for over 35 years. I guess some of us learn more quickly and are more adaptable than others.
Just in case people may think I have connections to politicians I do not nor have I ever belonged to a political party and vote for issues not parties or politicians.

Politicians tend to forget that they are simply employees and like all employees they have one job and that is to do what their boss tells them to do. In their case the boss is their electorate and their job is to do what their electorate tells them to do. They are not employed to represent the interests of their party or their own agendas.

If they don’t like doing what their boss tell them to then they have the same right as every other employee in the country…quit.

There is a definite issue with politics and maybe even the way democracy works, but every system and idea I’ve come across has flaws. If a minister actually listens to experts then they can do the job, but when its blatantly not possible to listen to experts and hold the same left/right wing ideology, so the experts get ignored then I think the minister is going to struggle. Politicians really need to do a better job of picking which policies to oppose/propose. I still struggle to understand how the NBN has become such a big mess purely for the benefit of whomever was pulling the liberal party policy strings on that issue. Its was by far the most popular labor policy and probably one that deserved bi-partisan support. Labor weren’t exactly rolling it out well and that where the liberals should have made their stand. Now we are being screwed over again and just getting infrastructure built in this country becomes far too difficult and we all suffer.

I personally think making political donations a transparent process is the best thing we can do to our current system. If someone can’t make a political donation without transparency of where the money has actually come from then they are not donating for the right reasons. They should also be open to public and media scrutiny.

To Masquara, you’re possibly right but I know when I had those portfolios I had the experience of being a public housing tenant prior to going into politics and I came from another country and spent 6 years in a migrant camp. Perhaps these experiences helped but I do know that empathy is often missing fomr the qualifications of ministers and bureaucrats.

John Hargreaves, I guess anyone could do “multicultural affairs” or “housing” as minister without any qualifications on those particular topics?

John Hargreaves said :

My experience is that if a minister really wants to know some new ideas and how his own ideas will or won’t work, it is best to ask the officers in his/her dept between the ASO4 and EL2 levels.

There’s probably been some grade creep since you learned that lesson.
In fact, if we’re talking the ACT Government, the permanent employees are all on stress leave so you’ll need to talk with the contractors that have been brought in to get the work done that the permanent staff are too dysfunctional to do themselves.

My experience is that if a minister really wants to know some new ideas and how his own ideas will or won’t work, it is best to ask the officers in his/her dept between the ASO4 and EL2 levels.

The properly qualified people are those people who staff the bureaucracies that are responsible for the relevant functions.
The politicians are there to inject their ideology into policy decisions, grab their slice of any corruption that’s on offer, and seek attention. That’s it – they aren’t there to actually run things, the properly qualified experts do that.

wildturkeycanoe, you have so many accurate points here, I’m having trouble commenting on them. But, I can say that most, not all, pollies start out being backbenchers who genuinely want to represent the views, as they see them, of their electorates. These are often overruled by the party policies (of what ever party we talk of) and thus being a backbencher can be frustrating. When on a Committee, the opportunity to contribute tot he discussion is real but often ignored by the government of the day which is not obliged to take a tinker’s damn bit of notice of it.

One of the real problems is that ministers are not chosen (in the case of the Libs and Nats) or elected (in the case of the ALP) because they have an agenda for a particular portfolio or are able to articulate the party’s position on that portfolio. They have to learn it on the run.

And another point is that rarely do ministers have control of their departments, let alone the mandarins. More often than not they sprout the views of the mandarins and claim credit if it is good and duck for cover if it is bad. The tail doth wag the dog! This is how a departmental mandarin can dispose of a minister if the fit is not a good one.

Just a coupla thoughts to add to your own.

So this is why the country is in such a poor state at the moment, nobody in government is qualified to do the job they have? We shouldn’t forget some real stand out examples such as a rock’n’roll lead singer attaining the environment portfolio and a fish and chip shop owner becoming the leader of a party, even losing the position in less than glorious circumstances and re-appearing years later without even a hint of the skeletons in the closet haunting her. Yet even for the most basic of casual retail work on offer to the public these days, there are prerequisites such as previous experience and relevant certifications that must be presented on application to even get an interview. Something is seriously rotten in this country.
Your revelation certainly sheds some light on the back-door shenanigans that goes on in politics. How can the leaders that supposedly represent the population be so far removed from the common man, as is the case of our current prime minister? How can a millionaire businessman with a fully solar powered mansion, be able to connect with the Aussie battler when it comes time to make decisions on electrical load-shedding for example? My personal opinion of politicians puts them below car salespeople and real estate agents in terms of trustworthiness. They simply cannot understand the hardships and the issues that everyday Australians face. They are more aligned with the CEOs and business world, being influenced by their “mates” who are of more importance than a family who is relying on welfare to survive.
Most unfortunately for all, there is no process in our electoral or legal systems to change this situation. We can only vote for the political parties that are available. Smaller parties cannot compete, because of the massive amounts of money being distributed to those already in power who gain an unfair advantage. It is a numbers game and I’m almost sure that even if a minor party won all of the first preference votes at the last election, we’d still have either Labor or Liberal pulling the strings due purely to their dominance on the political arena.
I can not think of a single thing a politician has done in the last decade that has made any part of my life better, but plenty that have made it worse.