Wasted

Three years ago

Three young friends got into my cab for a ride into town from one of the Defence bases here. One was full of pride in her job – a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She talked to her two friends about how the Prime Minister smiled and greeted her by name, was kind and considerate to her and all the other staff. She might not agree with all his policies, she said, but he was a nice man.

She had no kind words for another senior Government minister. He was only interested in calling for the most expensive bottles of wine aboard, and downing a couple on the relatively short flight to and from Melbourne. He called the cabin crew, “Hey, you!”, but he knew the onboard wine cellar by name and pedigree.

Tonight

He was wasted. This time on a Saturday morning, the only people over twenty-five in Civic are a few cabbies like me. This bloke was mid-thirties, business suit, tie loose, shambling along the footpath. A mid to senior-level public service manager, by his look.

My cab was next up and he opened the door, falling into the seat beside me. I examined him carefully. He was wrecked, to be sure, and he could be trouble. Trouble like throwing up, falling asleep, talking endless rubbish.

I drove off the rank, but stopped a few car lengths along to get the destination. He named a suburb five minutes away, and when I pressed him further, offered up the street name. This was hard work. He didn’t want to stay conscious. He wanted me to drive him home, and he didn’t care that I didn’t know where he lived.

Two months ago

Two middle-aged women got into the cab. They chatted to themselves in the back seat, and I cocked half an ear at their conversation, in case it included directions to the driver.

One was describing a young female relative, a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She was upset and unhappy with her job. The Prime Minister was an arsehole, treating the staff like shit, demanding impossible things of them, swearing at them. The young cabin attendant had put in for a transfer. I wondered if this was the same happy young woman who had been in my cab before the election, when the government changed.

I wondered if she was the same one who had made national headlines a year ago when she had burst into tears when abused by the Prime Minister, causing an official incident report to be filed by the plane’s captain.

Yesterday

“There’s no point sugar-coating this,” the Prime Minister said, admitting that he had demoted a a junior minister for bungling an important program. A program that had cost four young lives, had been scrapped halfway through and had caused huge and unexpected unemployment.

Sugar-coating is what the Prime Minister does. He does it so well. To listen to him, his government is sweet, in control, moving forward, doing important stuff.

The problem is that it isn’t true. The government is under the Prime Minister’s tight control. The Foreign Minister has nothing to do, because the ex-diplomat Prime Minister handles all foreign affairs, making overseas trips on a weekly basis. Every government program is scrutinised at the top. Anything that could embarrass the government is sent back until the media release is phrased just so.

And that’s about it. The government has done nothing much except issue press releases. The Prime Minister has made a few important but symbolic speeches and failed to back them up with action.

Well, no, that’s not strictly true. The government reacted decisively to the global financial crisis by spending the surplus painstakingly saved by the previous administration. Money was handed out to people, impressive programs were dreamed up to make work, including the bungled roof insulation scheme with the four deaths, the surprise scrapping, the sudden unemployment, the ministerial demotion etc.

The previous government’s border protection scheme was abolished, with the predictable result that illegal immigrants boarded leaky old fishing boats for the dangerous crossing to Australia. A new boat crammed with desperate people is reported every week. Some of them don’t make it. Some of them take extreme measures to be “rescued” by the Navy, dying, drowning, burning in their desire to enter Australia.

Tonight

My passenger’s head was nodding. He was asleep. Or something like it. I cranked up the airconditioning and took the corners sharply. Usually this wakes up the dozers, but this chap was sinking fast, burnt out.

We reached his street and with a few jabs on the brakes, he was awake. Or something like it. “This is your street,” I said. “What number are we looking for?”

We cruised up to the end of the street, made a u-turn and stopped.

“Where are we?” he asked.

I gave him the street name and the suburb, double-checking against my GPS.

“This isn’t the right place,” he complained.

He looked at the meter, fumbling with notes to pay the fare. Hell, but I couldn’t let him out unless I was sure he was in the right place. Letting a dozey drunk out on an unfamiliar street long after midnight is a recipe for disaster.

“What number are we looking for?”

He pulled out more money.

“Where do you live? What number is your house?”

This was stupid. I was talking to a public service executive as if he were a five year-old.

“Do you have your address on a drivers licence or something?”

Finally he gave me the house number. It didn’t sound plausible, but we moved along the street, the sidelight picking out house numbers.

“It’s the other side!” he announced. “Turn around!”

We turned around and he directed me into a driveway. Well, the driveway next to the one he lived in, and we had to bump over a bit of grass to get there. He paid the fare, and got out, wobbly on his feet.

“Careful getting out,” I warned him. “Take your time.” As if he was a pensioner, creaky and slow, afraid of falling and breaking a fragile bone.

Drunks have fallen out of the cab before. They can’t stand, they flop out, their legs give way. It’s a worry, and I watch them carefully.

He made it out, staggering up the driveway while I kept the headlights shining for his progress.

That was enough for me. My night was at an end.

Tomorrow

This Prime Minister has wasted a splendid opportunity. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments were under the control of one political party. Constitutional reform, an end to the costly divisions in health and education, new federal co-operation; the golden dream of every government was there for the taking.

And what happened? Nothing. The new Prime Minister made a few speeches, set his public servants working insane hours preparing reports on schemes that would never happen, dismantled some of the programs of the previous government and engaged in the mother of all public relations campaigns, working towards 100% favourable press coverage.

The government’s own list of achievements sounds wonderful, until investigation reveals that they are mostly announcements of schemes. Has the National Broadband Network been achieved? No. The first implementation in a tiny test market is months away.

The clean energy schemes are stalled or scrapped. The immigration policy is a disaster. The response to climate change failed before Copenhagen began. Election pledges on hospitals are broken. An education reporting scheme has had the predictable result of students deserting the schools ranked lowest, starving those schools of enrolment-based resources needed for improvement.

The government has lost control. All the public service research reports in the world, all the glowing media releases, all the fancy speeches cannot hide the fact that things are slipping away. The State and Territory governments are falling steadily, the chance for reform vanishing.

The media, sweet-talked to distraction, is sniffing blood in the water. Hard questions are being asked of waffling ministers. The Rudd gloss is fraying.

My take is that a man who cannot treat the staff with dignity and respect, venting his frustration on those who cannot fight back, smiling in public and snarling in public, sugar-coating disaster after disaster, squandering golden opportunities and promising heaven to come, my take is that such a man is not fit to run the nation, because he will inevitably lose the confidence of the people.

Not that I think the other party is any better. I don’t. The one thing I like about the Opposition Leader is that he’s honest.

Goodnight!

I’m disgusted. I’m a night cabbie, and for the past year or two, ever since the last Commonwealth election, I’ve been driving home public servants, drunk and exhausted. I pick them up from Parliament, from government offices, from hotels. Long after midnight.

Whatever they’ve been working on, it’s not working.