“Good Intentions & Bad Policy” – Siobhan Harris

By Siobhan Harris 

‘The road to hell was paved with good intentions’
Proverb.

The simple truth is that intentions don’t mean much. Can you imagine explaining to your professor, ‘Sorry Professor, I didn’t submit my essay but I really did mean to write it’.

Just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Policy is no different. Politicians remind us, but look, see, this is what we wanted to achieve and then…you know…the big bad unpredictable external factor barged its way through the door and snatched our noble idea and now we’re left to pick up the pieces. Honest.

What they don’t tell you is that frankly it was rather a rubbish idea in the first place.

There are many examples of this in action. Bungled policy, delays, politically unsellable notions. Remember former PM Julia Gillard’s unfortunate ‘People’s Assembly’? Sure, It’s a lovely idea, in theory, but an absolute terror to explain or put in action. And so it failed, as these ideas often do.

Are we helpless? Is it natural that things go a little awry during the implementation period, always? Or can we learn to identify the beginnings of bad policy and tear it out from the roots and dispose of it.

So, before a lot of money, time, energy and other resources get spent on silly little ideas. Do something about it. Get involved in an action campaign, start one yourself and get yourself a little social media drive happening.

Not to sound preachy, or homework-ey but try to make a conscious effort to watch announcements by politicians. Watch and read the tweets. They’ll post pledges, they might test the waters first with some public feelers.

Write, bring your friends, get inspired to stop what you think is bad policy. If by some unfortunate stroke of bad luck occurs and the policy goes ahead anyway, you can continue your campaign, there’s no reason to stop fighting.

But what I wanted to stress was the time at which bad ideas can be killed. Before any commitments. Before any resource allocation. Get on the bandwagon, and do it quickly.

So please, complain and rise up against bad ideas and bad policy!

Your Parents vs. The Senate

At some stage in your life, you’ve had a GREAT idea. Hell, it was a revolutionary idea. A ‘pull it off and you’ll be a hero’ type of idea.

Naturally, you shared your revolutionary idea with your parents and waited for their eternal praise. Instead you got this.

Not quite what you expected. “And how do you expect to do that? Where will you get the money? Do you know how long that will take? Have you even thought about what your saying? I don’t think you understand how difficult that is. These things don’t just happen.” They didn’t stop until your idea had more holes in it than a golf course.

In the process of being sad, angry, frustrated etc. you had enough time to think about those holes and realised (begrudgingly) that they’re totally valid. It didn’t feel like it at the time but they poked holes because they care. They want you to succeed and will do everything in their power to stop you making a fool of yourself. We all have the ability to get caught up in our ideas. Our parents make the difference between truly GREAT ideas and this.

In parliament, you are the House of Reps. Your parents are the Senate. You need each other. You need them to hold you accountable. Even if it makes life a little difficult at the time, it’s for your own good.

When we vote, we need to make sure that happens. We need to make sure the senate are more like our parents and less like our friends. Because sometimes our friends will support us to remain friends, even if they think we’re destined for failure.

You can’t pick your parents, but later today we’ll show you how to pick people like them. Stay tuned!