5 December 2012
Once upon a time, there was a silly Labor Senator called John Faulkner. He was silly because he believed in quaint old-fashioned notions like ‘political integrity’ and ‘open and accountable government’. Silly John was just an idealist. He even wanted politicians to earn the trust of the Australian electorate. What a dreamer!
Silly John wasted his whole political career thinking that, one day, things would change for the better. But nobody listened to him and things just got worse.
After 23 years in parliament, he decided to retire, but before he did, he made a great big speech. He was very angry and frustrated and impatient. He didn’t care if he upset Labor’s party machine because he had nothing to lose – he was going to retire anyway and besides, they couldn’t argue with him because they knew he was right. Just like he had always been.
In his big speech he said that he deplored the repeated deferral of a code of conduct for federal parliamentarians, the failure to put in place comprehensive protection for public sector whistleblowers and delays to reforms that would cut disclosure thresholds for political donations. He also lamented Australia’s absence from the Open Government Partnership, a forum of nations committed to transparency in government and the eradication of corruption.
He also said some really nasty things about some of his colleagues in the NSW branch of the Labor Party. He used phrases like ‘woeful lapses of judgement’, ‘exploitation of power’ and ‘flagrant abuses of privileges’.
Poor silly John still thought that people might change their ways. He even thought they might do it before he retired. Seems that he wanted to think that his political career had not been wasted. But it had.
Poor silly sad John – an elder statesman we may never see the likes of again.
Sydney Morning Herald related column and source