A matter of conviction

Today's paper has one cartoon called "The Politician". The interviewer is pushing a microphone in the mouth and asking "Do you have any convictions that we don't know about?"

The Politician answers... 'Not sure which way you mean it. Either way, No!'

It is an interesting joke, I have oft times bemoaned how many politicians seem to be headline driven rather than principle-driven. It leads to poor policy and the sort of tedious politics that we seem to be experiencing at both a national and state level just at the moment.

The curious reporting of the visit to Afghanistan by both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition in the last week is a case in point. Both seem to have handled this poorly.

Julia could have just chosen to note that Abbott was unable to go at the time and that he would have been travelling later. And why did Tony have to be so stupid as to say he wasn't going going to avoid being jetlagged, allowing the PM and others to at least suggest that troops in Afghanistan were less important than the Conservative party conference.

Then this morning he cries "bastardry", but at least he gets his gun-toting picture in the paper (I wonder if and indeed why he might have had training to use such a weapon). He said he wanted to be 'embedded' with the troops.

How crazy is that? Any fool can see that that is essentially a risky proposition. (At Least Prince Harry who presumably is a similar sort of risk is a highly trained combatant), and it's not that Abbott is endangering himself but he is endangering soldiers who are already at high risk.

Both of them should be ashamed of the way they have attempted squeeze the political advantage out of this.