There is an additional and dangerous downside to former Prime Minister Morrison’s grab for power I have not seen aired anywhere.
Like everyone else, I have watched the emerging revelations with amazement.
The weight of commentary against the actions he took is total, even his supporters in the Liberal party are having trouble even talking about it, let alone justifying it. The solicitor general’s report confirmed what others had assumed. It concluded that there was no illegality in his actions, but that they were ‘inconsistent with the principle of responsible government‘
We live in a highly volatile and complex world, one where the cycle time required of decision makers is contracting, as the need for wise input born of diverse knowledge from different perspectives into decision making is increasing.
This is where I believe the other great threat to good decision making in the nations interest lies.
Our political system is good at weeding out any diversity of view, it demands adherence to the party line, and as a result, decision making suffers, badly. Good people with good ideas and wisdom inconsistent with that party line do not get a say. As a result, we have a parliament and supporting systems filled with careerists who understand the way to progress is to be yes men.
Anyone running any sort of enterprise facing complex problems understands the challenge. The best way to address those complex problems is to seek a variety of views from experts looking at the complexities from different perspectives. You then blend those views into a decision making process that enables clear accountability and continuous improvement of the outcomes as results emerge. This requires a culture that encourages diversity and transparency.
Morrisons power grab is that he removed any sense that there was a valid opinion on any topic other than his own.
Everyone comes to any situation with a perspective of their own, moulded by their life experiences, beliefs, and positions taken in the past. This is entirely normal. It reduces the cognitive load required to get through the day by allowing us to act almost on auto pilot for most of the time, leaving cognitive capacity to deal with the unusual.
Complexity by its nature has all sorts of second and third order impacts when you set about addressing that complexity. No one person can hope to see them all, or even a small proportion of them. It takes a wise group of diverse minds to focus on the problem from differing perspectives to anticipate those second and third order impacts.
So, just at the time when collaboration, diversity of opinion based on fact, and transparency is vital, the former PM goes the other way, looking at the problems faced by the nation only through his own particular version of the truth, an overload of confirmation bias.
He is the one who exhorted a church audience in Perth a few weeks ago not to trust governments, presumably in total ignorance of the reasons why public trust has been trashed, and the blatant hubris and hypocrisy of his words.
Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall the next time he meets some of his former colleagues in private?
I think to understand it you have to understand the fundamentalist element that drives Scomo. He is there to do Gods will. When he won the first time I think he really did believe in the “miracle” – it was not metaphoric. When he says “you cant trust governments” as he was quoted as saying in a speech to the “enlightened” somewhere recently, that’s what he meant – you can’t trust them to do what he believes God wants. Ironically if God wanted him he would still be there, But even the big fella/she-fella would be appalled at the tactics last example being the hysterical election day “refugees are sighted” deaths-door pitch.
Until half way through the second term, I did not realise just how dangerous he was.
Scary that his apparently absolute belief in himself as a messenger of his invisible friend could get him as far as it has!