Nicholas Stuart | After a mixed 2022, there's hope for a brighter future

The polling tells us as a country we're looking forward to a brilliant holiday, just like the years before COVID, the years BC. Soon we'll be relaxing, by the beach or by walking in the bush as the mottled sunlight streams through the gums; perhaps talking beside a barbecue as the steak sizzles and the smell of spicy kebabs wafts through suburban backyards. More than any other country - apart, perhaps, from those in the Pacific - this season means downtime.

We've turned course and are heading in the right direction. But only just.

Start with the good: the triumph of the independents. Voters decisively repudiated Scott Morrison's policies of social division and failure to recognise climate change. The 5.74 per cent swing against the Coalition sent its vote plunging to the lowest share of the (House of Representatives) tally since the Liberals contested their first election in 1946. Labor won government although this time with a lower share of the vote (32.58 per cent) than it had lost the 2019 election (33.34). Both major parties lost seats to both independents and Greens and their tweedle-dum/tweedle-dum lock on politics appears to have been broken.

In this regard the most critical result was the election of David Pocock to the Senate, here in the ACT. At the time I'd interviewed him and came away impressed at his considered approach as he refused to bite and grab at simplistic answers to complex problems and remember thinking, 'Well, we'll see how that goes'.

The answer is now apparent and it is that things actually go much better when people are working together to achieve a positive outcome, rather than a political one. He is not just improving legislation but working on something far more important - achieving better policy. He and the other independents in the lower house, together with Jackie Lambie in the Senate, have allowed Parliament to escape the division of bifurcated politics.

Until this year our choices have always been presented as simple, either/or dichotomies. This is the same problem that lies beneath the paralysis that's embracing politics in the US and UK. It's evolved from the need to cobble together alliances of convenience that gloss over the real answers to our problems and instead pretend that simple alternatives can offer solutions. They don't. There are only choices, each of which comes with its own costs and benefits. This is the problem facing politicians around the world.

Both China and Russia have embraced the idea they are led by unique individuals - supreme leaders that can (by simple virtue of their genius) guide their country into the future. Put it like this (and then contrast this with the problems of their respective countries) and the idea that brilliant individuals make the best rulers is revealed as the bankrupt idea it always was. But then think back on the way both Liberal and Labor have attempted to portray their own leaders as remarkable. The real problem of democratic politics is it has evolved to dismiss the negatives and air-brush them away. Inserting independents into the mix has allowed us to recognise no one party holds all the answers and they are, instead, involved in balancing acts as they attempt to find compromises between competing interests and ideas within the main parties. The result has been better government, even if it does mean more work for politicians (and journalists).

So if that's the good, there can be no question about the bad.

Watching the royal commissioner last week, slicing through Morrison's waffle and requiring him to answer questions provided a delicious moment for journalists to savour. Despite this he remained, however, just as impossible to pin down as in a press conference. The investigation into robodebt is uncovering the way government worked in the past and in doing so has offered up a true miracle. Everyone, even and particularly an incredibly brave AO4, seemingly knew this policy was either unsound, illegal, or both. Somehow - and this is the true miracle - such concerns never actually bubbled up to the top. Given the opportunity to plead either ignorance or culpability for pressing ahead with flawed policy the decision-makers, whether politicians or public servants, have instead invoked a third excuse: it was all the fault of someone else.

What a pathetic way for people like Morrison, Marise Payne and Kathryn Campbell to have to spend their time, squirming their way around clear obligations to implement proper policy.

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By way of contrast the actions of Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in announcing a new agency to take over the role of the Administrative Affairs Tribunal appears to have been taken as the final act, but only after a series of attempts to reform the institution failed. The previous government is accused of effectively using this as nothing more than a dumping ground used to reward spear carriers with generous salaries and sinecures. It's unfortunate there's no room to further explore the way this institution, one supposedly beyond politics, was used to reward party faithful.

All we can do is hope this end-of-year purge means good government can begin afresh which leaves just the ugly, beginning with myself. My worst journalistic blunder this year was assuming Ukraine would fold.

The reasons it didn't are of course complex and have a great deal to do with chance and luck in those first few days. If the Russian airborne descent on airfields outside Kyiv had gone according to plan an armoured column would have appeared outside the Palace before President Volodymyr Zelensky had clambered out of his pyjamas into his green fighting shirt. Because aircraft and missiles couldn't occupy the same space the tanks were late, the defence was tough, and the goodies held on. The fight since has been devastating and shows no sign of being resolved soon. It demonstrates how incredibly lucky we in Australia are to enjoy the fact that we are at peace. This is a luxury we should never take for granted.

Merry Christmas.