Jumping from the general to the specific; while I was taking a short break from developing my comments on democracy I came across a week-old newspaper that had lodged, undiscovered, under some decking at the front of the property. And the front page of this paper held a story germane to my comments in an earlier blog and also to something that I had been thinking about earlier this evening.

The burden of the story was Malcolm Turnbull’s complete abandonment of, and outright attack on, Barnaby Joyce.  I was of course aware that the unfortunate Barnaby had been driven from his positions as Leader of his party and Deputy Prime Minister but I had assumed that these were due to pressure from within the National Party. Not entirely so, it seems.

Now the important point here is that only a short time ago Malcolm Turnbull was publicly joining in the celebration of Barnaby’s re-election and swearing eternal brotherhood (another typo – I wrote ‘botherhood’, which may be prescient) or something similar. Ol’ Malcolm was even wearing  ‘country’ clothing, matching that worn by Barnaby, and beaming sweatily into the TV cameras with his arm across Barnaby’s shoulders.

And he had reason to be damn grateful because Barnaby – or rather Barnaby’s electors, had just saved his parliamentary majority of one. It would serve him right if Barnaby now resigned and his seat fell to the Labor party.

Now my earlier thoughts had been about the curious custom of occasionally allowing a ‘conscience vote’ in Parliament. Since this is a rare phenomenon it follows that the political parties demand that their members otherwise vote in accordance with the party directives, regardless of the demands of their consciences.

But a conscience, it seems to me, is something that tries to dissuade one from doing what one knows is a harmful thing. And it therefore appears that, in a significant number of cases,  the political parties consider themselves unable convince all of their sitting members that their intentions, enshrined in the bill to be voted upon, are not harmful. Else there would never be a need for a special ‘conscience vote’ at all.

So these people are routinely supporting legislation that they know or suspect will harm those whose interests they claim to represent. Otherwise  there would be rare no-conscience votes. Only then would they be expected to disregard the dictates of their consciences.

And surely this is all of a piece with swearing that someone is a wonderful fellow when he’s just saved your government and stabbing him in the back as soon as there is an opportunity to do so. The name of the game is expediency. By its very construction our political system leaves no room for concepts such as morality, ethics or conscience.

This is a timely example of the rot inherent in our political system and I will refer to it when I resume my thesis.